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12th Gen Laptop For Only $249? Chuwi Gemibook XPro Review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ส.ค. 2024
- Chuwi Gemibook XPro Review. 12th Gen Alder Lake N100 quad-core 14-inch Windows laptop with 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Wifi 6, and 38Wh battery. More info: bit.ly/3TRdte0
00:00 - Intro, unboxing, and weight
01:06 - Design and features
02:56 - Webcam sample
05:17 - Loudspeaker sample
05:36 - Internals
07:35 - Screen
08:38 - Windows 11, benchmarks and performance tests
13:17 - 4k video decoding tests and TH-cam 4k60
14:41 - Thermals and fan noise sample
15:21 - GTA V 720p gaming test
16:25 - Final thoughts with Pros and Cons
More info and where to buy: bit.ly/3TRdte0
00:00 - Intro, unboxing, and weight
01:06 - Design and features
02:56 - Webcam sample
05:17 - Loudspeaker sample
05:36 - Internals
07:35 - Screen
08:38 - Windows 11, benchmarks and performance tests
13:17 - 4k video decoding tests and TH-cam 4k60
14:41 - Thermals and fan noise sample
15:21 - GTA V 720p gaming test
16:25 - Final thoughts with Pros and Cons
4K content playback is not optimized very well with all video players and codecs no matter how powerful PC you have and WMP legacy you used it definitely not good. I have current generation high end hardware and WMP does not behave well with 4K . 4K video file playback testing should be done with VLC player (one of best optimised video players for PC) and I guarantee you that playback would be with no problem and no lost frames on this intel N100. That's why youtube 4K playback had no problem but 4K file with WMP was bad. You are tech channel with almost half a million subs you should know that.
Please keep testing laptops for Linux compatibility, like Fedora or Ubuntu. This channel was such a valuable source of information for that.
I forgot to mention it in the end part, but I tested it and it works fine!
@@Techtablets Thanks, that is great news!
Yep. Nowadays important to say if linux compatible.
Especially sound which often is non operational on Chinese hardware (teclast for example)
Sorry it was meant to be in there the mention but I did a second take of the recap and missed it that time. Whoops!
most chinese brands runs fine with linux, they use common of the shelf stuff. mainly aimed at south east asia market
Thanks for the review! A few years ago, I paid $225 for an N5000/4GB laptop + $40 for an SSD to install in it. It's amazing to see that less money can now buy a similar laptop with twice the RAM and a 50-60% more powerful processor.
Yes things have improved and good to see this pricing of $250.
the N100 should be 'a lot' faster when I do remember correctly. plus 8GB RAM does make it actually really usable. Have a N6000/4GB 2in1 (180 Euro) and it would be fast enough for a lot Office and "Inernet-things", just the RAM does limmits it.
N100+8GB does make it IMO very usabable and would be enough for a lot of usecases!
edit: meant it not about the 50-60% in the comment, meant it just compared to my N6000 and other devices I own with low powered chips. :)
Electronics always devalued in price over years
Thanks for the detailed review. I'm binge-watching several of your laptop reviews because I'm a teacher who does some lessons by Google Meet, and I've got to replace a broken laptop ASAP and my school has no budget for it. The only activity I do that challenges the computer's processing is presenting YT videos and Google Earth on Google Meet calls. It got laggy on the Chuwi Ubook I was using. Wondering if you could show some presenting in your reviews of this machine and others going forward.
Very cool laptop. The only turn off for me is the power button on keyboard. It's pretty easy to have problems on these keyboards and once it gets any short circuit or problem, the laptop becomes a paper weight with power button and it's hard to get replacement keyboards. Also, making work around on the keyboard power button is nearly impossible at the ribbon connector.
This reminds me of the jumper ezbook e pro i bought in 2018 because of your review. I still use it today and still functions well. Might upgrade to this. Thanks Chris!
Glad to hear it's still going strong those Jumper laptops were such good value for back then. With the power limit and heatsink mode ran well. This is a little like them due to the price point and what's on offer.
