After purchasing through Indiegogo and waiting quite awhile, I found the Surbook in a well packaged box at my door. After letting it charge overnight then getting it updated I found the battery only lasted a mere 30-45 minutes. I found the screen had a bit of a bulge in it from behind, I contacted the company and after 3 weeks of waiting for a real reply, not a canned response… I was disappointed. They told me it would take 3-6 months to repair and they would not replace the Surbook.
OK, thought myself, no real warranty and not real help… I’m a hardware designer by trade, why not fiddle with it a bit. I plug the Surbook back in over night to just see if it will charge, low and behold the charger melts my carpet where it was resting. I proceeded to replace the charger with a Dell one. Works like a charm.
I open the case to see one ballooned lithium Ion battery pack pressing on the screen and the other just sitting there staring at it’s bulbous brother. I disconnect the ballooned battery, as they were set in parallel configuration allowing for more battery time on the device, charged it up and it works great. Upon further investigation, whoever installed the battery connector jammed it in to the motherboard bending one of the leads so it shorted with the ground… Funny thing is it was clear as day when I took a look at it, and it had a QA sticker right next to the damaged area.
Now, after all that and the fact that this is most likely a very very rare fluke, the tablet is amazing. It has great touch response(after all firmware and software updates from Chuwi). I took it on a trip with me and found that it really performs well for what it is intended; a low cost, low power device to jot little notes on and maybe watch a movie or two. Anything beyond using a word program and light web surfing, it is not your friend. If a cool looking tablet that does some stuff ok and most stuff worse is your thing, and you don’t mind a horrible warranty policy you should get a Chuwi Surbook. I honestly think I should have spent the same money on a refurbished Surface 3 Pro. They were on sale on MS store the same day I went with the Indiegogo campaign. Lesson learned I guess. I know a few thousand people that order through the campaign that have still not received their devices (5 months after promise delivery now) and those that have about 1 in 3 have bad experiences with faulty equipment.
