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.
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.
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.
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.
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. But
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.
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.
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 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 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-...
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.
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 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.)
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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").
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
[0]: https://techtablets.com/chuwi-lapbook-14-1/review/
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.
Absolutely. Any 2-3 gen old ThinkPad or Elitebook will outlast this and perform lot better.
I bought a tablet from this brand few years back. Screen edges were non responsive to touch within months.
my chuwi tablet had the eMMC suddenly die, it disappeared from the point of view of any software, kernel or uefi.
the brand is trash.
What decent secondhand thing can you find at $350.
It is being thrown away in the first place for a reason.
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.
HP EliteBook 840 G10
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.
This laptop has a 10” screen, weighs 900 grams and runs an efficient N100 cpu.
Different category to a 15” 2kg cheap 5 year old dell.
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 :(
Here's my notes on the device from last year with various setup tips https://muxup.com/2025q2/chuwi-minibook-x-n150
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. But
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.
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.
The GDP devices are amazing except for the keyboard, which is some fever dream layout I've never been able to understand. https://img.website.xin/contents/sitefiles3601/18006016/imag...
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.
I would love something that you can open and it expands/pops out a split keyboard like the Voyager (https://www.zsa.io/voyager)
Hey I also have the pocket 4, the screen rotation issue should be fixed soon (slash already fixed): https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/41036
The specs on this thing look pretty great. Which part do you find insufficient?
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 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.
https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/03/9f923860-4b47-11e4-b6...
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-...
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.
Stuff like this that I’ve really enjoyed has gotten permanent AC or portable power.
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.
Modern laptops either have an LTE modem integrated into the general wireless chip, or have a short m.2 slot for a modem card.
My T14 has even a dedicated slot for a SIM card.
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.)
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.
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype-m...
What I wouldn't give for this machine with a thinkpad keyboard
This vs Dells new XPS 13? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48351808
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.
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?
Why must he say Hackers is a classic film. It was a pivotal part of my life. I'm not even that old
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.
You (we) are old :)
I have a Chuwi Lark Box from a few years ago. The volume less than my fist, it's great for doing occasional Windows stuff.
What's the problem with 2K 50Hz screen? Too high resolution?
Lots of 15.6" Windows laptops come with 1080p screen which is painful to look at.
50Hz is a weird refresh rate. Even back to the 80s (and before?) PCs have been 60Hz at a bare minimum.
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.
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.
The original black and white NTSC was 30/60 Hz but was changed to 29.97 fps in order to be backwards compatible with black and white TVs.
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.
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.
Certainly seems too high for that screen size. But probably not fatal
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.
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.
16GB ram is cool though.
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.
It looks nice but I feel like a bear riding a tiny unicycle using these kinds of computers.
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.
Dump the desktop. Switch your login shell to emacs and you have an overpowered WritersBook that’ll fit in a coat pocket.
I'll take my gpd pocket 4 over this for sure, though funnily enough it has essentially the same screen problem.
> Keyboard is terrible – it only registers keystrokes when you hit the exact center of each key.
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 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.
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").
HP used to have extremely small laptops in the early 90s, specifically the omnibook 300
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_OmniBook
> 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.
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.
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...
Did you also have the screen rotation issue? Curious to know what's causing that.
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.
Yes, I did, and the reason is super straightforward: It's a hardware portrait panel, mounted sideways.
Getting from zero to a fully working OS was a mild journey, but I'd do it again.
Somewhat common with Chuwi and GPD's netbook type devices. IIRC it's because they repurpose tablet screens
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.
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.
The Crash Override boot up screen tho. HACK THE PLANET!
Netbooks aren't dead, they're just called Chromebooks now
Chromebooks aren't netbooks.
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 run my desktop OS on my Chromebook (boring Debian) and use it like a normal computer. All the ports (HDMI, usb) and so.
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
The new procedure is boot without the battery connected to enable writing to flash.
If they're still allowing that it seems fine
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).
> 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?
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.
> 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.
>But I guess "normal computer" means "windows" to you
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.
> A modern chromebook with Crostini can run basically any Linux desktop stack you want.
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).
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.
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.
So replace the OS: https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/
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.
I have a matte black Pixelbook Go running PopOS and i love it.
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
>So replace the OS: https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/
How's the Windows support with this flow?
Which windows program are you looking for, specifically?
>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.
Depends on the device (for both Linux and Windows): https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/docs/faq.html#will-my-device-r...
For a list of devices: https://docs.chrultrabook.com/docs/devices.html
where can i pick one up thats reputable?
Apple. Or, what do you mean by one?
Bummer that it has a fan
Are the specifications listed in the article reliable? It's difficult to trust them, considering Chuwi has a history of misrepresenting CPU specifications.
The author's benchmarks are listed in the article.
Excuse me. I trust that.