Chris, I bought the alldocube iPlay 40 pro tablet and Teclast F7 laptop years ago from your reviews and I have much paraise of you and your channel. Currently I'm searching for a tablet that can take the place of both these items and have come to an issue of too many options out there making it a difficult decision!!! Any help here is regarded highly and no need to worry about making a statement vs keeping a decision that may screw you if you help out!!!!! An Aussie fan 😊
The webcam looks better than some higher-end laptops and the IO is decent at this price point. It's the Dacia Duster of laptops lol. seems like an excellent day-to-day laptop for those who just need something to surf the net, watch videos, and attend classes. Not being special yet having all of these features makes it special in itself lol
I think somewhere in 2017 I had a 14 inch dell Vostro with an i7 dual core which cost somewhere around 800$ at the time.
As far as I can tell, this little laptop has the same performance, similar battery life and a better screen (same sRGB, but better brightness and resolution), for just 250$
Could be a good starter laptop for someone, who doesn't have money to spare, or maybe for a kid.
Slap linux on it and it would feel pretty good for a few years for sure.
I love the FULL size arrow keys!
Yes! None of the silly half sized up and down keys that I dislike.
That laptop is sure to increase your productivity. Thanks for this review.
Thanks for watching!
Thats actually a very solid deal for students or office workers. Battery life is the most critical for them, even a sata 3 speeds this will zip through word, excel, powerpoint, and acrobat. Nice big trackpad. Lightweight. This was built strictly for function, and most buyers vastly overspend for no benifit. 6 years from now it will still be capable of the same thing.
Had a Chuwi laptop a few years back but product design issues meant the device did not last as long as I hoped. Hopefully this model is better designed and built.
Thanks for the review as always Chris.
Love me some chinese cheap laptops. Alder Lake N is quite nice, shame intel decided to ship them only with support for a single ram channel; can't let the cheap stuff get too good!
I spent quite some time with Jasper Lake processors and fount that for those 15W was really high. If Alder Lake N behaves similarly i think 10w would have been a better fit for such a laptop. Maybe up to 15w for the 8 core model. Also the passive cooling was a nice bonus.
Battery life is quite poor got to say, even with 38Wh it's disappointing.
I'd like to see them start pushing for USB-C charging, we have been stuck in the barrel connector realm since the early Jumper days
Cheers
Yes clearly they can't have the bottom end chips being too good so crippled it somewhat with single channel only.
By jasper lake, are you referring to the N5100? If so, how did you increase the power limit to 15W? Mine only ever gone up to 10W
I tend to benefit more from core count rather than single core performance the way I use my computers. The N100 looks impressive and I heard an 8-core N300 is coming soon. I just hope Chuwi will refresh the original Aerobook soon. I prefer smaller laptops.
The N300 will be great if not too expensive. Something like 7th maybe 8th gen core i5 performance hopefully.
this kind of content is why i love your channel
More to come some affordable tech. Cheaper tablet and phone review in the works.
can't wait for the more affordable option, thanks for your review
Great review
Love your reviews mate
Thanks!
Hard to complain about the price. My parents need a laptop but use it once a week at most, so this pricing fits well. However, in the end, I bought a refurb three-year-old laptop for a similar price with more oomph.
@Techtables can i use this for visual studio coding, example java
and adobe illustrator as well?
currently a college student, need a budget laptop will this be enough?
For some reason the charger I got with this laptop doesn’t work
Hi, Chris! Can I ask you a favor? Is there a downloading in gta 5 if my processor is N100 Acer Intel Inside Laptop? Thank you for your help.
why did you use windows media player for the 4k test would have run it fine in media player classic or vlc player has they use hardware decoding
According to the posts on Chuwi's own forum you cannot use a PCIe SSD, only SATA. The PCIe lanes are not connected to the NVME slot.
I have the chuwi gemibook pro j4125 tdp 15w unlocked, should i change the laptop fot this? The screen is a shiit un this new chuwi because i have 2160*1440p and i have 12gb RAM
Was hoping you'd review this one as it looked like a Chuwi special - bargain basement but completely usable. I have a mini PC with this CPU and it's great for office tasks; scoring just a bit higher on Geekbench than this one.
