I have one of these. It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.
I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.
My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.
Used laptops are such a good deal that you could something high quality in excellent condition for so little that I almost can't justify buying something like this. Like used Dell XPS laptops are ridiculously cheap and they're amazing for the used price.
Or really buy any laptop rated highly by Dave2D or other reviewers that's 4 to 5 years old.
"Bigger screen" (i.e. being bigger on the length/width dimension) is a bad thing in this discussion. Some people want a programming/writing laptop that fits in a handbag, so that they don't have to decide to bring it, but can just leave it in their bag the way many people do with an iPad.
Amen. I have a GPD Pocket 4 as my go to because it, a second screen, a 40% keyboard, and the arc mouse all fit in my surprisingly small bag along with chargers, cords, and a bunch of non laptop related stuff (e reader, pens/notebooks, some small tools, a miyoo, etc).
It is, however, an expensive fucking device. $2300 maxed out these days (which I think is $800ish more than i paid. Hurray ram...) or $1400 min specs (which are still quite nice).
I'm glad to see other options at that size (Pocket 4 is 8.8", but my second screen is 10") but a literal quarter of the cost. 80% of what I do on the pocket could be done something like this Minibook, and I don't give a shit if the keyboard/mouse sucks because I've got my own anyways so long as I can tent it.
There will be those days where I might need to do some local heavy lifting and regret not having the Pocket, but I'm also happy to know if it dies on me tomorrow I've got options that aren't shell out another $1k for a tool mostly used for coding.
Confirmed. Minibooks are amazing in cramped locations (for example, airplane seats), or just to always keep in the bag for support.
There's nothing in the market like them, which is a shame - I think a slightly better quality Minibook (Chuwis are plain crap) would be a very solid laptop.
I just responded above, but you might want to look at the GPD Pocket 4.
It is NOT cheap ($1300 min spec) but it's also quite a bit more powerful and with better ports (full size HDMI and Ethernet). It's not for everyone, but it blows my mind how little competition it has given how useful its been for me over the years.
The _feel_ is very different though, even if the dimensions aren’t numerically. It was around half a cm at its thinnest, it was 250g lighter, and 23mm less deep.
I think at those sizes, what reads as small differences give an outsized experiential factor.
Part of that I think was that it was the first SSD laptop many people had had, so the fast boot up times were mind blowing. I had two, a work and a personal one, and I miss them terribly.
Depends what code you are programming. Unless you are doing significant number crunching, 3D work, or local GenAI, there is an awful lot that spec can do. If you are working on a multi-user system and it is slow processing your actions as a single tester on this, then you have a heck of a lot of optimising ahead unless you want your production users to hate you!
Maybe you'd save running a large test suite until back at base with the branch checked out on something beefier, but for on-the-go coding I expect this spec would do just fine for many. The reviewer's comments about the keyboard would be my concern, not the limits if what it can run.
Or get what fits your preferred routine if available, instead of changing to match others?
Though my experience with this brand is mixed at best so I'd personally give this one a miss, especially given the reviewer's comments on the keyboard.
My x1 carbon gave me nothing but trouble from the beginning. I couldn't even move it too fast lest I risked it locking up. Additionally, my wrist strain got considerably better after ditching it for a comparably priced M2 that blows it out of the water in every conceivable category.
I'm starting to see 2020 M1 MacBooks CA$350 on Facebook Marketplace. That's the device I'm using to type this out. It still lasts all day, and it's still the only computer I use.
My daily driver is a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad T14 gen2 with R5/16/512 GB. 360e last year from a trusted retailer with a 1y warranty. I expect I'll be happy with it for some years, as my previous T450s is still running as a homelab.
I also just acquired a 2014 MacBook Air for two packs of coffee to use as a distraction free tty writerdeck and toy around with, as it's my first piece of Apple hardware.
Why are you assuming there's something wrong with it? I'm not pointing to outliers that are only cheap because they're broken. The average market price for an M1 MacBook in my area is around $350.
I'm seeing a lot of M1 Macbook Airs around £200-250, and Pros in the £300-350 range.
What's wrong with them? The M1 was popular and now people selling them are competing against a lot of other people selling them which suppresses the price. Like it or not, Macs are mainstream and therefore aren't going hold a "magic" high price.
I just searched my area. There were plenty listed as having no issues at that price point. eBay has similar deals. No reason to think that $350 isn’t the market price.
13th Gen Intel, 14” screen, 16GB/512GB at about $350.
Lenovo and Dell both make similar business laptop models at around the same age and price point.
Businesses sell off perfectly functional laptops in bulk because they are on regular refresh cycles for employees, not because there’s anything wrong with them.
Glad to still see options for small portable laptops on the market, but nothing out there has drawn me away from the 2015 11" MacBook Air. Good keyboard and trackpad, and single core speed is comparable to the newer (albeit lower TDP) Minibook. It's enough for everyday use, and the fan allows for better sustained performance (though it's rarely needed).
My main pain point is RAM (even with zram), but considering the MacBook Neo was just launched with the same amount I don't think I'll need to stop using it unless it finally decides to kick the bucket. A lot of laptops like the Minibook are better on paper but the build quality isn't there.
