I have with me here the Lapbook 12.3 this is the latest laptop from Chuwi
that's powered by the Apollo late in 3450 now unlike all of the models that
I've looked at recently they've all been 16 by 9 aspect ratio this one's a little
different so it's got a 3 by 2 ratio screen and in fact the same panel used
in the Surface Pro the 2017 model or the Surface Pro 4 now it also has an SSD
base you get able to increase the storage capacity so if you're not happy
with 64 gigabytes of each MMC storage 5 spec then you can just slot in a larger
SSD up to 512 I think it takes the 22 by 42 spec it has 6 gigabytes of RAM runs
Windows 10 has wireless AC and a full metal build so let's have a look at it
so at the time of this video here this is selling for around 319 us on gearbest
so a little more expensive than say the laptop 14.1 or the easy buck 3 pro but
you have to take into account that you are getting a much better screen there
with the surface pro 4 screen so the seal has already been broken so
someone's probably gone in there and just done their inspection checks to
make sure it's got no faults hopefully ok so it all slides out here we have the
little box or the accessories this is just like the chewy 14.1 and our laptop
in the middle so here we have just a little information leaflet I'd say
that's just the warranty card yes it is warranty card tablet pad it says even
though this is a laptop some sort of QuickStart guide or something that's all
in Chinese I'm not going to go into any detail with that so accessories this
will be the charger so they've given me well your pian cable that came with that
that's good so normally you get just the u.s. two prongs so I don't need a power
adapter so 12 volts 2 answers what that is rated 2
that's a DC plug and I think the diameter this is three millimeters like
the other ones
okay so full metal build on this it looks a little bit thicker than I
thought it would be just looking at the front of it there - lid thickness at
least and feels a little bit heavier I've got my scales here so I'll just
wait and that weight doesn't feel too that certainly not the lightest so it's
1.37 kilos so almost 1.4 and the front here is an SI about 17 millimeters thick
and the rear of it so we do have some plastic along the back here this is for
the antenna reception for wireless AC and Bluetooth the back here comes in at
your 17.3 to the lid here we've got a Chuwi logo pressing down on that it seems
quite firm I don't believe that if you put this in a bag with books that it's
going to push the screen against the keyboard or anything it's quite firm and
looking at the ports here on the right side we've got a Kensington lock this is
the first time I've seen this on a Chinese laptop at least the ones that I
normally review USB 2 port shame that's not USB 3 I've got the 3.5 millimeter
headphone jack and then a micro SD card slot and micro SD cards - look they
click in and sit relatively flush there with the rest of it so hopefully that
won't be knocked and come out in transit so the bottom of the laptop metal as
well this is screwed in place for rubber feet which are about 2 millimeters in
height - down with phone speakers this flap here is where you put in your SSD
I'm going to install my own SSD in here because I like the speed you get it's
quite a lot faster than those emmc 5 specs so we need to do is undo that
screw which we've already done slot this in so push it in place
and then screw that down
and put the lid back on and you are done very quick and easy oh and there is a
second step you have to go into the BIOS and then select your SSD as the boot
drive and then go ahead and install windows onto that drive and lastly on
the left side status LED the DC in there for charging and a USB 3 port next to
that many HDMI out ok so I haven't opened this up yet and taking a pic at
the display but I think it's glossy from looking at the press images but
hopefully it's going to be met hopefully I am wrong here
so can we open it with one hand yes no ok and it is a matte display which is
good so I was wrong there but wow look at those massive bezels that's a shame
it has to kind of look to it like the ace of Swift 3 or those Mac books with
that massive silver bezel on there so the keyboard layout has most of the
shortcuts and thank all of them that I think most people would want we have to
use the function key for your page up and down and end but their controls for
the volume media controls screen brightness controls a dedicated Print
Screen button which is what I'm always after and you'll notice the location of
the power button near the backspace is a little annoying but your one seems to be
doing it has the same resistance as any of the other buttons - you can of course
sit in Windows settings that when you tap it by mistake that it will do
nothing so booted into windows quite quickly with an account that was already
created so someone's gone and they're just check things out to make sure this
happens a lot but stuff that I buy from China they often go in there and just
test everything that there's no faults with it before sending it to you
personally I don't mind this a lot of people do they have a problem with it
because then it feels like it's used but for me it's just another level there
that I'm making sure they're making sure sorry that I'm not going to be getting a
faulty laptop here so the touch pad first impressions that actually seems
okay not too bad so this top here I can feel that it is made
out of plastic and it does support the gestures the panel the screen is looking
very good so a very nice three by two aspect ratio screen the same as the
surface pro screen so very nice have a look here and see if my micro sorry
the Oh micro SD card yes I can see it's listed there and the SD both detected
