Yet another Celeron N3450 (Apollo Lake) based notebook. And there will be a few more reviewed on the site before i get sick of them! This one is the smallest and lightest yet. around 12.5mm, 1.08 kilos. Very thin and portable, with quite a deal break for a few. It only has one type-c port. At least it is USB 3.1 spec, data, video out and charging all possible at the same time. And you do get an included adaptor, but they copied the MacBook too much here.
Besides this, it has a nice 1080p 12.5-inch panel. It’s got a pre-applied screen protector on it making it a glossy display, but pull it off and it’s matte anti-glare. So you have a choice between the two. The keyboard is great to type on, better than expected. And the touchpad is a precision one, fully control of gestures in Windows 10 settings under mouse & touchpad. This is good, but the ELan fingerprint read with-in it doesn’t work, at least not on my unit. Drivers issues it seems or a hardware conflict.
Another issue, once connected to the internet Windows activation promoted me for a key, not good. They have used some temporary key to install Windows. No doubt because the system was first in Chinese only. Buying a cheap Windows 10 Pro key from eBay, upgrading to Home to Pro will sort that out. But it’s unacceptable.
The Wireless AC is Intel 3165, a common chip that performs well. The battery is 31Wh or 8000mah and looks good for only around 6 hours max on 25% brightness. Or about 5 hours at 50 to 75% web use online. The 128GB SSD is of an unknown band, around 520 MB/s reads, but only 120 writes so quite slow. But still much faster reads than an eMMC 5.0 spec.
Thermals and other benchmarks will come later in the full review (If it makes the cut) I’m trying to fix the driver issue and get the activation sorted out first. The laptop is almost exactly the same as the Onda Xiaoma 21, but that model has 2 x USB3.0 ports and a microSD slot!
The Civiltop Air is also expensive $400+ at Gearbest and even selling for more on Aliexpress. I hope t have the Lapbook 12.3 next week, that one looks the most promising N3450 powered lapbook from China. Surface Pro 4 screen, 6GB of RAM, wireless AC, 37Wh battery, USB 3.0 ports, type-c and M.2 SSD slot.