Shame you didn't try it with an NVME SSD - would probably only be x1 speed, a chipset limitation, so not a deal faster than the SATA drive they've installed, but my Morefine M9 runs at x2, so it is possible to go faster.
Mainstream manufacturers are still selling N5095/5105 laptops, which are noticeably slower and less useful, so Chuwi have done well to hit this price point
Thanks, helped inform my decision to buy...and mine even sounds not too shabby.
Glad I could help!
Can it do spreadsheet work like several workbooks open?
I'll be better off buying an old refurbished high-end laptop than a cheap new one.
Thanks for the review, I loved it.
That's a wise move yes!
Nice Review, love it, can this unit do video editing? I do edit short videos so I was always waiting for your video editing reviews. Thank you.
Not really so well, very basic 1080p short edits with a lot of patience it can do. But 4k is too laggy.
For the video decoding for local files, should try checking task manager to see if its falling back to cpu decoding (maybe due to lack of hardware support for the encoding parameters used for the files).
If lav filters are used for video playback can check/try different modes from there as well as certain files only support hardware decoding with certain modes (quicksync/dx copyback/dx native etc)
Yes it should easily play those files with GPU decode fine with 24 Xe Cores. The Intel video decoder is very good.
Seems like a good laptop for travel, as of it gets stolen it's no great loss. But totally usable for most things whilst traveling.
Thanks for your detailed review! This thing is an absolute bargain. I've bought one for testing, as I'm wanting to purchase up to 10 for use for childrens' after school/half-term clubs running a variety of light-ish productivity software.
I'll probably install an custom Windows 10 iso on them to free up a bit of RAM usage, unless I find I can debloat Windows 11 enough to be comparable to an lightweight W10 install.
Cheers from sunny old England!
USB C charging should be a standard on these low wattage chips at this point, it would reduce unecessary extra chargers that can only be used with specific machines
UBS-C supremacy
Does Chuwi provide an option (BIOS or something) to revert the wattage to 6w? I need an ultra low wattage laptop. I don't care about GTA V, I'll only need it for Audacity.
my tip is to use Firefox (or forks of it) on devices like that ;)
Hi my name is nope and I am an tab addict.
I'm using a Tablet with Pentium Gold 6500y with 8GB, so a lot slower but with Firefox (addons noscript, ublock) I have about 200 tabs open/in the tab session manager.
edit: it's not easy to compare it seems, some benchmark sites do have benchmarks but for the Pentium Gold, older ones. I did assume because of 2 cores (4 threads) and it's way older 14nm it is a lot slower. When I did compare it with Silver N6000, and Silver N6000 with the N100 (which do have some tests with the same version) it seems to be not to much of a different.?
im still using a lenovo x270, looking to buy a new one, i can go for a refurb later gen of the line up but this laptop has me interested lol
Hello, which usb C HUB port can I adapt on this computer for rj45? THANKS
Anyone. Which can you recommend between this laptop and a Thinkpad t470s i7 6th gen?
Can you open and upgrade the ram?
Imo marketing this chip with "Alder Lake" or 12th gen is not quite true. While Intel N100 is technically of an Alder Lake generation, it lacks P-cores and is solely based on E-cores. Those E-cores are 4th gen Intel Atom microarchitecture (Gracemont), not related in any way to "big" Alder Lake microarch. (Golden Cove).
For the price however those are just fine and acceptable, I only have issue with the marketing.
I am surprised by how bad this fared in terms or performance. I can only hope that the mendocino amd stuff ends up similar in price, even with just 2 GPU cores it should perform adequate enough with at least video decoding
Thank you for the review!
I was by how bad 4k video playback was. Didn't expect that to be so choppy. But then 4k60 TH-cam with VP9 was fine!
Nice little machine for basic use - and putting the numbers in perspective: I paid around 900 € a few years back for a then new Core i5 5200u based machine, 8 GB RAM , and a 256 GB SATA SSD... And this here has double (!) the geek bench score... So for 249 US$? Not bad at all! 👍🏻 Sure: it's not upgradeable, not perfect as 8gb RAM is on the low side, but natively Win11 capable, with a low power consumption and good enough for the things most people need. Power users or gamers will look elsewhere anyways 😊
Exactly it's not bad at all when you factor in the price tag and what's on offer.
