$389 16GB Kaby Lake R Laptop Hands-On (Update)

$389 16GB Kaby Lake R Laptop Hands-On (Update)

Update, the video review is now finished:

The Lhmzniy A9 is a Kaby Lake Laptop, using the low-end 15W Celeron 3867U, it’s an 8th Gen chip with Intel 610 graphics. Only two cores with a max speed of 1.8Ghz. The performance singe core is better than the Celeron N4100 Gemini Lake’s but worse off in multitasking due to only having 2 cores. The interesting thing with these laptops is they ship with 16GB of 2400Mhz DDR4 RAM, which is double what we typically see. The RAM is a single SODIMM DDR4 stick. So upgradable if there is an 8GB version out there you could upgrade it. The SSD is a 2280 M.2 SATA 3 no-name brand one that can be upgraded. It will even allow me to install an NVMe drive but it wouldn’t boot for some reason so I assume NMVe drivers are not supported or it lacks the NVMe controller needed.

My version is the 15.6″ on that sells for $389.99 with coupon K444F4524FDEB000. And the smaller 14″ model is $352 version similar to the Gemini Lake 8GB models reviewed.

SODIMM slot for RAM and upgradeable SSD. It’s 15W so fan-cooled.

The laptop has a metal lid and base. But the palm rest and keyboard are plastic. A backlit full-sized keyboard with number pad and the key size is similar to the Lapboo Pro or Aerbook from Chuwi. The design of this laptop is similar to the Chuwi Herobook Pro which still hasn’t released. Maybe it’s from the same ODM. The CPU is fan-cooled but so far in my testing, you hardly hear it come on. Only for a brief moment and thermals are great it seems to stay under 65 degrees C.

The Overall build is good, the keycaps are silver so a little hard to make out depending on the angle. And it has a mini HDMI out, D/C 12 volt charging, and two USB 3.0 ports. There is also a MicroSD reader, but typically it’s only a USB 2.0 one.

The battery is 40Wh and so far battery life is not looking good about 4-5 hours like a Core M3 laptop. But that’s not the biggest issue, the screen is a poor 15.6″ TN panel. Viewing angles are not good but not the worse I’ve soon. You need to really look at the screen face on or it’s a bit washed out. More on this laptop soon with the full review currently a work in progress.

 

 

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.

4 Comments

  1. Hi Chris, my 2C about ultrabook
    Given the Chinese manufacturer are launching new models with old gen cpus….I guess it would be correct to compare them to what you can find in the refurbished market (Amazon Warehouse for instance) and the warehouse stock of old models (but new items).

  2. I know they’ve cut costs to the bone, but… no vowels, no sale.

  3. I guess with the 16GB of RAM they had to go with a cheaper panel. But I would have prefered 8GB of RAM and an IPS. I’m sure most would agree with me on this! This CPU can’t really use 16GB anyway, be different if it was a Core i5 that could handle video editing and demanding photoshop etc.

  4. These cheap TN displays, can they really not even get a VA panel? I’ll always pay extra for IPS. I could tolerate VA in a laptop that spent 99% of its time on an external monitor.

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