The Chuwi LapBook 14.1 Review: Redefining Affordable
by Brett Howse on March 10, 2017 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
With a 6-Watt Celeron branded processor, featuring the latest generation Atom CPU core, and a 45-Wh battery, the Chuwi Lapbook 14.1 has the capability of offering some great battery life, but the devil is always in the details, and there’s more to battery life than just the CPU. Let’s take a look.
2013 Light Web Browsing
All our battery life testing is done at 200 nits, which on the Chuwi means the display is almost at 100% brightness. This is certainly a contributing factor to dragging down the battery life somewhat. I was expecting over ten hours on this test, and the Chuwi fell well short of that. It’s a respectable 7.5 hours, but for an Atom powered laptop with a decent size battery, it really should have done more.
2016 Web Browsing
The newer battery life test is much more demanding of the CPU, and it really shows. The extra workload drops the battery life down to 6.25 hours, and it’s really a long way from where this laptop should be. When a laptop manufacturer really strives for battery life, every component needs to be looked at and evaluated, and at this price point, that’s likely not a realistic scenario. It’s still a decent result, but it should be higher.
Normalized
By removing the battery size from the equation, we can see just how efficient the overall platform is. Here you can really see how much the Chuwi is lacking compared to more premium devices. The now discontinued Microsoft Surface 3, with quad-core previous generation Atom, is basically double the efficiency of the Chuwi, and most recent Ultrabooks are well over it as well. Some work here by Chuwi could go a long way on the end user experience with their product.
Movie Playback
The movie playback test splits the difference between the web browsing tests, and our Tesseract score lets you know you can almost watch The Avengers three times before having the machine turn off. This isn't as good as hoped.
Charge Time
The laptop ships with a 24-Watt AC Adapter, which is 100V-240V. The review unit shipped with the wrong cable, but since it’s a standard PC cable, it wasn’t difficult to dig up the proper North American plug, which is no issue because the adapter itself handles both voltages.
The charging capabilities of the Chuwi are about the opposite of the battery life. With just 24 Watts, it takes about 3.25 hours to charge from 5% to 100%, which is quite a long time for a 45 Wh battery. So, the result is the battery life is less than expected, and the charging time is longer than expected. That’s not exactly a great combination, but when you want to hit a price point, sometimes things have to be sacrificed.
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bill.rookard - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Never mind, apparently there IS an M.2 slot! Outstanding!Andrew Vanelli - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Indeed, there is, people are using it well, although, there's no way found to install the Windows on it (at least according to 4pda.ru). Someone, apparently, succeeded to install linux-like somethingwebdoctors - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
I love using my Toshiba CB2 when I'm travelling, but the crouton Ubuntu can sometimes be flaky. Having a native PC I can dual boot into windows or Ubuntu would be gold, especially at a price of $250, 14 inch size and under 3 lbs with an IPS screen.When my CB2 bites the dust, I'll definitely buy this thing, or whatever equivalent is selling, its a no-brainer.
tipoo - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Still my favorite Chromebook design, it's a shame Toshiba exited the NA market. Would have loved a CB3.mitcoes - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
I do not understand why this cheap chinese laptops do not offer a pre installed and even cheaper Ubuntu Kylin option with the new UKUI for those that dislike the MS WOS 10 desktop, and or a cheaper Chrome OS version.If MS WOS 10 cost near 100 USD in this prices the Kylin or Chrome OS version lower price would make them best sellers.
keeepcool - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Fuck thiskeeepcool - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Can post my comment, a fuck this is not spam, but two phrases saying that Windows licenses in volume are under 5 bucks is spam.asgallant - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Unless MS has changed its policy, the Windows license is super cheap, if not free, for OEMs making Chromebook competitors, so Ubuntu or ChromeOS wouldn't make the laptop cheaper.niva - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
No, it's not free. You can bet at least $10 went towards that license, maybe as much as $50.andychow - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
It's $15, exactly. The reviewer mentions that this laptop fluctuates between $250-265, but actually it's $250 for the one with the fake license, add $15 for the real license, when you order from the source. They actually explicitly mention this on the chinese page.