I just got my unit and overall I'm happy with it. However: When I plug in a NVME-SSD, it's not found. Has anyone actually tried plugging in an NVME-SSD and does it work?
Chubacca delivers ! 😀
What is the tape thing inside?
How about Linux on it? Wake on lan? Almost kinda make sense as homelab server node.
Forgot to mention Linux runs fine on it.
It would be okay for my banking only hardened laptop but I'm willing to spend more for more of an all rounder.
This laptop performs very similar to the laptop I'm currently working on which is a late '17 HP17 (17") with i5 8250U (8gb), except for the wifi card of course. (geekbench does 894 single core (=lower) but 2901 multicore (=higher)
That cost €800 back in nov. '17 (this includes 21% tax) and was considered a base laptop with good cpu (it also included a 256GB sata ssd which performs slightly better on the random read/writes but overall pretty much the same). The 14" model would have probably been ~€100 cheaper, so about €700 incl tax. The Chuwi Gemibook XPro costs here € 341 (incl tax), so about half that.
When you think of it, the HP loosing only about half it's value over 5.5 years compared to what a similar performing laptop costs now, its not too bad.
Hello, love your content.
Can you please recommend some great gaming laptops, the low and higher end ones.
No liability on you of course😂
Not really buying more gaming laptops sorry. Just so expensive.
How to on/off Backlit Keyboard !?
I am a programmer and should I buy this laptop for my work?
My computer use 8th low-cost CPU:Intel Pentium G5400, and the memory is a very low speed 16GB RAM:2 pieces of DDR4-2666 (1333MHz).
When I open 12 tabs on the browser at the same time, the maximum CPU usage is only 70%(max), and each tab is completed quickly, and the CPU usage will soon drop to 10%.
But when I set the maximum performance of the CPU to 50% in the Windows power management, the CPU operating frequency will be limited to 1.8GHz , and the operating frequency of the RAM has not changed. When I open 12 pages in the same way, I found the CPU you showed In the same situation as INTEL N100, each page will run for a long time, and the CPU will maintain 100% occupancy for a long time.
So I think that with the same working frequency, the efficiency of E-core is much lower than P-core, and it may need to be matched with P-core, or need more E-coer...such as N305(8 E-core)
Good inside, yes the e cores are very limited and clearly Intel didn't want to make it too powerful so they crippled it with single channel support only and low e-core turbos so limit this N100.
Is the WiFi card a replaceable PciE? Can't quite make it out. Some Amazon reviews say it's unreliable...
It's not. But soldered onto the motherboard
Quite affordable grate review.
It’s € 249 in Europe. But they have a special Valentine discount that brings the price down to about € 216 at the moment.
BTW other TH-cam channels praise the sound quality.
There's this nokia purebook s14 selling in India for 370 dollars approx for i5 10th gen.
in a different review they said it´s not possible to install an nvme drive
Does keyboard have lights
Just a heads up for anyone considering these cheap laptops! I got a T-Bao X8S Pro some time ago and quickly noticed the biggest weak point being the screen hinge screw down points which are cheap plastic. A reviewer won't encounter this issue as it will take some time to manifest!
shit i just ordered one
I thought your review was very well done. thanks
Thanks for watching!
Can you really upgrade to pcie 3.0 nvme? Cause some people say its sata only
Sorry it's marked PCIE/SATA on the motherboard but only Sata3 works! My fault.
You keep talking about the ssd speed but not the benefits of a ssd with like 2tb or 4tb witch will be good for people who have huge video or music or lite game libraries.
Do you think this Chuwi Gemibook would have better performance if it had 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of ROM?, or not?, given the Intel N100 processor? Are you saying it would have 10-15% more performance?
Yes it does I currently own and use that exact laptop
They do some good things for the price
They do yes.
The Gateway 14.1 exists. I purchased one for 279 in January and it's still working great. This chuwi laptop isn't even in the same ballpark guys
This Chuwi laptop is 2x better then the gateway 14.1
will it ChromeFlex?
