This one is for those of you asking for a comparison between the Chuwi Hi13 and the Hi12. Hopefully, this will clear things up on which suits your needs best. And if that $100 extra for the newer Hi13 is worth it or not, I think it is but it all depends on what you want the tablet for.
So there is a big price difference:
- The Chuwi Hi13 is $306 with coupon CHUWI25%OFF here
- And the last gen Hi12 is $207 with coupon 27fc14 here
Reasons to get the Hi12:
- Full sized USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports
- Can be charged with any PC, power bank or mobile phone USB charger
- It’s the only dual boot one. So if you must have Android, this is the one to get.
- It’s cheaper
- Lighter and smaller
- Longer battery life, approximately 2 hours more each full charge
Reasons to get the Hi13:
- Faster CPU/GPU
- Native H.265/HEVC decoding
- Dual channel RAM
- Much faster storage eMMC 5.0 spec
- Faster USB 3 MicroSD card reader
- Better stylus, and performance stylus performance
- Stylus can be held by magnets on the side of the tablet
- Better screen, brighter, sharper and improved contrast & colours.
- Much quicker Wireless AC, with greater range
- Larger keyboard with more shortcuts and keys
- Larger touchpad
- Marginally louder speakers (But still poor!)
Areas where the Hi12 and Hi13 are the same, build quality and cameras. I hope things made things easier for those asking about these two, confused on which one to get.
Jarrad
Chris, can you give a more detailed comparison of the stylus performance? I have a Hi12 and the stylus is the major drawback for me because I plan to take all my handwritten notes and avoid paper – it’s a bit slow picking up the first screen touch and i need to push quite hard compared to some others I’ve tried on different tablets. I find that the stylus works fine when you scribble lines or write large words but struggles with my small and fast handwriting
Ginger
Hi Chris
I’m struggling to choose a laptop for my wife – she just needs it for surfing the web and doing some book-keeping on a spreadsheet like OpenOffice or Excel. As far as I can tell, doing book-keeping on a spreadsheet isn’t heavy stuff so do you think the N3450 would cut it for this ?
Also, I’m torn between the Lapbook 14.1 for the slightly bigger screen, value and SSD possibility VS the Hi13 for the nice screen and more premium materials.
Any suggestions between these two or an alternative. Will those screen sizes be OK for prouctivity in W10 ? Thanks in advance. Whichever I choose I’ll buy by clicking through from your site – thanks for a great site.
Chris G
Hi,
For those needs the lapbook 14.1 should be fine, the keyboard is good and better for typing and it has a very decent 14.1″ IPS panel.
ice
PRICE UPDATE
Hi13 is actually €348.54 with keyboard dock + active stylus
Pete
What is the fastest tablet CPU that will run both Windows 10 and native Android 6.0+?
What is the fastest tablet CPU that will run both Windows 10 and fully functional Remix OS?
ice
give a look at this
http://anbox.io/
eventually we won’t need an android partition anymore, but we can rely on a plain Linux + ANBOX to run android apps (both system apps and .apk) on a Linux Kernel
klinux
I tried anbox and I can say that installing it was a real headache and it is still an early alpha: it doesn’t support network connexion, many apk are not working, and installing apps must be done by adb, anbox will be wonderful after some improvements but up to now it can’t replace a fully working android system. That’s why a dual OS system is a real plus even though it is not the latest version (5.1 vs 7.0).
Nacho Portillo
Two questions for Chris:
– Does the hi13 charge slow with a 5v charger or it does’nt charge at all even powered off? Any wall charger or powerbank with Quickcharge 2.0 or 3.0 with 12V 1.5A can charge the tablet when it is on standby mode or powered off?
– Why do you say the hi12 does not play HEVC? I am pretty sure with the z8300 was able to play h265 videos with hardware acceleration (GPU) and less than 15% CPU help. At least 1080p videos.