A 2011 mb air weighs almost half a pound more than this and is slightly larger. Also you are forced to run on 1) MacOS (which I like but is a limitation for many) and 2) since it’s unsupported will have many (especially modern) apps and such not work.
I love my 2016 MBpro. Can still render edit and render 4K video, pulls solid work. But it’s limited. Can’t even download Final Cut on it anymore because Apple won’t let me pull the latest supported version of the app. Luckily resolve does.
I bought one of these last year, specifically looking for a modern take on the netbook form factor. I run PopOS on mine and absolutely love the machine. It’s a perfect travel laptop and it has largely replaced the iPad mini that I previously used as my travel companion. I sometimes use it with XReal glasses, which is great. I’ve found that a 35 watt phone charger is sufficient to charge it over USB C, so I don’t even need to carry a laptop-class charging brick.
I will note that I also had the screen rotation issue described in the post, but it was easy to solve at the desktop environment level in COSMIC. I didn’t bother dealing with it elsewhere because I honestly don’t mind if the grub menu is sideways.
Yes, I’d be wary of going anywhere near this for that reason alone. You can’t just say “the keyboard is terrible” but then that you still like it overall -- more detail needed!
The Minibook X is obviously targeted at the netbook form factor in the traditional sense, i.e. small and cheap. If you're like me and appreciate the netbook/UMPC form factors (for travel purposes in my case) but also need better specs to actually get any work done -- and you're willing to fork out a bit more to get that -- I would recommend looking at GPD's Pocket and MicroPC series. I own both a Pocket 4 and MicroPC 2 with Linux on them, and I'm quite satisfied. The only issue I've noticed is the same screen rotation quirk described here, for which the same workarounds apply.
This is the primary reason the Minibook X won out in my searches: It's the only small device that has a keyboard layout that puts all of the keys in the right spots.
They're sometimes an odd size, but when I hit the wrong key due to a sizing constraint, I don't even have to think: Backspace, hit the right key with mildly adjusted positioning.
I've tried a few machines with different layouts, and that's never the case - and having to stop and look at the keyboard to find a key interrupts flow in the worst kind of way.
The CPU is just too underpowered; I'm sure it's fine for basic computery stuff, but building software and running medium/large test suites on it would be far too slow. Also not enough USB ports; I don't want to carry a USB hub with it.
Battery life on it is comparable to the MicroPC 2, but for the netbook form factor, it should really be compared to the Pocket 4. Similar story for the RAM, as well as the odd screen refresh rate.
Minor points: I do also appreciate the Ethernet ports on the GPD devices, and their approach to touchpads (buttons and placement in particular).
I guess my issues basically all boil down to the Minibook X not having enough functionality for the form factor when compared to GPD. That's mostly understandable for the price, but my point is just that if you're willing to fork over some more cash, you can get a whole lot more laptop in the same form factor (Pocket 4) or slightly better specs in a smaller form factor (MicroPC 2), and at least for me, that's the only way I could even have seriously considered these form factors for my work.
(Just to be clear, I have no particular brand loyalty to GPD; they're just the only player in town for high-end netbooks/UMPCs at the moment.)
I miss my Sony Vaio P series which fitted in a similar sort of niche, the cellphone radio made it just by far the best laptop I've ever used. Modern laptops don't seem to have provision for a LTE/5G radio which always confuses me a bit, in this form factor it would be ideal. I'm surprised nobody has cloned this actually, with phone screens being the right aspect ratio it seems obvious.
I had a thinkpad at one point that had a slot, but because it wasn't optioned for it you had to patch the BIOS or it wouldn't boot with anything in the slot, it seemed so hostile as to be worthless.
Probably a lot of people who care about this niche just get an iPad. (Which is what I've done - 5G iPad is great for travel - if I need something with a real OS, it waits until I'm home.)
Its also very useful to have an 5G connection for CGNAT for various reasons, for me its very useful for web scraping to avoid WAFs and rate limits. Currently you have to proxy through your phone, use a 5G base station (although these use static IPs often) or pay $6.00 a gb for mobile proxy bandwidth. Having a 5G connection on a laptop would be clutch, and is definately a priority of mine on my next laptop.
we're probably only a year or two out from LTE/5g being an option on Apple laptops, and I can see a bunch of other manufacturers jumping in a year after that to claim parity.
(Note: My estimate on this is purely based on Apple implementing/expanding the use of their own cell modems, which also includes their wifi chip. It seems logical that they would quickly adopt the same chip for wifi in their laptops, thusly getting LTE/5g 'for free'. Definitely no insider knowledge on this)
There's actually a known prototype MacBook Pro from 2006 with a cellphone radio, and the release MacBook Pros from the time all have a weird looking area near the battery and RAM where the SIM slot was supposed to be, and some leftover parts for the goofy little extendable antenna on the screen. Hopefully they end up doing it.