Ram - single or dual channel?
I don't know about ChromeOS flex (I do have a laptop that runs it, but it's an N5100), but I can tell you it's single channel RAM
Tell me something a laptop that cost a 700 euros or dollars wilh have a similar battery time.. How is that a cons?
dude for 700 euros most laptop will have better battery time
It looks nice, but I had a gemibook pro and after about a year the paint was completely ruined around the trackpad and the battery inflated raising the trackpad and keyboard... microsd reader stopped working quickly, and that barrel charger urgh... so overall 280€ for 1 year was terrible value and I'd rather pay 600-700 for a lenovo and keep it 4-5 years tbh.
Now, this is techtablets.
Can you upgrade the ram?
Unfortunately not.
Unfortunately one big downside of Chuwi is that there's no support whatsoever; the only things they offer is these answers for any issues:
- "the device is working normal".
- "reinstall the Windows".
- no answer.
They also dont offer any software/app for any of their device functionality, and no - they dont offer any BIOS update or drivers.
So at best, what you get in the 1st day is what you'll have all the time, if things dont get worse.
Weirdly, if you reinstall Windows on a GemiBook XPro you'll lose 80% of the gaming/heavy application performance.. even after installing all drivers including those they provide on their forums, and overwrite each respective one with the absolute latest version. I did a ton of debugging but can't find the difference, must be something hidden they embed from the factory, my gut js it's CPU governor related
Never reinstall, resist the urge to run a clean OS on your own terms, until someone figures it out, you'll already see the "worst" (far below mark) scores in an UserBenchmark
14:11
Chrome is not totally closed in the task manager
Where can i find its fan replacement. Chuwi's parts where too rare to find...
Have you tried AliExpress?
Thank you. Accept my greetings. Is it suitable for office work?
Yes as shown okay for light office work.
@@Techtablets Thank you my dear
That's actually a good value.
It is yes.
Can i use it for programming and blender??
Light tasks yes but it's very low end not powerful. Blender will lag big time.
24w ? Why not just build in a standard Type C charger. Lots of phone chargers could power this.
Does Chuwi make laptops powerful enough to do coding and programming?
The N100 in this laptop - paired with 16GB of ram - is more than enough. It keeps pace with an Intel 3770k - and I coded professionally on one of those with a SATA drive for 10 years. I have a Beelink mini PC with this N100 chip and 16GB of ram and Win11 Pro - I've frankly been astonished with it's performance for the price.
Do these machines fail after a year?
no, after 1.5 years.
470 dollars here 😢 wondering if Teclast has similar but cheaper...
But wait, without jokes, the keyboard looks very handy. Big up and down arrow keys, a row of navigation keys - home end page up page down. Why they not do the same for more expensive laptops trying to copy Apple design instead? Damn!
Chuwi needs to do something with their logo and placement
They could replace it with a big furry looking creature, though, I doubt Disney would allow it. 😅
Can crome os flex run on this laptop?
If Linux ran then it should yes.
ANYONE know if this Laptop will pass the specs for most work from home/remote jobs?
Microsoft word? Photoshop artwork? Digital audio workstation? Engineering simulation? Architecture drawing?
Been waiting for your review, I know it's gonna happen and now I know what they sacrificed to get that $249 price point.
TechTablets Thanks Much !.......
I would buy it if they had a version with 16GB RAM.
Great product as a side laptop
Look at how much empty space is in the laptop! Chuwi could easily add there RAM slots for upgrade, second ssd slot or make this into battery beast with even bigger battery
Larger battery would have been better 38wh is small.
Its honestly fine. Its better then a 3rd gen mobile i5 or about as fast a quadcore mobile 3rd gen i7. Not bad at all, for the price as these machines are still "relevant"
Yes I think they are. Still shame how Intel capped them with single channel ram only.
