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A Chinese Tablet After 7 Months. Is It Failing To Bits & Does it Hold Charge?

A Chinese Tablet After 7 Months. Is It Failing To Bits & Does it Hold Charge?

I’ve now had my Chuwi Vi10 Dual Boot for around 7 months. I thought I would post a quick video on how it’s holding up. To be honest, like most people I expected battery wear (Would it hold a full charge?), slowness to creep in and maybe the USB ports, MicroUSB charge port to be falling apart or some other damage. The usual for a cheap Chinese tablet right? Well, it seems many models might just last well beyond expectations.

My Vi10 is holding up well, my most used tablet, because of it’s two full USB ports and keyboard dock. It’s now selling for around $135, when I got it I paid about $180 for it. And there is the new updated Vi10 Ultimate version out this week which replaces the Atom Z3736F Bay Trail with the new generation X5 Z8300 Cherry Trail. I’ll review this model, but only briefly since the CPU is the only change which should give a nice 30-40% boost in graphics capabilities.

The only issues after 7 months of use:

The keyboard scratches up the screen protector I have on it. So I wouldn’t go without a screen protector due to this friction from the keyboard rubbing on the screen when it’s in transit. Android was pretty bad on the tablet due to the poor choice in DPI made it look blurry, so I removed Android and later installed Windows 10. And it has the normally wear and tear expected, wear on the keyboard case and keys.

Battery life is still going strong, only 6.8% cell wear over 7 months and countless charge cycles. I still get around 6 hours on a full charge. I had powering on issues and static over the 3.5mm jack, both fixed themselves after upgrading to Windows 10.

Some people reporting charging issues in the forum, I never had a problem with this as I use my Blitzwolf 24w charger for all my tablets, maybe some of the stock chargers don’t deliver the full amps it needs?

Often I post videos, benchmarks, gaming tests and even reviews that don’t make it on the site here. Make sure you subscribe to the TechTablets YouTube channel if you don’t want to miss out on this type of content.

Video tech reviewer and tech blogger. I have a huge interest in the latest tech, tablets, laptops, mobiles, drones, and even e-scooters. Active in the tech community since 2008 days of the Omnia i900 Windows phone. Samsungi8910omnia.com, Samsunggalaxysforums.com founder from way back.

15 Comments

  1. Hi,
    my Chuwi VI 10 when I open internet explorer in windows 8.1,the tablet is in OFF and don’t power.
    Why…please help me
    I suppose that I chance the battery…is possible???

  2. Hi,
    You mentioned the Chuwi Vi10 Ultimate. I really like the idea of a better CPU with better graphical performance. But the Ultimate has no dual boot. Is it possible to make the Chuwi Vi10 Ultimate dual booted with Android?
    Thanks a lot!

  3. Hey Chris,
    Just got my x98 air 3g, pretty satisfied with it.
    thanks for reviews and suggestions.
    I wonder which microsoft office version would work on it better?

  4. Thanks Chris, these articles are very important.
    I was wondering something : Why would you choose using this tablet instead of the cube i7 stylus for example? Is it only the full USB ports?
    Between those two, would you still but this one (or the newer model) instead of the cube i7 stylus?
    Thanks

    • It’s a must really for me to have a full sized port as I use it as a Baidu download machine for getting firmware files from China. I hate having to use adapters. It’s a throw around tablet for travel, but just for light tasks. If I need to edit videos (1080p) I would go with a Core M Cube i7 Stylus. But I sold mine to help fund getting the Teclast X2 Pro.

      The other big factor is it’s so cheap and so practical, I like the keyboard. I’m going to replace it with the Vi10 Ultimate I think. It would depend on my needs in a tablet, for anything but video editing or heavy gaming I choose this tablet. It’s speakers are also one of the best in Chinese tablets.

  5. My Vi10 still holds 6.30-7.0 hours of charge. But the problem is something wrong with the power system. The screen will start to flicker if there are processes that consume intense CPU/battery/power and most of the time it will make the tablet turned off suddenly. For example:

    – If i set the brightness more than 70% on idle (not opening any program)
    – Brightness around 30-45% (which i usually use all the time) and opening a medium-heavy program such as Photoshop, or sometimes even Firefox/VLC player !
    – Randomly when logging in to Windows

    Strangely, when i plugged in the charger, this seems help to reduce the possibility of screen flicker (but still happens one or two times). This is never happen when i am in BIOS (maybe because very little CPU usage) nor when the Windows booting which lead me to suspect the problem is whether on the battery or the power delivery. I am in latest BIOS with latest VGA driver too. This happen around 1 month ago, i thought because overheating but i am not so sure as this problem can appear in the first time i use the tablet on the day.

    Can you help me Chris?

    • That sounds like more of a hardware power issue or lose cable affected by heat? These tablets can be a lottery and I must have lucked out with my one sinceI have no issues after 7 months.

      • Yes chris..i do hope it is only driver issues related. Can you check your current driver version if you are still in Windows 8? Or anyone?

    • Are you on Windows 10?
      Sounds like my lenovo laptop issue after msft forced graphic display update.
      My vi10 haven’t done this update yet.

      • I’m on Windows 8.1 w/ Bing sir. As far as i know the graphic driver HAS BEEN update at least once. Do you think this is because the ‘forced update’ ?
        If so, could you help me to upload the original driver version?

  6. I just mounted mine on my bed, replacing an old 8″ tab,
    All mentioned are valid.
    Charging issue will happen if your charger+cable deliver current less than 1.3A @5v.
    I have a USB current voltage meter. So I already know which charger is true 2A charger and which cable deliver 1.4A – ish.
    I separate and classified my chargers and cables that way.

    Oh.. I got issues with the Insyde switcher after I got win10. So I stop using the apps and just use the long press volume down during boot.

    @chris
    Is a glass film help?
    I have switch to my 2nd std screen guard just to find it scratch again.

    • I think a temperated glass screen protector would fix the issue or maybe even no screen protector at all, since the protectors are plastic they scratch super easy.

  7. G’day Chris,
    And how do you find the display in day to day use? Does the low res screen worry you at all, or would you prefer a better res? Obviously the slow read/write speeds you mentioned in the original video aren’t worrying you too much?

    Terry

    • Hi,

      I find 1366 x 768 is fine, the screen is quite good as it’s the old Surface RT screen. 1080p would be better, but again 768 is perfectly usable for me. I thought I would hate it and almost didn’t buy it to review because of the screen.

      The eMMC benchmarks a little on the slow site in writes, but in use it’s fine.

      • Thanks for that Chris, yes, Windoze seems to be optimized for the 1366 x 768 display, but I think I will hold out for a better display anyway. I can live with slow read/write speeds because I don’t have time to play games on a tablet, so it is mainly businessy-type stuff I would use it for.

        These Vi10s have dropped in price here in Aus now that the new versions are starting to filter through, but I will definitely have a look for bargains on 11/11 for the Vi10 Ultimate, as well as the X2 Pro and Cube i7 and Stylus.

        Thanks again for these reviews, you have got no idea how helpful they are to buyers like me — without you we would be left with just the paid ‘reviews’ on the sales sites — and you know how much we Aussies hate praising Kiwis! 🙂

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