I got Vaio P many years after the fact and it was so neat. Alas, the PowerVR gpu Intel included on many of the chips there is quite quite problematic for anything but basic use. Although it just saw more work recently! https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-GMA500-Driver-In-2026
I think it was a year or two latter I got a Chuwi Lapbook 12.3, which was a great machine. Lovely 3:2 screen off the Surface Pro, again a pretty good Intel small-core set-up, decent ram, ok SSD, all so cheap. Great metal case. Lovely machine, at such a great price. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Chuwi-LapBook-12-3-Celeron-2K-...
Wow. Have to respect someone spending time on the GMA500. It was terrible when new, I recall Ubuntu being barely able to render desktop without lag. Windows was better but still unpleasant. The vaio p’s odd screen aspect ratio was also a challenge.
I’d love to see someone retrofit a modern soc into the vaio p motherboard form factor. There were a few partial efforts on GitHub but seems like Sony’s miniaturisation skills remain undefeated.
I somehow managed to get it working in 2016 with a lot of hackery, I'd still have it as a usable device if the weird little pouch cells it had didn't die, repacking those batteries seemed like enough of a fire hazard I just didn't bother.
I have an original Chuwi Minibook and would not recommend buying from them unless you're willing to treat the hardware as disposable. Their support is REALLY bad, warranty is useless (cheaper to buy replacement parts yourself on AliExpress) and the hardware has some baffling cost cutting decisions- I replaced the included jet turbine with a much quieter fan for a couple bucks, but most people won't want to solder their own harness to replicate this mod.
They make great deals but if you can afford the 4x cost competition, I would recommend doing that instead.
I'd rather not have to underclock the RAM and be careful in which order I plug my USB hubs in order for the system to be stable even if I still end up with great performance.
I wish there were more laptops with a similar form factor. I was looking forward to the MacBook Neo before it was officially announced; I thought it was going to be more like an upgraded MacBook 12", but it ended up being more like a downgraded MacBook Air 13". Nobody likes small things anymore :(
I can't say I agree with the author's assessment of the keyboard in this submission. I find it more pleasant to use than the other laptops I have access to.
I bought a Chuwi Lapbook[0] for my wife a few years ago. It was great at first, but got unusably slow running Windows within ~1.5 years. I got her a new laptop and put Linux on the Chuwi. It worked fine for checking email and light browsing. The touchpad had strange sensitivity and seemed to be hard-coded so that scroll worked the opposite of my preference. It was tolerable until the keys stopped responding to my typing. I found that if I pushed really hard in the center of the key, it would sometimes register, but required firmer pressing. Ctrl and Shift stopped working altogether after awhile. The problem crept up from the bottom-right side of the keyboard, and I eventually gave up on it at the end of last year.
I have one of these and run Debian 13 on it. I love it. Having only two USB ports is annoying and I ended up buying a relatively expensive PD Thunderbolt hub, and there are some compromises that come with the territory (middling battery life, trackpad certainly isn't Macbook-quality). In general, though, it's great and it feels fun in way that I haven't felt about laptops in a long while.
As others have noted the company has done some pretty shady things with some of their other products, and I would not really expect a warranty, so this isn't really a recommendation. But my personal experience after ~six months of use has been good.
It's actually the keyboard that surprises me the most: I think it's really good (and I consider myself a bit of a keyboard snob). I've never had any issue like the author describes, of having to strike keys just-so.
With those brands it's quite possible they changed it later without listing that anywhere. Same for the Linux support, which they also specifically not provide officially (and there is a developer post somewhere that they dont ever test on Linux). Made me not buy this when I searched for a travel notebook last year.
I use a GPD Win Max 2 for this purpose (https://fluctlight.net/gpd_win_max_2) and while it has its quirks, the performance of a Ryzen APU is significantly better than the Chuwi Minibook X.
I think my desire for this kind of product is something lighter, but this set of notes on the Chuwi feels like the compromises GPD gives you but with less power.
The GPD devices seem like they've cornered this whole niche in terms of ideal form factor but they are all ridiculously overpriced and that was before RAMpocalypse. I'm actually unsure how they will weather this storm because they are a small company and likely don't have any economies of scale to rely on.
I had no idea other vendors like Chuwi were providing netbook like devices. I will be doing more research tonight. Great post by OP!
It looks like the current iteration of the MiniBook will be discontinued soon; their official stores (on chuwi.com and AliExpress) are not selling them anymore. I've had my eye on this laptop for a while and still haven't bit the bullet, so I really hope it's not going away.
This is my daily driver laptop. It's pretty good for what it is. Runs Linux perfectly, not trying to be especially too fast, very nice pixel density, all metal case, sturdy build. Battery life is not the best. Beautifully compact.
I love small laptops but this thing would really benefit from a better processor. It's about 4x slower than the Snapdragon 8 elite, a 2 year old smartphone chip.
I think the "net" does a lot of heavy lifting for a box like this - e.g. you do all the important work on a remote server, and only do basic maintenance work on the laptop itself.
It'd be so lovely if these phones & systems could run Linux. Man. Such a pity.
PostmarketOS has a small handful of Snapdragon 870, 865 tablets (~5 year old, Cortex-A77). But it feels like it's by hook & by crook. Meanwhile it feels like bootloaders are just getting more and more locked down, making it less interesting whether mainline Linux support developers or not.
