Cube Thinker i35 Review

$459 Here

The AllDoCube Thinker i35 is without a doubt the best piece of tech to come out of the China from the typical brands that I review. The build quality is excellent, very premium a step up over anything I’ve seen from Cube before, very well finished all in metal. And the main focus of the laptop is its touch-enabled Surface Book 13.5″ fully laminated screen with a 3000 x 2000 resolution (267 PPI) and a decent max brightness of 505 lux. Not only that it uses the same exact touch digitizer panel with N-Trig stylus support. Which means the screen is exactly the same as the Microsoft Surface Books, even the Surface Stylus works.

Below is the full detailed video review of the Cube Thinker i35. See the timecode index below the clip.

Timecodes:

01:04 – Design
03:58 – Screen
05:27 – Benchmarks
08:04 – Battery & Charge time
09:01 – Thermals
10:31 – Webcam sample
11:18 – Mi Notebook 12 Vs Thinker i35
13:03 – Adobe Photoshop CC & Premiere Pro
14:59 – Stylus tests
18:52 – Speaker test
19:18 – GTA V Gaming test (Playable)
20:36 – Thoughts with Pros and Cons

The Cube Thinker i35 is impressive, while not perfect it comes close. The Core M3-7Y30 does have a copper heatsink and without gaming, it reaches around 86 degrees max when you push the CPU, but if you game or use anything that taxes both the CPU and GPU, it will hit 92 degrees C. This doesn’t trigger any thermal throttling, and if you’re concerned about it, there is an easy way to lower max temps by at last 20 degrees by doing my simple copper heatsink and thermal pad mod below.

Of course, we should never have to mod anything like this straight out of the factory, even just a thermal pad between the copper heatsink and the rear alloy panel would be sufficient. It’s a shame Cube didn’t do this.

There are two other things, the speakers aren’t really loud enough and the battery life, a 37Wh battery with Core M3 is fine, but that beautiful  3000 x 2000 screen what makes this laptop does take a bit of a toll on the battery. With some babysitting, you might get 7 hours doing light tasks. But on average, I get around 5 and a half hours which means it’s not able to do a full days work.

Overall I really like the Thinker i35 and see it as the best laptop yet out of China and yes, it’s better than the Core M3 Xiaomi Mi Notebook I reviewed. And it might even be better than the Surface Laptop base model.

Pros and cons with the rating below.

Buy this Product

Currently $393

Good

  • Top build quality
  • Surface Book 13.5 screen
  • Fully laminated screen 505 lux bright
  • Very fluid, fast and accurate touch input
  • System feels very quick
  • Surface Stylus support (N-Trig)
  • Accurate stylus input
  • Clean and loud 3.5mm audio output
  • USB 3.1 Type-C (Data, charging, video)
  • Wireless AC
  • Fast finger print unlocking
  • 8GB RAM & 2 x USB 3.0 ports

Bad

  • Gets hot 92 degrees
  • Screen hinge isn't 360 degree
  • Battery only good for 5 hours max
  • No MicroSD slot
8.6

Great

Build And Design - 9.5
Perfromance - 9
Screen - 10
Sound - 7.5
Battery Life - 7

2 Comments

  1. Thanks for your review and guidance. I just bought a cube thinker i35 from gearbest. I use it to play geometry dash scratch. I bought it only based on your videos. Let me see how it the heating issue fares, if required I will do the thermal mod (as per your video).
    Million thanks. Keep up the good work!!!!!

  2. I had the CHUWI LapBook 12.3 before upgrading to the Cube Thinker i35. And for me they have a near identical design: The same hinge for the display, the same LED lights on top of the keyboard, the same keaboard and the same edges and even the little curve for opening the display looks the same. Are these two notebooks really manufactured by different companies?

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