Thank you for your review, I ordered mine 1 week ago, can’t wait to have in may hands 😉
Chris G
Hi,
The Hi13 doesn’t charge at all with 5v even when off. Well the Apollo Lakes are advertised as hardware VP9 and HEVC decoding by Intel.
foop
You missed the full sized usb ports off your pros/cons list, one of the biggest things for me. This is made much worse for 2 reasons. Firstly the usb3 connector is type C. That would be great if there was also a full sized port too, but there isn’t, so you’ll need an adapter for any usb3 use, even using it with the keyboard. Secondly, it is also the only charging port. So if you want to use a USB3 device at full speed, you can’t charge. Not without getting a different charger/docking system etc at least.
On the topic of the charger, that’s another negative. It’s a real shame they didn’t support 5v charging (too) because being able to take just one small charger to handle both laptop and phone is great with the hi12, even if it was just trickle charging when off. No big brick like this. 5v charging is slow so I get moving away from it, but this doesn’t seem that much faster from what you report. Disappointing.
I also find myself questioning the point of it as a tablet at this size/weight. The hi12 is already pushing the boundaries IMO. And as a laptop only, don’t you think it’s very questionable value compared to the cube m3 laptop with this screen coming up? (any news on that..?)
As a small point, 4k reads are actually slower on the hi13, which is surely significant for OS use.
I don’t want to be totally negative as they seem to have improved well in a few areas (dual channel ram, wifi, etc etc) but it’s very one step forward one step back for me.
Chris G
I’ve updated the list, I mentioned it at least in the video those pros and cons you speak of. Th weight is a bit of a factor I tend to use it as a tablet for a limited time. Last night held it in bed and watched and an episode of the Walking dead. Was great for that with the large screen, but a little cumbersome.
Eric
It’s a pity they didn’t put in Core M3 into Chuwi Hi12 – otherwise, Chuwi Hi12 would have been the best 2-in-1 tablets out there with so many advantages.
I really liked the design of hi12 compared to hi13. It stands out in every way.
It’s sad that I have to agree with foop that hi13 is more classified or should be classified as laptop due to its weight and size. If you can’t use it as a tablet for longer hours, then it’s not a tablet anymore and should be on the desk only instead of the couch. And if you count hi13 as a laptop, then it has to compete with more options (other laptops) out there which hi13 have less and less chance to compete with.
So basically, hi13 will not be unique in anyways while hi12 WAS very unique in many ways.
I really like the idea of having a 2-in-1 tablet where you can charge with a normal power bank. Makes it the ideal working station wherever you go – even for a camping trip in the forest (watching movies at night before going to sleep for example).
Chuwi got great ideas for hi12. I wonder what happened with their engineers and designer? Did they fire that guy? By the sudden, they changed the winning formula.
“If it ain’t broken, don’t fix”. You should never change your winning formula. Google learnt that lesson the day they spoon fed and forced everyone to connect Youtube together with Google+ and now they had to revert that crazy idea.
ice
eventually we don’t need the whole Android or RemixOS
but we can rely on a plain Linux + ANBOX
here is the article
https://mm.gravedo.de/blog/posts/2017-04-10-introducing-anbox/
have a look at the video at the bottom of the page
ice
http://anbox.io/
TechnoMax
USB-C charging seems to be tricky. Do you know of any power bank that can be used with the Chuwi Hi13? It would be a shame when this big tablet too could not be used all day long without access to a wall socket.
(I did not buy the nice Huawei Matebook because they use “PD quick charging protocol”, for which not a single powerbank is available according to Huawei at least.)
Chris G
Well, all my power banks output 12v 1.25A max and it lights up the red status LED likes it’s charging, but slowly loses power. So it has to be 12 volts and 2A or over.
TechnoMax
As profile 2 has 1,5A max, the device must be an “USB Power Delivery” device with support for profile 3 with 12V 3A max. And in my case not from a charger (that would only be a reserve for the Chuwi charger) but from a power bank. And that does not look very good. Most former “good” tested power banks are no langer available.