50Hz is what European power runs at, as opposed to North American 60Hz. This had some correlation to the analog film frame rates being 25 fps in Europe and nearly 30 fps in America, though I’m not entirely sure what the cause was.
Nowadays it’s probably a performance / battery saving “feature” attempt.
TV signals (PAL and NTSC) were 50 and 60 Hz so as to be in sync with the flickering of electric lamps.
When film is converted to 50 Hz TV, the film is sped up 24->25 fps and every frame shown twice.
When converted to 60 Hz TV, there is "2:3 pulldown": every even frame is shown twice, every odd thrice.
(Actually, both PAL and NTSC have interlaced video modes, with only every other line updated each frame, so as to conserve bandwidth.)
BTW, when 60 Hz computer monitors were introduced in Europe and used in office spaces with fluorescent lights with passive ballasts that flickered at 50 Hz, some sensitive users suffered headaches from using the computer screen for too long.
These days, both fluorescent lights and LCD backlights tend to flicker at much higher frequencies that it isn't much of a problem.
Nah, not film rates [1], video: NTSC is 30fps and PAL is 25fps because the cathode ray tube scan rate was built around AC power cycles. When low fps truly Hz. Sorry.
[1] generally 24fps because that is culturally what film looks like and people get very weird whenever anyone tries to fuck with it
I'll allow your joke, but NTSC is 60 fields per second, and PAL is 50. Certainly a large portion of content came from film and in PALworld would be shown as even and odd halves of a frame, or in NTSCland as 3 halves of a frame, then two halves...
But actually interlaced content exists too. Each field is independent, there's no frames to speak of.
Early video game systems based on NTSC/PAL ran at 60 fps or 50 fps, but ran off-spec signals to always hit the same half of the display lines (odd or even). 4th gen systems (genesis/mega drive and snes/sfc) had a few games that used interlaced output; later systems had many, running PAL@60Hz became a common option too.
Not only was it built around AC, the technology at the time only allowed for roughly 1/2 the AC cycles rate. People think there was some great reasoning behind 30fps. It was just what was available, essentially.
Standard CRT TV refresh rate in the UK. Pretty much all home computers here produced 50 Hz output, the goal being that they could be connected to a TV, until the PC started to eat that sector in the early 1990s. Games consoles supported 50 Hz (same rationale) until at least PS2/Xbox.
Alan Cox had a pre-netbook netbook smaller than a VHS tape at linux.conf.au 2001, and milled about chatting with colleagues and fanboys while his kernel builds scrolled by in the background. Everyone would gawk at the strange little machine.
It was Japanese, naturally.
At linux.conf.au 2007 we chose a smaller conference bag, designed to carry your electrical accessories and nick-knacks... it turned out to be the perfect size for the new EeePC (and later the MacBook Air 11").
The time difference between today and Hackers is the same as when the film was released and the year 1964. That's the year films like Dr. Strangelove, Goldfinger and A Fistful of Dollars was released.
I have a Chuwi Minibook X and the keyboard is amazing. Its the best smallest keyboard available anywhere, I can type on it just as easily as my other larger laptops. I think there must have been something wrong with the reviewer's hardware, mine works great.
Would the rotated panel mean that any screen tearing is vertical or is the screen update order also changed when the screen rotation is changed in the settings?
That $350 price tag is good for that configuration. Not sure how fast the USB-c ports are. It should have an HDMI 2.0/2.1 port. Mini PC's with the N150 CPU support 2 4k@60Hz monitors.
I have this laptop, and it is amongst the best laptops I have ever owned, despite being awful in many ways. It has almost completely replaced my use of my M4 Macbook Pro, simply because I always have it with me. That, and it can run Linux.
I don't share the complaints of the OP about the keyboard or the screen, though. The keyboard is fine, I can hit about 110WPM on it, slower than my regular pace, but enough that there's no dramas. The layout is great: Occasionally there's keys that are too small (looking at you, apostrophe) but everything is at least in the right spot, which is way more important.
The 2K display at 10" is high enough DPI that everything is totally crisp, and you can unlock ~95Hz (bad for video, good for everything else) with a bit of a tweak. You can also smash a byte into the EC at the correct offset and access the full unrestricted BIOS -- mostly to crank the RAM up to 4800MT/s.
I'm running vanilla Arch with Niri and Noctalia, and it's a dream. It's my primary dev machine, used in combination with a remote server with a tonne more grunt. If it broke tomorrow, I'd buy another - and I wouldn't do that with my macbook.
I agree. The keyboard is fantastic, it is the best smallest keyboard I've ever used. Debian 13 works out of the box and there are no screen rotation issues.
The cause is just that the panel is mounted rotated on the device. It's supposed to be used in a tablet where the top is the short end and the side is the long end, opposite to a laptop.
> Keyboard is terrible – it only registers keystrokes when you hit the exact center of each key.
So, unusable for blind typing.
920g for a 10" is also crazy much. LG make 14" laptops under a kg.
I want something like the Sony Z4 tablet. About 600g with keyboard dock. Thin, waterproof (not the keyboard), days of standby, 4G supported, the keyboard was excellent.
