Didn’t expect this on to arrive until after Chinese Spring festival and New Years. My Chuwi Hi12 arrived today, it’s Chuwi’s new large 12: tablet and the first tablet outside of Microsoft to use the 12″ 2160 x 1440 screen the Surface Pro 3 uses. What’s special about the panel? Well its a 3:2 ratio panel, has a 2160 x 1440 res and 216 PPI. So looks sharp. I got this unit for $249 from GearBest this time and ordered when it was first listed. Must have been first in first served and it now states shipping after the 29th? Has anyone else seen their Hi12?
Powered by a Atom X5 Z8300, 4GB of Ram and 64GB eMMC. Here’s the unboxing video:
Edit: 10th Feb. New second hands on video with benchmarks and thermals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU6ozhMjTHw
Chuwi Hi12 First impressions:
- Screen is great, looks sharp but Chuwi’s tweaked the brightness down compared to a Surface Pro 3
- The USB 3 port will power a 1TB or 2TB external hard drive.
- The build is good for the price.
- Metal rear and the front frame seems to be plastic.
- Speakers sound okay (Tested in the hands on vid)
- The eMMC in my unit is a Hynix. 120 mb/s reads and 80 mb/s writes. Much better than a BIWN or FORSEE unit
- The battery is around 10,125 mAh according to battery bar pro. So more or less in line with the claimed 11,000mAh.
- Touch screen controller is a Goodix unit. The screen is responsive and feels fast overall.
- I like it so far, mostly the build and screen. Being a Surface 2,3 and now Pro 4 user I’ve grown to like 3:2 ratio screens.
- This screen screams for more power, for example a Skylake Core M3 or at least, an Atom X7 Z8700. Please, someone build one! (I’ve seen enough Z8300 units now…)
- For now, thermals seem great, 70 degrees C max running 3DMark11, PCMark 7 and Geekbench 3. Power limited or thermal pads transferring heat to the rear metal housing to act as a huge heat sink?
- Box mentions Android, the bios has an Android setting in there. So hope to see a dual boot version. Would love Android on this. But then again, Android gaming at that native 2160 x 1440 is something the Atom X5 Z8300 will not handle well at all.
- First benchmarks look much lower than other X5 Z8300 units? Is it the screen taxing the system that much? I need to recheck this with a reboot and wifi off in case it’s Windows update running.
- Still only single 2.4Ghz band Wireless N… Come on it’s 2016, time for dual band!