which is great and you get two thirty eight point three gigabytes free of
these fifty seven point one rather 64 gigabyte MMC so not a lot of space to
play with I definitely recommend adding your own is his d2 this under the device
manager now the e MMC they have used is a Toshiba 0 64 G 93 now this will be an
EMC 5.0 spec so faster than the ones we used to see in the at interior trail
laptops and tablets the wireless is Intel wireless AC 3 165 which is a very
good decent chipset with good speeds here's the memory information so we've
got 6 gigabytes of RAM running at 1600 megahertz you can see the timings there
and the screen as a Samsung got into the settings now of the mouse and there are
no gesture controls here so it's not set up as a precision touchpad at all but it
still to me feels quite good so far using it and the keyboard as well I'm
impressed with it I've been typing on it just a little bit now and I must say it
feels like a very decent keyboard one of the better ones on these more budget
orientated upon a late laptops that I have been checking out so have a look at
a couple of photos here just to get a quick idea and impression of this screen
here which looks really quite stunning so the brightness at the moment I think
is on 100% this is so that now is 0% which is still reasonably visible so
that should be OK for night use perhaps even a tad too
right I would say 25% 50 75 and then 100 blacks are quite deep and give you a
close-up here of that screen really nice be interesting to see how the screen is
going to affect the performance but so far so good I haven't really noticed any
difference so I believe I have discovered a little bit of a problem
here a first batch issue perhaps hopefully it's maybe just my unit I
don't really know but look at this 50% brightness 75 100 no change whatsoever
so it seems to just go from 0 to 25 to 50 and then the next two settings do
absolutely nothing there which is quite unusual if I go into manually slide it
here the brightness if that's going to change it no so you can see it only
seems to start working here from about 50% downwards and nothing's happening
there so how could I have a bias update to fix that now it's time to have a
listen to the two downwards firing speakers check out how they sound
they sound just like the let book 14.1 speakers to me they're not bad they've
got a bit of volume to them you can hear that some vibration coming out of it and
100 cent volume but just tweak the volume back down a little bit and till
it doesn't vibrate like that but they're not bad those speakers hmm so these are
the drive speeds here for the C Drive which is I thought an emmc 5 spec one
but it looks like it's 4.4.1 spec because it's not getting those kind of
speeds very poor speeds out of those through the read speeds they're fine but
the four K's oh dear and 24 sequential writes so I'm going to be switching over
to an SSD time to see if it's going to power an external hard drive looking
good you can see the screen doesn't take much to wobble around there which is a
minor con so that is working I can see it's accessing the external hard drive
there just to note as well that the USB ports they don't have a lot of spacing
between the power jack the port itself years of using a very wide USB pendrive
then you have to bear that in mind had the same problem with the easy book 3
Pro and also the USB port is upside-down and the other port the USB 2 port will
also power 1 terabyte external hard drives now on the bias it's pretty much
locked down we've got no advanced settings here whatsoever you can disable
the security there with the secure boot which i think is disabled by default
actually boot order and that is it really so I'm going to try and see now
if I can run a linux on it it's going to change that to my USB pendrive and yes
it does support Linux this is Manjaro release 17 have a look and see if the
touchpad is going to work and Wireless and everything like that it's just
loading up at the moment ok yes touch pads working I'll need to change the
scaling of the desktop here you can see everything's tiny
and I can see that wireless networks that is also working so check out the
display if we can adjust the brightness and the audio we can and just like
windows we can only control the brightness up to 50% so the battery is a
36 watt hour battery and it's giving an estimated battery life here of around 8
hours with the brightness at 50% now bear in mind this is an estimate I'll
have an update of this and more solid figures and the full review so first
impressions of the Chuwi left pocket 12.3 are looking very positive the build of
it is excellent the keyboard feels good the touchpad as well no problems with
that now there is an issue with the screen brightness then it seems to be
maximum 50% 75% and one humber scene or anything over 50% I should say just
doesn't seem to increase the brightness so there's a problem here they need to
address the other column that I discovered so far in my time using it is
the emmc so it's got quite low speeds there it's not definitely not the
fastest that I have seen apart from that we're looking at a very nice-looking
machine with of course a really great screen on it it's super super sharp and
I'm pleased to see that it is in fact mat coated as well I expected it to be
glossy for some reason from maybe the priest images just made me believe that
so I'll be back with further tests in the full review which will cover things
like thermals battery life gaming performance and anything else that I
encounter in my time using it thanks all for watching and I do hope to see you
back in the channel soon with the full review of this and further reviews on
other devices from China