If it would be possible to run a current version of Android on it, it would be perfect.
Pretty sure a power supply that just puts out 12V on USB-C without any negotiation is not in spec and should be illegal. As the article mentioned, it would damage anything that wasn't expecting 12V, like most things that take 5V USB power.
I love netbooks and I am curious to get one of these at some point - I can’t justify one right now.
I do have my ASUS EEEPC 701 4G Surf still working. I think it is 18 years old at this point? It is rocking Antix, in its 3.6 GB hard drive. It broke the S key in the keyboard last night and I ordered a replacement.
I use it as writer deck and to ssh to my server and raspberry pi from the sofa.
It is built in a very resistant way? Survived my kid so far.
I've done that with mine. Worked great, and now I get around 30 hours of battery life with a lean linux distro, as long as I'm only like reading websites or writing on it.
>Which windows program are you looking for, specifically?
All of them, specifically.
I don't want to think about which windows program can or can't run with Wine.
This includes:
* Microsoft software, from MSTeams to Windows itself
* Audio production software (DAWs and VST plug-ins)
* Games
* Device-specific software (like drivers/software for portable thermal printers)
* CAD (nTop, only supports Windows, for example, and don't tell me I don't need it; same for many Autodesk products. NX and Rhino don't have Linux support)
The last one is the most fun, as I'm a CAD developer who worked on nTop in particular.
Aside from Microsoft Office, the rest is workstation stuff, and Microsoft Office is pushing "web first" (at least if their pricing is to be believed, the lowest O365 subscriptions do not offer access to the native apps).
We'll have to see how the AI softwarepocalypse goes. If I only need 10% of the features of Photoshop, I really don't need to be spending money on the full software suite.
Back when Chromebooks and Netbooks were contemporaries, yours was a much harder proposition. I had an awful time getting Linux on my first gen Chromebook
I've heard that on the new ones they've illegally made it not possible anymore, but haven't experienced direct evidence of that yet. For mine I had to remove a screw from the motherboard but it wasn't that difficult. Not much worse than jumper for boot order in ye olde days
That sounds like an opinion baked in 2013 and never revisited. A modern chromebook with Crostini can run basically any Linux desktop stack you want. Like, what exactly are the tasks you need from a "computer that you could use like a normal computer" that you aren't getting today?
As a data point: I'm 100% converted personally. A Chromebook is what goes into my backpack and the device I use for all my general day-to-day UI clickery, and it's a better fit for my needs than Windows (not nearly as bad as it used to be but still sort of a PITA to make work as a Linux-focused dev environment) or Linux (not nearly as much of a PITA for a connected consumer network device but still has the occasional wart trying to get something weird to run).
Crostini is a mixed bag; e.g. IIRC something in their stack breaks ptrace. I prefer to wipe and install a normal Linux distro. But, when it works it works, and I do use one Chromebook with Crostini.
ptrace works fine on crostini. The guest kernel has Yama enabled, which restricts it to root for boring security reasons. You can do your debugging at a root shell or turn the setting (yama/ptrace_scope) off via sysctl.
> A modern chromebook with Crostini can run basically any Linux desktop stack you want. Like, what exactly are the tasks you need from a "computer that you could use like a normal computer" that you aren't getting today?
Well... yeah. Likewise your post is clearly about your needs, which are different. But that's not what you said, you said it "wasn't a computer" and you couldn't use it "like a normal computer". Which is obviously wrong. But I guess "normal computer" means "windows" to you, which (especially given the forum you posted on!) is a little surprising.
So what you wrote (but apparently not meant) seemed mistaken to me, thus the correction. But if you want windows then just buy windows. Your market is well served.
> Normal computer means a choice of OS to run on it without having to hack it to do that job.
That's too high a standard. When we consider MacOS along with Windows and Linux, there are basically no computers that let you freely choose between all three without hacks.
And even just considering Windows and Linux, a big chunk of the laptop market only supports Windows properly.
A laptop that runs any normal desktop OS is a normal computer.
You're losing me. Your first reply says "A computer that meets my needs must provide a choice of OSes", your second says "A computer that meets my needs must run one specific OS". To be blunt: your reasoning here is simply bunk and I don't understand it.
If you must use windows, then you must use windows and you don't have a choice. None of that has anything to do with the nonsense about Chromebooks not being "real computers" or whatever, that's just the rationalization you've decided on. Obviously they are real computers.
That works great until you inevitably need to launch some streaming service that doesn't work on Linux Chrome or whatever. The needs of "general consumer junk we all deal with" are real. I spent decades on the "I don't actually need that stuff" hamster wheel too, and... yeah, it sucks and I'm too old for that.
A Chromebook is a first class consumer device backed by a Big Threatening Tech Giant that works on all sites everywhere because no one wants to piss off Google. And it's still Linux and runs great. I'll take it.
I was too, and then AI came out, and now Codex just makes my Linux work how I want it, no needing to fiddle with .config/gconf whatever crap. I just tell it to fix my two finger scrolling on my trackpad, and it does it.
I have a couple of x86 tablets from Chuwi where I run Debian with plasma-mobile.
