CHUWI Lapbook 12.3" Windows10 64 Bits Tablet PC Intel Apollo lake N3450 6GB RAM + 64GB ROM Laptop with IPS Screen Dual WIFI Bluetooth 4.0 HDMI 2.0M Camera OTG Notebook PC

I work in IT. I actually manage an IT department for a large college and as such, I have a keen interest in computers, particularly laptops, tablets and netbooks that might be useful for our students. For work I have a powerful desktop PC, but I also have Macbook Air 11” that is the device I carry with me to meetings on or off campus. It’s also the device I carry on holiday with me. It’s been a great laptop, I love the physical size of it but it is slight limiting for the sort of work that I need to do on it because it runs Mac OS rather than Windows 10 and the device isn’t mine, it belongs to the college so if I ever left, I’d have to hand it back. So, I’ve been keeping an eye on a suitable replacement Windows device and I saw this Lapbook 12.3”and decided to give it a go as the price vs specifications was excellent and the design looked really nice, just like my Macbook Air!When I got it, I did a quick unboxing video for Youtube (I’ll put the link in the comments below). I always do this because first impressions count. I was really impressed! It has a really premium feel to it and you really would be hard pushed to tell the difference from a Macbook. It is the same width as my Macbook Air 11, but has a slightly taller screen (about 2cm taller) so you get more screen real estate on it. If neither device had any logos on them and they weren’t turned on, you would struggle to tell them apart. Even the keyboard looks almost identical to a Macbook! Does it matter that it looks like a Macbook? Well, probably not. But Apple are renowned for their build quality and a device like this that has a similar build quality should be applauded.So first impressions were good!Specifications wise, the device has:A 12.3” IPS screen supporting 2736x1824 resolutionA massive 6GB RAMA quad-core Intel Apollo Lake processor running at 2.2GHzIntel HD Graphics 500 Gen-9 graphics processor64GB eMMC storage, expandable by an extra 256GB via the M.2 slot on the rear of the device.Most of our student netbooks are HP Stream 11 devices with 2GB RAM and a 32GB disk and we can get a full installation of Windows 10 and Office 2016 and still have about 10GB of disk space left. Which is fine when the students are storing their work in OneDrive or on our network. This device has 64GB and after I let it do all its Windows updates, it upgraded itself to the latest version of Windows 10, I installed office 2016 and I still had over 30GB free – which is plenty enough for any student or any casual user. If you think of an Android tablet that is typically 16-32GB or an Amazon Fire Tablet that is typically 8-16GB and how many films etc you can store on those, 30GB free space is more than enough for storage of films or documents or pictures. Obviously, if it is your only computer, you may want additional storage either in the cloud or via an external hard disk, but that is good practice anyway as you should always backup your device. In my case, 30GB is plenty enough, but if I want more, I know I can get a M.2 disk with a 64GB capacity for about £30 which would double the size of the device storage.Talking of expansion and slots, the M.2 slot is located on the rear and for those that don’t know what it is, it allows you to plug in a disk-on-a-chip that will run around 650% quicker than a SATA disk, so you get very fast file transfers. On the sides, there are 2 USB3 slots, one on each side. There is a headphone jack, the power socket and a micro SD slot. Finally, there is a HDMI out. All nice and simple and easy to access. The WiFi chip supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz which is nice as some cheaper devices only support 2.4GHz and 5GHz gives you much more throughput so it’s good to see 5GHz included.The keyboard and trackpad are both full size and the keyboard has a lovely action and is a joy to type on. The power off and on button is located on the keyboard, rather than the side, so no danger or catching it when the lid is shut.The memory is more than enough for a device like this. Most netbooks are 2GB and most “student” or “home” type laptops are 4GB, so having 6GB gives plenty of room for multitasking and the screen gives plenty of space to have multiple windows open on such a small device.Battery life is great. When I was testing it, I sat this and my Macbook side by side and monitored the battery drain and in the time the Macbook when from 100% to 80%, the CHUWI had gone from 100% to 87% so the battery lasts longer and at 99% battery, it says it has just over 8.5 hours remaining. It will easily last for a day of typical use. I have it configured to sleep when closing the lid – ideal if I’m going from one meeting to another; and I have it configured to shut down when pressing the power button – ideal if it’s going back in my bag. Even on sleep, the battery drain is very low and it still has the same battery when you wake it up later.I was looking at this device as a possible replacement for my work-owned Macbook but also as a device we could recommend to students. It more than fulfils both. I’ve been using it as my main machine now and have handed the Macbook back so it can be reassigned to someone else. It feels really nice and solid to carry around. The keyboard and screen are lovely to sit in front of for a good amount of time. The battery easily lasts a full day and the performance is really good.So in summary, I love my new Lapbook 12.3. It looks gorgeous, it performs well and it feels really well made!I’ll upload some pictures when I can and include a couple of videos in the comments.

Overall build quality seems to be good. Very good, in fact, considering the price. There was some complaining about touchpad but to me it works just fine. I prefer mouse anyway. Display is really good, that's why a bought it in the first place. Keyboard is almost as good as my other laptop's which is three times more expensive.Lapbook 12.3" is quite slow if you use it just with the eMMC drive but not to the extent that makes it unusable. Anyway, you really need an SSD to obtain good performance. I use TCSUNBOW 240GB. At first the system refused to recognize it. I'm by no means a computer expert, so after a good amount of reading managed to make it visible using AOMEI. Then came the real pain. I wanted to use it in a dual boot - Windows + Manjaro. There wasn't problem to run it from live USB. But even after installing Manjaro on SSD, the system continued to boot in Windows. I did a lot of reading about workarounds and ended using live USB every time I wanted to boot Manjaro. (I use the USB just for detecting the bootloader, then I boot normally in the Manjaro OS that is installed on the SSD). I wasn't able to try some workarounds because some options in the BIOS are hidden/don't exist. I know CHUWI advertises these devices as ones with a good Linux support but in my opinion this is not the case. That's why I took away a star.One of the first things I did was to reflash the BIOS (zip-file available in CHUWI's forum). Well, to me it resolves the screen brightness problem only partially - the gradient became normal but there was no increased brightness at 100%, at least so it seemed to me.Generally, I could recommend CHUWI Lapbook 12.3", it does the job and is of good value to me but it doesn't come without some frustrations. Please, excuse my English, I know it is very far from perfect.

It's early days yet but this little beauty is incredible value for money. I've already inserted an extra 128gb of ssd storage. I don't understand why more computers with low emmc storage don't allow the addition of the card-type SSD but I'm glad this one does. Plus, build quality is amazing, feels solid, keyboard is great, screen is amazing. Made in China but then so is most of Apple's stuff.

This is a great little laptop. It's light, has good battery life, excellent wifi (much better at picking up the signal in my garden than my Samsung tablet), has a display screen that works well even outside in daylight and is an all-round strong performer. I bought it for my husband to take on holiday and it surpassed all my expectations, enabling him to keep himself entertained while I did my usual reading for 8 hours a day schtick. Recommended.

Amazing screen and general build quality, including one of the best chiclet keyboards I've used. My only advice is to ensure you buy an M2.SSD and move Windows there, or you'll be in constant pain with the poor performance of the onboard eMMC. You can re-use the eMMC for file storage, so it's not lost.

Since last week it has developed a shimmer in the top left corner and have only had this since Jan 18. The website is down, so can't get any support.

Not as good as expected and the keyboard was pants

Used for linux programming, very good and light.