A little over two years ago, I reviewed Chuwi LapBook 14.1 Apollo Lake laptop with Windows 10, but it happened to run Ubuntu 17.04 fairly well, until the company made a major redesign of the laptop a few months later, and updated the BIOS to disable the Linux option.
So I would not recommend Chuwi laptop if you’d ever want to run a Linux distribution, but if you’re after a affordably priced laptop with 4K (3840×2160) display, the upcoming Chuwi LapBook Plus laptop, also based on an Apollo Lake processor, may be worth a look.
Chuwi LapBook Plus specifications:
- SoC – Intel Atom x7-E3950 quad core Apollo Lake (Embedded) processor @ 1.6 GHz / 2.0 GHz (Turbo) with Intel HD Graphics 505,up to 500MHz; 12W TDP
- System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4 (dual-channel)
- Storage – 256GB SSD, plus M.2 2280 socket for optional SATA SSD
- Display – 15.6″ 4K HDR display with 3840×2160 resolution
- Video Output – 1x micro HDMI 1.4 port
- Audio – Built-in stereo speaker and 2x microphones, 3.5mm headphone jack
- Connectivity – Dual band 802.11a/ac/b/g/n WiFi 5, Bluetooth 4.0
- Camera – 2MP font-facing camera
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 2.0 port
- User Input – Backlit QWERTY keyboard and touchpad
- Battery – 36.48Wh
- Power Supply – 12V/2A
- Dimensions – 362 x 242.1 x 6-14.9 mm
- Weight – 1.52 kg
The LapBook Plus ships a charger, and a user manual in English. It may be one of the most affordable 4K laptop, as it is sold for $439.99 on GearBest for the next two days. It’s also available on Aliexpress at the normal $499.99 price.
Now you may wonder about the rational of using an Atom processor to drive a 4K display. But the 12W Atom x7-E3950 processor should be faster than 6W/10W Celeron or Pentium Apollo Lake processors with a higher base clock. Still, the Apollo Lake processor family is known for its low price, low power, and entry-level performance, so there may certainly be applications where the 3840×2160 resolution proves to be challenging including gaming or/and 4K YouTube video playback. The latter can be accelerated by hardware so it might be OK, but some games will have to be run at lower resolutions to be playable.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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