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.