- Budget laptops are becoming increasingly popular
these days for good reason.
Today, we're gonna take a look at the CHUWI LapBook,
a 12.3 inch laptop that only costs $300.
Is it any good?
I'll tell ya.
Stay Tuned.
(upbeat music)
Costing between $300 and $350, the CHUWI LapBook 12.3
is a pretty solid-looking device.
Now, obviously, it looks a lot like a MacBook.
No secret there, CHUWI's been doing this for a while.
There's some actual components in here
that also resemble a Surface.
I'll get to that in a little bit.
Overall, though, it's a CNC machined aluminum body.
It feels really nice.
No creaks, either.
Coming up to the left side here,
you have a barrel port here for the charger,
a USB 3.0 port, and a micro HDMI for video out.
Coming to the right-hand side,
you have a Kensington lock, USB 2.0,
a three and a half millimeter headphone jack,
and a micro SD slot.
One of the more exciting aspects of this laptop
is this right here is an M.2 slot,
so, you just pry this door open with your fingernail,
and I didn't break it,
it just pops off like that.
This allows you to put a M.2 2242 SSD into this slot.
So, it's external storage, you just pop it in there,
screw it down, and then you put this cover back down,
and that's a really neat thing,
'cause this device only comes with 64 gigabytes
of eMMC technology.
That is a Toshiba drive.
It's OK.
It's not the fastest out there, but it's pretty solid.
You can put in a SATA 3 SSD though, into this drive here.
I just love how this drawer works,
you just pop it in, click it in there, and you are all set.
If you don't need it, no worries about it whatsoever.
Opening up the CHUWI LapBook, and this is one
of the crown jewel achievements, here.
You are looking at a three by two aspect display,
but it has a 2736 by 1824 resolution.
If that crazy number sounds familiar,
it is because that's what the Surface Pro uses.
In fact, at 12.3 inches,
this is essentially the same panel
that is being used in the Surface Pro.
Though one difference of course,
this is non-touch, and it is matte.
Now, the trade off there, of course,
is you get a thinner panel on top.
You can open this device with one-handed,
but it's not just the resolution that's important here.
You have excellent color accuracy.
I did a calibration with this and hit 99% SRGB.
That is super impressive,
and technically, higher than the Surface Pro.
So, not only does this IPS display look really good,
but you're gonna get really good color accuracy,
which is important if you're editing photos.
Now, let's talk about those bezels.
They're obviously pretty wide.
I get that's going to bother some people, but hey,
this is a budget device, and we're not quite there, yet.
Considering it's a non-touch display,
I'm not sure why these bezels are that thick,
but it is what it is.
Looking at the keyboard, now,
these keys are a little bit smaller
than normally what CHUWI uses in their larger devices.
The keys though are pretty good.
Excellent travel.
I'd say it's probably at least one point three millimeter.
No back light.
It is a budget machine.
So, you're not going to get that.
Comes to the trackpad, again,
there's gonna be some compromise here.
Now, I'm usually pretty harsh on CHUWI's trackpads,
but this one is probably one of their better ones yet.
Now, this doesn't use official trackpad drivers,
so, it's definitely not precision, and nor is it synaptics.
It is a mouse driver that's being used as the trackpad.
It's a little rough-feeling, but the click is not too bad.
It's, like I said, better than their previous attempts.
I didn't hate using it.
It's not my favorite.
I would take a precision any day, but at this price range,
this is actually a pretty decent trackpad.
In terms of the rest of the hardware,
you're talking a seventh generation
Apollo Lake Intel Celeron N3450.
It's a one point gigahert base processor
with a turbo boost of two point two gigahertz.
Celerons are not the best processors in the world,
but it is cheaper than a Core M3 processor,
which would have, essentially, doubled the price
of this device for $300.
So, they had to use what is available out there.
The Celeron does pretty well, though,
if you're just sticking with Windows 10 apps
and a couple light games.
Obviously, if you're running something like Adobe Photoshop
you can do that, but it's going to be a little rough.
Luckily, when it comes to RAM,
things are a little bit better.
Instead of four gigs, this is actually running six gigs
of RAM.
That's a little bit unusual.
It's not quite the ideal eight gigabytes,
but that extra two gigabytes will help you
when you're running a browser with extensions
and have multiple tabs open.
So, I'm really kind of happy with that choice.
So, let's talk about using this device.
I am actually very impressed with it.
Now, it's an Intel Celeron processor,
not the best in the world, a little bit better than an Atom,
but at this price range, totally forgivable.
The keyboard is very good, the trackpad is acceptable,
and I really like that M.2 expansion slot
along with that six gigs of RAM.
However, it's really the display
that's the most impressive aspect of this device.
You're talking about something that's very high resolution,
nearly 3K.
It's matte.
I could stare at it for hours,
and the color accuracy is very high.
In fact, it's higher than more premium devices out there.
Overall, this is a great device for students,
and I think people who are on a budget
looking for a solid laptop.
The build-quality is very good.
Now, there are other choices out there
if you want pen or touchscreen support,
so, keep that in mind,
but overall, CHUWI's done a solid job here,
and I'm pretty impressed with this company.
So, there's a quick look at the CHUWI LapBook 12.3.
If you want the full review, make sure you head
to Windows Central where I have benchmarks,
high-quality photos, and information on where to buy it.
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Thanks for watching.
Take care, everybody.