Battery life is crap, on the new one the webcams aren't supported by linux because they aren't v4l.
With plasma-mobile there is no need to mess with configuration about the orientation since it just flips the screen the way I'm holding it.
I contributed a couple of patches to KDE to improve the experience on touch devices but overall there is lots of applications that already work fine on a touchscreen. Alligator, kasts, a few kdegames, angelfish.
A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing
– Linus Torvalds
If you are an adult, able-bodied human male, and you even notice a laptop being "heavy" becauase it's over 1000 grams, I am sorry but your health is fucked. I am not a strong man. But if you are so weak 200grams extra or whatever bothers you, sort your life out. Seriously. You will feel so much better.
Are the specifications listed in the article reliable?
It's difficult to trust them, considering Chuwi has a history of misrepresenting CPU specifications.
I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.
My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.
Or really buy any laptop rated highly by Dave2D or other reviewers that's 4 to 5 years old.
Different category to a 15” 2kg cheap 5 year old dell.
It is, however, an expensive fucking device. $2300 maxed out these days (which I think is $800ish more than i paid. Hurray ram...) or $1400 min specs (which are still quite nice).
I'm glad to see other options at that size (Pocket 4 is 8.8", but my second screen is 10") but a literal quarter of the cost. 80% of what I do on the pocket could be done something like this Minibook, and I don't give a shit if the keyboard/mouse sucks because I've got my own anyways so long as I can tent it.
There will be those days where I might need to do some local heavy lifting and regret not having the Pocket, but I'm also happy to know if it dies on me tomorrow I've got options that aren't shell out another $1k for a tool mostly used for coding.
There's nothing in the market like them, which is a shame - I think a slightly better quality Minibook (Chuwis are plain crap) would be a very solid laptop.
It is NOT cheap ($1300 min spec) but it's also quite a bit more powerful and with better ports (full size HDMI and Ethernet). It's not for everyone, but it blows my mind how little competition it has given how useful its been for me over the years.
I think at those sizes, what reads as small differences give an outsized experiential factor.
Sure, I can blame Chrome and JS, but ultimately, the core 2 duo and 8GB RAM did not keep up very long.
It still works, but a few specific apps started to really drag on it.
Maybe you'd save running a large test suite until back at base with the branch checked out on something beefier, but for on-the-go coding I expect this spec would do just fine for many. The reviewer's comments about the keyboard would be my concern, not the limits if what it can run.
Though my experience with this brand is mixed at best so I'd personally give this one a miss, especially given the reviewer's comments on the keyboard.
I bought a tablet from this brand few years back. Screen edges were non responsive to touch within months.
the brand is trash.
It is being thrown away in the first place for a reason.
I also just acquired a 2014 MacBook Air for two packs of coffee to use as a distraction free tty writerdeck and toy around with, as it's my first piece of Apple hardware.
What's wrong with them? The M1 was popular and now people selling them are competing against a lot of other people selling them which suppresses the price. Like it or not, Macs are mainstream and therefore aren't going hold a "magic" high price.
13th Gen Intel, 14” screen, 16GB/512GB at about $350.
Lenovo and Dell both make similar business laptop models at around the same age and price point.
Businesses sell off perfectly functional laptops in bulk because they are on regular refresh cycles for employees, not because there’s anything wrong with them.
On the Mac side, MacBook Air M1.
My main pain point is RAM (even with zram), but considering the MacBook Neo was just launched with the same amount I don't think I'll need to stop using it unless it finally decides to kick the bucket. A lot of laptops like the Minibook are better on paper but the build quality isn't there.
I will note that I also had the screen rotation issue described in the post, but it was easy to solve at the desktop environment level in COSMIC. I didn’t bother dealing with it elsewhere because I honestly don’t mind if the grub menu is sideways.
They're sometimes an odd size, but when I hit the wrong key due to a sizing constraint, I don't even have to think: Backspace, hit the right key with mildly adjusted positioning.
I've tried a few machines with different layouts, and that's never the case - and having to stop and look at the keyboard to find a key interrupts flow in the worst kind of way.
Battery life on it is comparable to the MicroPC 2, but for the netbook form factor, it should really be compared to the Pocket 4. Similar story for the RAM, as well as the odd screen refresh rate.
Minor points: I do also appreciate the Ethernet ports on the GPD devices, and their approach to touchpads (buttons and placement in particular).
I guess my issues basically all boil down to the Minibook X not having enough functionality for the form factor when compared to GPD. That's mostly understandable for the price, but my point is just that if you're willing to fork over some more cash, you can get a whole lot more laptop in the same form factor (Pocket 4) or slightly better specs in a smaller form factor (MicroPC 2), and at least for me, that's the only way I could even have seriously considered these form factors for my work.
(Just to be clear, I have no particular brand loyalty to GPD; they're just the only player in town for high-end netbooks/UMPCs at the moment.)
https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/03/9f923860-4b47-11e4-b6...
My T14 has even a dedicated slot for a SIM card.
At least with Lenovo laptops, that is very common. You con't need to order the laptop with a radio; it can be easily upgraded.
