Chuwi Lapbook SE

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8.3

Great

8.9

User Avg

This *COULD* be the budget laptop you’ve been looking for.

User Rating: 8.8

Ok, here’s the story:   *IF* you don’t need a bunch of chrome windows open  all the time; *IF* you are not a big game gamer; this COULD be all the laptop you need especially: *IF*, you do or want to do a lot of writing….in the dark, *IF* you use mic’d headphones or earplugs-wired or bluetooth; *IF* you need a LOT of battery life, like over 9 hours; If you use LINUX ubuntu derived distros (haven’t tried Manjaro but Mint 19 is flawless, then The SE shines. No mods needed.

HOWEVER,  if you want to play older, or less demanding games, it is entirely easy to open the lappie up, do a simple heatsink mod, toss in a larger 2280 m.2 sata drive, clone win10 off the emmc to the sata, change a couple of settings in the unlocked bios,  and increase  the cpu and graphics performance some 200 to 300 percent!! ALL while maintaining temps below around 70C (mine has yet to pass the 66 C threshold, ymmv slightly).  4k 60fps is beautiful, get a mini hdmi adapter for your big screen. The sound from the 3.5 audio jack is flawless and amaszingly good. The wifi is dual band and rocks. The construction quality is unheard of for the price and quite a bit more… The screen is not the brightest but is quite good non the less. But perhaps the best thing is that everything *just works*. The keyboard is exceptional. Finally, the performance under linux is exemplary and, For the VERY first time(and I’ve been messing wih laptops since the original compaq crt luggables) a full and complete windows/linux  dual boot install (with 100 percent functionality) was achieved with a simple check in the linux install box for “install alongside existing operating systems” followed by the enter key. no muss, no fuss, no command line, no partitioning tables-nada!

Now THAT is something.

1 Comment

  1. Thanks for the user review. Yes have to admit and agree now with your comments after 11 days use it’s great. I’m getting over 8-hour battery life. The screen isn’t the brightest 200 lux but I use it at 40% just fine indoors. Moving Windows 10 to the SSD has improved things (Should be installed there in the first place) and Linux Mint 19 runs perfect, seems more fluid than Windows 10, faster browsing. Still checking on battery life under Linux, but looks like it might be 1-2 hours less than Windows. My max temps after my copper heatsink mod are 65 degrees C with no power limit.

    There is a way to get no power limit on boot and in Linux. Disable the bios power limit and then disable C-states. Worse battery life, but the CPU can hold 2.3Ghz all 4 cores instead of clocking down to 1.6Ghz after 40 seconds or so stock.

    However the GPU will not clock up to the max speed unless you run the software power limit unlock, then the GPU performance is up 200%+

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