Update: Tomorrow the Aerobook Pro kicks off on Indiegogo and it will cost $499 USD.
Releases from the Chinese brands have been slow, but Chuwi today posted on Twitter their new laptop release coming in 22 days via Indiegogo crowdfunding. The Chuwi Aerobook Pro is their fastest laptop yet, with an Intel Core i5 6287U 28W SoC up to 3.50 GHz turbo and Intel’s more powerful Iris 550 Graphics. This chipset is dated still a big step up over the low-end Gemini Lake or Apollo Lakes used before. Especially in terms of GPU performance as this chip has some dedicated eDRAM and supports 4k60hz.
Which is what the display is, a 15.6″ 4k 100% sRGB panel. No word if it is matte or glossy but my guess is a glossy panel like in the Herobook. Other specs include two M.2 2280 bays of which one is filled with a 256GB SATA3 SSD loaded with Windows 10 and one of the slots does support NVMe/PCIe. The battery is finally a big one (Well for Chuwi) 60wh instead of the typical 37Wh we see. It comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and has a full metal build.
The BEST Display ➕ The LARGEST Battery ➕ The FASTEST CPU/GPU
?The most powerful #CHUWI Laptop, EVER.Meet AeroBook Pro 15.6.
Soon be available on #Indiegogo
Check here for more details and 25% OFF Early Bird Discount:
?https://t.co/4Mq6Whp65F#Newarrivial #crowdfunding #4K pic.twitter.com/HlvkLCKhUP— Chuwi Tablet (@chuwidotcom) March 4, 2020
The Aerobook Pro weighs 1.53 kilos and is 15.9mm thick. Not bad for a 15.6″ laptop. It looks to have a backlit keyboard similar to the Aerobook, but with a number pad. And the touchpad looks very big with possible top firing speakers either side of that backlit keyboard. For ports, it has a full spec Type-C with video out support (Should be 4k60 using DisplayPort) data and possibly PD 2.0 charging support. MicroSD is my guess, 2 x USB 3.0 ports and HDMI 1.4A (4k30 max)
No word on pricing, but you can sign up now on Indiegogo for 25% off once the laptop is live on the crowdfunding site. Looks okay, but I would have loved to have seen at least an 8th gen CPU like the Core i5 8250U, even if it doesn’t have the Iris GPU. My guess is the cost of the newer hips was too much for Chuwi so they got a good deal on this old SoC. But Hackintosh users might like the idea of this CPU as it’s used in the old 13″ MacBook Pro.