Sometimes I think I just want to buy one so I can say I own a CHUWI
& put a Chewbacca sticker on it ;D
Please review Mi Notebook 13 OLED
Sorry not plans to buy it.
so if you get 5 hrs i think test done with 50% brightness so 6wx5hrs = 30watt and total watt is 38watt . Then with a 27000 mah power bank you can get up to lets say another 15 hours of battery for 50 backs meaning you will have 20 hrs of battery not bad for 250+50=300bucks
However its strange to me that it consumes 6 watt an hour when my gaming laptop consumes 7 watt and hour with my configuration. no offense bro but how exactly did you test battery life
TH-cam streaming, docs, google drive uploads of video, emails stuff like that.
@@Techtablets With a brightness of ? I am asking because this is a cpu that consumes only 6 watts and i thought it could do even more hours on idle / reading mode of ms office or pdf?
Hi, can i ask you a question?
I bought a new GemiBook X Pro. When I turn on the computer, I have to push the power button for 4-5 seconds. Is the power button not sensitive? Do I need to change a new computer? Thanks 🙏
Same thing here, I guess it's so you don't accidentally push power button off while typing. Guilty of doing it a lot on some laptops, ESPECIALLY if it has a little bitty backspace button (this keyboard layout is great including FULL SIZE backspace and arrow keys).
Same problem like with my Chuwi LapBook 14: no charging via USB and horrible battery runtime from the start. With my Chuwi, however, it also came with extremely bad Bluetooth performance, oh, and the battery now is totally flat, hence usage with power brick being mandatory! So, watch out with those Chinese low-level brands! And with my model only having 4 GB RAM, Linux is the way to go.
With Windows being slow on lower-level hardware, you are even better off with Chromebooks at that price point if you can use them for your workflow or have Linux on it if you are not totally dependent on Windows stuff.
It's odd because other models have full spex type c with pd support. The battery life is poor yes 4 hours and only light tasks. Linus does run well on it.
@@Techtablets poor linus… has to now run on a computer 😂😂😂😂😂
They fooled me too.
I bought a 2 in 1 on amazon germany a few years ago. Initially, I accepted the minor flaws since it was cheap, but a few months in the problems just kept piling up. The audio jack was unusable due to coil whine, the touch screen malfunctioned and it would turn itself on/off at random.
When filing a warranty claim they wouldnt send me a package label, so I had to pay 35€ for shipping it to spain. After it had arrived it took them 6 weeks to answer my inquiries. They then refused to fulfill the warranty and started straight up lying.
After that Ive had enough, but those scammers first wanted another 35€ so they would send me back my device.
In the end I complained to amazon directly and after half an hour on the phone I got a refund and return label.
This and a similar experience with another chinese electronics manufacturer forever healed me from my greed.
Buy local or from a reputable vendor to save yourself from ever having to directly deal with a chinese manufacturers warranty departement directly.
THis is basically a NUC with a display, a keyboard and a battery :)
I will buy if it has a extra free SO DIMM. I don't mind only 4 core but 8GB is too little these days😊
Oh, no. After your great test Chuwi up price for 20 $ 🤑
A pity they went for the plastic case solution, as Jumper Tech proved (e.g. the EZBook X3 air or the EXBook 3 pro) that for the same price a full metal case is possible.
Those where the good days of cheaper notebooks! Jumpers metal clade ones we could increase power limits on.
@@Techtablets It's not that long ago. The X3 Air came in 2020 on the Market, and my Z3 Pro from 2017 is still running strong, with good battery time and decent power for browsing the Internet, watching movies and doing office work under Win10
Sadly I think Jumper isn't around anymore. I would love to see a new Jumper EZbook with the N100.
@@Techtablets Oh, I didn't know that. It has always been a hassle to get Info contact with them, sold their stuff over Banggood, etc, no real webpage.
If they made it $349 but spec'd it with 16gb ram, an n300 and a fully functional usb c port then i bet it would be popular. Also the lower battery life is probably due to windows 11, i switched my alder lake laptop to windows 10 and now get 1.5-2 hours more battery life
What's the total battery life with Windows 10 when doing light tasks?
they cannot make a $350 full laptop with a n300, since that chip alone is $309 for manufacturers. think a little before you make such idiotic comments, it's an electronic device, not a bag of potatoes.