This is Chuwi’s first attempt at a Notebook, and for a budget notebook it’s not bad, but it does have some minor flaws. The Chuwi LapBook is based around a 15.6″ matte coated 1080p panel. At its core is the ever so common Atom X5 Z8300 or the refreshed X5 Z8350 (ever so slightly faster). This is a low-end quad-core Atom X5, with 4GB of DDR3 single-channel RAM, a Samsung 64GB eMMC and runs Windows 10.
The laptop has two USB ports, one USB 3.0 and the other USB 2.0, both of which can power external hard drives unlike the Jumper EZbook 2 I reviewed. You also get a mini HDMI out, MicroSD card slow and wireless N with BT 4.0. The keyboard is spacious and offers a decent enough typing experience for its price tag. it has little flex and bounce and the keys have good travel and make very little noise. The touchpad is large with good accuracy and I find it one of the best I’ve used in a budget tablet or notebook.
The build is completely plastic, with a super white plastic, matte black bezel and keys. At 1.8 kilos it’s not the lightest but well made with a very solid feel to it.
Below is a detailed video review of the LapBook covering the design, components, performance, speaker test and some gaming. Pros and Cons are below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wIhHN17YIY
To conclude, the LapBook I find is a very good first attempt at a notebook from Chuwi, sure it’s not perfect if the RAM could later be clocked to 1600Mhz it would feel a little faster. Although the benchmarks seem to be more or less on par wth other Z8300 devices. Battery life is very good, you should be able to make it through a full day and perhaps this is helped by the fact the RAM is only running at 1066Mhz.
The speakers while they are loud enough, sound quite bad, very flat, almost no mids and zero bass. This is very common on these cheaper devices, but I have heard much better. The downwards location of them to isn’t my favorite, because if you do happen to use this on your lap, like a lapbook you’ll block the speakers.
The screen is practical, anti-glare matte coating I personally prefer on notebooks and it’s good enough to been seen clearly in bright environments.
Overall for light tasks, like web browsing, emails, youtube, movies etc this LapBook is ideal, just don’t expect to play any AAA gaming titles or edit and encode videos on this Atom X5 CPU, it’s not meant for that.