(Note: My estimate on this is purely based on Apple implementing/expanding the use of their own cell modems, which also includes their wifi chip. It seems logical that they would quickly adopt the same chip for wifi in their laptops, thusly getting LTE/5g 'for free'. Definitely no insider knowledge on this)
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype-m...
I think it was a year or two latter I got a Chuwi Lapbook 12.3, which was a great machine. Lovely 3:2 screen off the Surface Pro, again a pretty good Intel small-core set-up, decent ram, ok SSD, all so cheap. Great metal case. Lovely machine, at such a great price. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Chuwi-LapBook-12-3-Celeron-2K-...
I’d love to see someone retrofit a modern soc into the vaio p motherboard form factor. There were a few partial efforts on GitHub but seems like Sony’s miniaturisation skills remain undefeated.
The appeal isn't necessarily the end result. It's the process of tinkering, learning, and gradually making the tool your own.
I'd rather not have to underclock the RAM and be careful in which order I plug my USB hubs in order for the system to be stable even if I still end up with great performance.
I can't say I agree with the author's assessment of the keyboard in this submission. I find it more pleasant to use than the other laptops I have access to.
At least it can charge off a powerbank, but that's pretty standard now.
[0]: https://techtablets.com/chuwi-lapbook-14-1/review/
As others have noted the company has done some pretty shady things with some of their other products, and I would not really expect a warranty, so this isn't really a recommendation. But my personal experience after ~six months of use has been good.
I used to play with omarchy. It is good enough for a lot of use cases. For powerful work I just connect to remote session.
Perfect for planes in economy
It's actually the keyboard that surprises me the most: I think it's really good (and I consider myself a bit of a keyboard snob). I've never had any issue like the author describes, of having to strike keys just-so.
I think my desire for this kind of product is something lighter, but this set of notes on the Chuwi feels like the compromises GPD gives you but with less power.
I had no idea other vendors like Chuwi were providing netbook like devices. I will be doing more research tonight. Great post by OP!
16GB ram is cool though.
PostmarketOS has a small handful of Snapdragon 870, 865 tablets (~5 year old, Cortex-A77). But it feels like it's by hook & by crook. Meanwhile it feels like bootloaders are just getting more and more locked down, making it less interesting whether mainline Linux support developers or not.
Lots of 15.6" Windows laptops come with 1080p screen which is painful to look at.
Nowadays it’s probably a performance / battery saving “feature” attempt.
When film is converted to 50 Hz TV, the film is sped up 24->25 fps and every frame shown twice. When converted to 60 Hz TV, there is "2:3 pulldown": every even frame is shown twice, every odd thrice. (Actually, both PAL and NTSC have interlaced video modes, with only every other line updated each frame, so as to conserve bandwidth.)
BTW, when 60 Hz computer monitors were introduced in Europe and used in office spaces with fluorescent lights with passive ballasts that flickered at 50 Hz, some sensitive users suffered headaches from using the computer screen for too long. These days, both fluorescent lights and LCD backlights tend to flicker at much higher frequencies that it isn't much of a problem.
[1] generally 24fps because that is culturally what film looks like and people get very weird whenever anyone tries to fuck with it
But actually interlaced content exists too. Each field is independent, there's no frames to speak of.
Early video game systems based on NTSC/PAL ran at 60 fps or 50 fps, but ran off-spec signals to always hit the same half of the display lines (odd or even). 4th gen systems (genesis/mega drive and snes/sfc) had a few games that used interlaced output; later systems had many, running PAL@60Hz became a common option too.
It was Japanese, naturally.
At linux.conf.au 2007 we chose a smaller conference bag, designed to carry your electrical accessories and nick-knacks... it turned out to be the perfect size for the new EeePC (and later the MacBook Air 11").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_OmniBook
You (we) are old :)
I'm a big believer in cheap, small, low-power laptops. For simple tasks, you don't need that much compute.†
But you can't skimp on the keyboard! Especially because, one of the big advantages of a low-power laptop should be for writing!
------
† Okay, Electron exists... you shouldn't need all that compute.
I don't share the complaints of the OP about the keyboard or the screen, though. The keyboard is fine, I can hit about 110WPM on it, slower than my regular pace, but enough that there's no dramas. The layout is great: Occasionally there's keys that are too small (looking at you, apostrophe) but everything is at least in the right spot, which is way more important.
The 2K display at 10" is high enough DPI that everything is totally crisp, and you can unlock ~95Hz (bad for video, good for everything else) with a bit of a tweak. You can also smash a byte into the EC at the correct offset and access the full unrestricted BIOS -- mostly to crank the RAM up to 4800MT/s.
I'm running vanilla Arch with Niri and Noctalia, and it's a dream. It's my primary dev machine, used in combination with a remote server with a tonne more grunt. If it broke tomorrow, I'd buy another - and I wouldn't do that with my macbook.
To the OP:
* Accelerometer support, EC-byte-bashing to get BIOS unlock: https://github.com/greymouser/minibook-x-tools
* 95Hz EDID fix: https://github.com/sonnyp/linux-minibook-x/issues/7#issuecom...
Getting from zero to a fully working OS was a mild journey, but I'd do it again.
