Chuwi Corebook review

After the SurBook, Chuwi is back at it again with an ever better tablet-laptop offering. After another successful stint on Indiegogo, the Chuwi CoreBook finally started production late last year.

The Chuwi CoreBook, at its core, is for people who want the power and capabilities of the Microsoft Surface Pro (undoubtedly, the most popular Windows-based tablet out there), but aren’t willing to shell a small fortune.

Specs:

Dimensions: 315.0 x 211.0 x 8.0mm

Weight: 1046g (without keyboard)

Build: Aluminium alloy

CPU : Intel Core m3-7Y30 (Kaby Lake)

GPU : Intel HD Graphics 615

Operating System : Windows 10 Home

Memory : 8GB RAM

Storage : 128GB ROM (SATA3 SSD)

Expandable storage : Supported, Up to 128GB microSD (dedicated slot)

Display type : Fully Laminated, 2.5D Curved Glass, 10-point touchscreen display

Display size : 13.3 Inches (82% Screen To Body Ratio)

Screen resolution : 1080 x 1920 pixels, 16:9 ratio

Wi-Fi support : 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

Bluetooth support : 4.0

GPS support : N/A

USB : Type-C

Rear camera : 5.0MP

Front camera : 2.0MP

Battery : 34.2Wh (10000mAh)

Color : Silver

Let’s review one of the most impressive features that the Chuwi CoreBook has- its display. The screen measures 13.3 inches and has a resolution of 1080p (1920×1080 pixels).

The brightness is measured at 240 lux which might seem quite low but helps you get the most out of the 8 hours battery life.

And unlike more expensive tablets, the CoreBook actually has a fully laminated screen that not only makes the images on the display clearer, more transparent and colourful, but also makes the whole tablet lighter and easier to hold. But there's a downside with the brightness adjustment, even we set the brightness to the darkest setting, it is still way too bright for night use, and I do hope that they will fix that in future tablet releases.

When it comes to aesthetics, the CoreBook actually resembles the Apple iPad more, with its soft edges and curved 2.5D glass. The screen to body ratio is at an impressive 82%, which helps contribute to it’s lightweight form factor. A nice touch is that below the screen is an inbuilt fingerprint sensor allowing you to quickly unlock the tablet.

As for the CoreBook’s body, its exterior is made out of aluminium alloy. This material is very thin and light, thus making it apt for an ultra portable machine like the Chuwi CoreBook.

It wouldn’t be a tablet without a front-facing camera for video calls. Unfortunately the Chuwi CoreBook only has a 2MP camera located in the centre above the screen. While the camera is adequate enough for quick snaps, the photo quality isn’t something to write home about and video is limited to 720P.

When it comes to connectivity, the CoreBook doesn’t disappoint. It’s widely known that most tablets are lacking in the ports department, but the CoreBook completely bucks this trend.

It has a micro USB port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, microSD card slot, as well as an USB 3.0 Type C port. That’s enough connectivity options that most people know what to do with. But I don't like the position of those ports, which is at the top. I don't find this would be convenient to use.

The processor that power the CoreBook is a beast: the Intel Core m3-7Y30. Though it’s just a Core M, this processor supports hyper threading and is backed by a very generous 8GB of RAM. That’s more than enough juice to get you through most casual computing tasks.

Running at 1Ghz for low intensity tasks, the M3-7Y30 maximised battery life. When you need the power it has turbo-boost feature which clocks the processor up 2.6GHz giving you all the power you’ll need.

Since the processor also has integrated graphics (Intel HD Graphics 615), the CoreBook is thereby capable of basic photo editing and video editing, as well as other graphics-intensive tasks. The Intel HD Graphics 615 can also handle older games remarkably well (or newer games at lower graphics levels and resolutions), so you can do a bit of gaming on the CoreBook. The 128GB SSD equipped in this tablet is okay, but not the typical speeds we can get on a SATA3 SSD. The sequential reads and write are about 400 MB/s but not over 500 MB/s.

The CoreBook’s keyboard, while not a direct copy of the Surface Pro’s, feels very nice to use. The keyboard has a cover and a bracket that can be adjusted to 165 degrees, so you can prop the device in any way you want. Even the keys themselves feel nice to type on; they are clicky and have a bit of travel to them and don’t feel as mushy as keyboards on other portable devices. What I don't like is the keyboard surface materials are made of fabric, so it really attract dusts and oils, thus difficult to keep it clean. Additionally, the keyboard lacks of some shortcut keys like Print Screen shortcut, I need to use the Windows Snipping tool to perform a screenshot. For the touchpad, good news is it supports Windows Precision drivers, one positive there.

I've checked the BIOS settings and unfortunately it isn't fully unlocked. Which means some of the settings like power limit tweaks can't be accessed. But luckily we can use the Intel's XTU to tweak the power limits and get maximum performance, and what's good is they've set the TDP for this chipset as 7W instead of the default 4.5W setting. We still have the boot menu of course, so I've tried to install Linux on this machine and it just runs fine, just the touchscreen is not working at the moment.

Take a look at the Windows Device Manager, and what we got is an Intel Wireless AC 3165, and I did a FTP test and the speeds can reach up to 390Mbps through this particular chipset, which is good, but of course not the fastest chipset out there. For the sensor part we do have a Bosch accelerometer, which allows your device to rotate the screen automatically, and an ambient light sensor that allows automatic brightness adjustment based on environment brightness.

The native HEVC codec support by Core m3 chipset, able to play HEVC 4k video perfectly fine. The display output from the Type-C port, maximum capped to 4k 30Hz but not 60Hz, which means it doesnt support HDMI 2.0 specifications. The audio output from the 3.5mm jack is quite loud, there's no hiss, no static, it is clean which is great. The dual-firing speakers at the top, they do sound a lot better than the Alldocube tablets, but just lacking some volume.

Something which we can't always get on Windows tablets is they have fingerprint scanner included and it is located at the bottom of the screen. Personally I do not like the location of the fingerprint scanner, and i prefer it to be at the side of the screen, but not at the bottom. However it does actually tend to work nine out of ten times and it goes straight into Windows after you place your finger on the reader without using password.

On the battery side, the battery life wasn't so great, and I do see that most of the Core m3 tablets are having average battery life, typically won't get over 5 hours with mix use. Here I tested the battery life by watching some Amazon Prime videos, document editing and using Chrome to edit my website. For the charging times, it is around 3 hours and 30 minutes to fully charge this tablet with the 12V 3A adapter provided.

I've conducted the stylus test and I can only say: this is really bad. Although the palm rejection seems working, but the writing test was really bad. I can't even properly write a word on the tablet. If you want the best stylus performance, you should get a Surface or other alternatives, but this is not for you.

You can see how bad the stylus performance is!

For gaming test, we can play Counter Strike in 720p and lowest setting, and it able to stay on 60fps, just sometimes will drop a little bit of frame rates. Other games like League of Legends and Asphalt 9 also runs perfectly fine. After game playing, it does get warm on the back of the tablet, but we use HWiNFO to check the temperature of the chipset, and it looks fine with max temperature of 73 degrees, which means the thermal performance is not really bad.