General Update & Recommend Laptop List Updated

General Update & Recommend Laptop List Updated

My recommend Chinese laptop list has been updated to be 100% recent now April 2019, the tablet list to follow soon. Mostly dominated by Teclast, Xiaomi, and Chuwi nowadays, with the exception of the Alldocube Thinker i35. This list covers the best and recommended Gemini Lake laptops. Ones I’ve reviewed, own or owned like the Chuwi Lapbook SE, Teclast F7 Plus, F15, and F5. Also, Core M3 laptops I’ve reviewed and more powerful Kaby Lake Core i5 laptops.

What’s interested to note is the price impact the Intel 14nm shortage has played and the Windows licensing costs. Most of these laptops are now around $50-$60 higher than before if they have 4GB of RAM, thank you Intel! And if they have 8GB of RAM about the same $50 more due to the 8GB Licensing fee! Thanks to Windows!

Times are certainly changing and difficult for these Chinese tech companies. A few of you have commented why aren’t I covering so much budget tech anymore or tablets? Why the premium expensive phones, laptops, budget phones and other more expensive tech in the Youtube channel now? Where are the cheap tablets and other good budget tech like 2017 and 2018?

To put it simply, there isn’t much at all. 2019 has started off and continues at a slow pace, a few good Core i7 mini pc’s now into April we have nothing really exciting coming. Intel is again partly to blame, no new Gemini Lake successor (yet) Tablets are dead and dying. Unless someone can release some new Snapdragon tablets out of China. Or even Teclast and Chuwi I hope will switch over the using the newer Helio P60 and P70 chips. These are now a year old and much better than the Helio X27 ten cores a lag chips. Let’s hope they get their hands on these better MediaTek chips soon with a new line up for 2019.

So instead of sitting idle, I’ve been covering more mobiles and other tech that interests me keeping the channel ticking over. That’s not to say you’ll not see more budget tech featured. If there is anything good and I can, I will review it. But it’s also refreshing for me to review the more premium tech, not only for a change but to see just how big the gap is from the Chinese budget brands to the top end. And there are only so many crappy products I can review without going insane. It’s nice to review worthy items and not some slow Helio X27 lag-tab.

The following “budget” items are planned for review:

  • $300 Chuwi Laptop Pro. 14″ Gemini Lake laptop with slim bezel screen and type-c
  • $269 ACEPC Core i5 7200 mini PC barebones. Looks interesting for the price. M2 2280 NVMe/SATA support.
  • $499 FIMI X8 SE drone. This is half the Mavic Pro drone price and shoots 4k 100Mbps footage.
  • $189 Xiaomi Redmi Note 7 Global edition review.
  • Teclast X6 Pro – Ordered last year! Still not shipping. Core M3-7Y30 shortage to blame. Production delays…

Also, most of the tech you see on the Youtube channel and on this site are bought items. A good 80%, I do get some loan units and some sub $200 review units. But really that’s it, the rest all comes out of my own pocket. So a lot of it depends on the review coffers as to what I can or cannot buy to review.

I’m always open to suggestions if you think you see a great item for a good price just let me know.

 

 

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.

20 Comments

  1. hi there. what would be the best 10-11 inches tablet running windows 10, right now? with big battery powerful enough, 128gb and 4 gb ram? any suggestions? i would also get an android 9 instead but i am afraid that these wouldnt get updated so….

  2. I ordered a Fimi X8 SE from banggood.com. Have you gotten yours yet? There have been a ton of delays in getting people these shipped out to people. Banggood is claiming that Fimi is having a hard time keeping up with demand which I can totally see since the price is right especially when you compare it to a Mavic Pro 1st gen.

    • Not yet, but I have a tracking number so it looks like it is at least on the way to me. A huge amount of delays I ordered when back in October 2018?

  3. Alldocube got so many things right, it’s a shame they have no successor to the i35 with a better and backlit keyboard.
    I’m tired of Chinese laptops. It’s always 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Lately though it’s been 2 steps forward and 2 steps back…

    • Yeah, to me after my Jumper EZbook 3 Pro died within months, I decided it’s just not worth it when for not THAT much more $ you can buy an overall better (Lenovo, Acer, etc) product with better QA, support, and will prob last longer… and… where you have a chance to find spare parts if it does break. Plus the more popular models usually work better OOTB with Linux.

  4. Many Intel Atom X5-Z8350 “cherry trail” SOC TV-boxes now run Linux fine. So you can get a pretty fuctionaly 2GB/32GB mini PC for less than $100. Not very exciting “old” tech. But good value.

    • There’s also a 2GB/16GB Z8350 SBC called “Atomic Pi” for only $40 coming with Lubuntu pre-installed on the eMMC. It’s board only, no case, for makers/hackers. Also, they ship only in USA as of now, so you may need to use a pkg forwarding company (eg., expressfromus.com)

      • Good price, but a bit old now of course.

        • Yeah, but it’s still HEAPS more powerful than a Raspberry Pi 3B+ for close to the same price which is what they were going for. Plus it is x86 instead of Arm so it can run a lot of different standard Linux distro’s which the RPi cannot.

        • This is actually one of the issues with being able to have a VERY low cost computer… Windows 10 is unusable on a 2GB/32GB box. Sadly most people don’t know how well a modern version of Linux runs on these meager spec’ed devices. I suppose not being able to run very many games on them w/Linux is also undesirable for some people.

          • Yes, Linux can run great on half the hardware Windows 10 needs. Runs really well on the Gemini Lakes for example. I think that could be part of the issue is games and apps. That is, of course, it’s not so mainstream.

  5. Hey Chris, how easy is for you to get your hands on Microsoft USA store items?

    I always thought that nothing could beat these cheap chinese laptops/tablets in cost/performance until I saw an Asus vivobook 2 in 1 on sale at the Microsoft USA store for 300 USD.

    14 inches touchscreen display in a 13-inch body, 1.3 kg, 4 gb of ram, intel celeron N5000, 64 gb eMMC and an available slot for an m.2 SSD.

    This is a steal for sure, beating even the 64 gb eMMC lapbook SE on sale.

    Now it is at its regular price at 400 USD but I wouldn’t be surprised if they put it on sale again.

    • Not easy at all, I get hit with huge import taxes. But it does look good for that price for sure.

  6. Do you have a recommendation for a good convertible or a tablet with a keyboard cover that has LTE?

    • Yea, something to replace my aging Miix 700?
      This thing would be my recommendation if you can get a ‘new’ one.

    • The Chuwi Hi9 Plus is 4G and comes with an optional keyboard and stylus. I use mine daily at work. The screen is superb. Chris alerted me to it.

      • Yes that’s a good one. Still not perfect the Miracast is upside down still right? Not that I use it. I hope Chuwi update the Hi9 plus and give it the Helio P60 or P70.

      • What about battery life? Any big bugs?

  7. Hi Chris, what do you think about reviewing the Umidigi F1 play, or Umidigi S3 Pro? Because it’s been 2 months since release and still not a single review on the internet.

    • Hi, I have a S3 Pro coming to review it. Looked ok at MWC. But the camera like always seemed so poorly optimised. Even had view finder lag.

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