I recently tested out the new Chuwi Vi10 Ultimate, the upgraded Vi10 which the new Atom X5 Z8300 in it. The tablet is an improvement in some areas over the Vi10 and in others it’s not much of a step up over the Atom Z3736F By Trail. The design is exactly the same, a solid build with front and rear tempered glass.
The Vi10 Ultimate boots up quicker than my Vi10, but in most benchmarks it’s a little slower, apart from 3DMark’s tougher tests like 3DMark11 and Cloud gate. It’s down to the lower CPU clock speeds of 1.84 Ghz Vs 2.16Ghz on the Z3736F. But the GPU does have more EU’s than the Bay Trail. 12 EU’s on the Cherry Trail Vs just 4 on the Bay Trail, but with the single channel ram and lower clocks limiting the GPU it’s not really much faster at all. You have to remember the X5 Z8300 is the lowest Cherry Trail, so much slower than the X5 Z8500 and X7 Z8700.
Thermals have been an issue on most X5 Z8300 tablets and mini PC’s I’ve tested. But the Vi10 Ultimate is good. Pushing the tablet hard with 3Dmark11, gaming and other benchmarks for a few hours the maximum temps on the X5 SoC where 75 degrees C. The back of the tablet get’s slightly warm. But no thermal throttling which is the main thing here.
But the Vi10 Ultimate does have several improvements over the older model:
- Micro HDMI Outputs upto 4k 30hz (As well as 2560 x 1440p 60Hz)
- MicroSD card slot supports high-speed cards with reads and writes over 100mb/s
- Ships with Windows 10 Home (Latest November update)
- Slightly better battery life. Looks like over 7 hours at 40% brightness
- 3.5mm headphone jack now supports microphone headsets
The benchmarks, and others things like, 4k YouTube playback and a Counter Strike test are included in the above video. Overall it seems a solid tablet with its super useful 2 x full USB 2.0 ports and keyboard dock. The 1366 x 768 resolution might not be for everyone and the loss of Dual boot Android & Windows. It’s still one of my favorite tablets the Vi10 and for me, it’s a step up over the Vi10 Bay Trail model as I can now drive my 2560 x 1440 monitor at this resolution instead of being limited to 1080p and it works well.
And having the faster MicroSD card slot offers faster expandable storage.
Benchmarks are one thing, but it feels faster than the benchmark results in Windows.
I picked up my Vi10 Ultimate from Banggood.com for $173 (64GB Model) The 32GB model is cheaper at $146