So, unusable for blind typing.
920g for a 10" is also crazy much. LG make 14" laptops under a kg.
I want something like the Sony Z4 tablet. About 600g with keyboard dock. Thin, waterproof (not the keyboard), days of standby, 4G supported, the keyboard was excellent.
If it would be possible to run a current version of Android on it, it would be perfect.
Client side (device) sets the current draw. Weird take to not use the supplied psu.
I do have my ASUS EEEPC 701 4G Surf still working. I think it is 18 years old at this point? It is rocking Antix, in its 3.6 GB hard drive. It broke the S key in the keyboard last night and I ordered a replacement.
I use it as writer deck and to ssh to my server and raspberry pi from the sofa.
It is built in a very resistant way? Survived my kid so far.
They're Android tablets with non-removable keyboards.
The idea of a netbook was very small, cheap, portable, full-featured computer that you could use like a normal computer.
All the ports, your desktop OS, and so on.
Chromebooks ain't it, even if they compete in the market segment that made netbooks a success.
I've done that with mine. Worked great, and now I get around 30 hours of battery life with a lean linux distro, as long as I'm only like reading websites or writing on it.
How's the Windows support with this flow?
For a list of devices: https://docs.chrultrabook.com/docs/devices.html
All of them, specifically.
I don't want to think about which windows program can or can't run with Wine.
This includes:
* Microsoft software, from MSTeams to Windows itself
* Audio production software (DAWs and VST plug-ins)
* Games
* Device-specific software (like drivers/software for portable thermal printers)
* CAD (nTop, only supports Windows, for example, and don't tell me I don't need it; same for many Autodesk products. NX and Rhino don't have Linux support)
The last one is the most fun, as I'm a CAD developer who worked on nTop in particular.
Aside from Microsoft Office, the rest is workstation stuff, and Microsoft Office is pushing "web first" (at least if their pricing is to be believed, the lowest O365 subscriptions do not offer access to the native apps).
Also drivers are often better on Linux.
How's nTop Linux support coming along?
The hardware feels great to hold (though the touchpad is still meh). I covered the Google logos with a glossy black vinyl Obsidian sticker.
https://notes.danielgk.com/Hardware/Travel+Laptop
As a data point: I'm 100% converted personally. A Chromebook is what goes into my backpack and the device I use for all my general day-to-day UI clickery, and it's a better fit for my needs than Windows (not nearly as bad as it used to be but still sort of a PITA to make work as a Linux-focused dev environment) or Linux (not nearly as much of a PITA for a connected consumer network device but still has the occasional wart trying to get something weird to run).
Run Windows and Windows programs that I use.
> it's a better fit for my needs than Windows
Happy for you. The key here is your needs.
Well... yeah. Likewise your post is clearly about your needs, which are different. But that's not what you said, you said it "wasn't a computer" and you couldn't use it "like a normal computer". Which is obviously wrong. But I guess "normal computer" means "windows" to you, which (especially given the forum you posted on!) is a little surprising.
So what you wrote (but apparently not meant) seemed mistaken to me, thus the correction. But if you want windows then just buy windows. Your market is well served.
Normal computer means a choice of OS to run on it without having to hack it to do that job.
Chromebooks aren't sold as general-purpose computing devices. They aren't "normal computers" in the same sense that cell phones aren't.
>which (especially given the forum you posted on!) is a little surprising.
I'm a CAD developer and user. I need Windows for my work.
I would hope that this forum includes people who are in touch with the real world.
That's too high a standard. When we consider MacOS along with Windows and Linux, there are basically no computers that let you freely choose between all three without hacks.
And even just considering Windows and Linux, a big chunk of the laptop market only supports Windows properly.
A laptop that runs any normal desktop OS is a normal computer.
If you must use windows, then you must use windows and you don't have a choice. None of that has anything to do with the nonsense about Chromebooks not being "real computers" or whatever, that's just the rationalization you've decided on. Obviously they are real computers.
Psh, Fuck that. Install actual Linux on it (I have Debian on mine) and don't deal with ChromeOS (if you don't want to).
A Chromebook is a first class consumer device backed by a Big Threatening Tech Giant that works on all sites everywhere because no one wants to piss off Google. And it's still Linux and runs great. I'll take it.
I was too, and then AI came out, and now Codex just makes my Linux work how I want it, no needing to fiddle with .config/gconf whatever crap. I just tell it to fix my two finger scrolling on my trackpad, and it does it.
Battery life is crap, on the new one the webcams aren't supported by linux because they aren't v4l.
With plasma-mobile there is no need to mess with configuration about the orientation since it just flips the screen the way I'm holding it.
I contributed a couple of patches to KDE to improve the experience on touch devices but overall there is lots of applications that already work fine on a touchscreen. Alligator, kasts, a few kdegames, angelfish.
– Linus Torvalds
If you are an adult, able-bodied human male, and you even notice a laptop being "heavy" becauase it's over 1000 grams, I am sorry but your health is fucked. I am not a strong man. But if you are so weak 200grams extra or whatever bothers you, sort your life out. Seriously. You will feel so much better.