Review on 💻 CHUWI CoreBook Pro Windows 10 Home Laptop: 13” FHD 2K IPS Display, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Intel Core i3-6157U Processor | Gray by Mason Gordon

Perhaps this review can help a certain group of people who may be interested in these CHUWI laptops. I have had a customized Lenovo 100S Chromebook running GalliumOS (Linux) for several years. Neat, useful, little all-rounder. Great battery life but pretty weak on specs, especially RAM @ 2GB. I wanted a new laptop that could: 1) smoothly run any "major" Linux distro without much fuss, 2) have reasonable RAM/CPU specs, 3) have a display larger than 1366x768, 4) have a display larger than 1366x768 x864 architecture) get the lowest possible price. I find these CHUWI laptops pretty unique these days for ticking those boxes. It's been a few years since I bought a new non-Chromebook laptop. My first attempt with an ASUS Zenbook, equipped with a good display, Ryzen 5 processor of the 4000 series and NVIDIA graphics, ended in disaster. A simple lid on standby in 2021 when Linux just isn't possible on this computer. What major manufacturers have done to disable many of their latest machines in terms of limiting firmware-based power/standby options (S3 vs. S0ix "Modern Standby") is a crime. Not everyone wants to run Windows 10! There is a technical rabbit hole I don't want to go down. When I saw that these CHUWI devices are supposed to be very Linux friendly, I had to give it a try. Last month I had two CHUWIs to evaluate. I ordered a CoreBook Pro after returning a similar GemiBook that had intermittent display issues. I don't know what the problem was with the GemiBook, but it definitely wasn't happy with some video modes. Impressions of the CHUWI CoreBook Pro Very reasonable build quality, especially considering the price. Sturdy body, keyboard feels decent enough. This display is a REAL DEAL. Nothing comes close for the price, which is twice the price of other CHUWI. However, my display had quite a bit of glare in the dark, but at all other times it was just IMPRESSIVE and VERY beautiful. Running partial scaling in KDE gives you a modern yet traditional desktop environment, which is fine. Spent enough time in Windows to image the computer and find the right Linux distribution for light to moderate computing tasks. No gaming, media creation and the like. I liked the small, slim GemiBook power supply. The CoreBook Pro 19V/3.42A Dual Charger cable is longer, but overall quite long. This power plug is tiny and must be damaged. Running KDE Neon for 4 to 5 hours, which suits my needs. Others may require more working time. So far I haven't had any performance problems. Pretty quick and quick. An issue that almost made me return the CoreBook Pro was also fixed after some tweaks to the settings in KDE Plasma. For some reason, I was getting repeated/ghost keystrokes and input device lag, which impacted the user experience. The keyboard and touchpad appear to be finicky devices and/or are currently not optimally supported in the Linux world. The trackpad also stopped working when the keyboard went haywire. This behavior was consistent regardless of the distribution used. I was so disappointed because I felt it was close to the ideal device for the price. In the KDE Plasma settings, the following seems to have completely fixed my input device issues. Hardware > input devices > keyboard, 250 ms latency and 4 repetitions/sec. Hardware > Input Devices > Touchpad, disable when typing. The camera isn't as terrible as I thought, there will be some reports. The speakers are, well, they're pretty bad. I'll probably add one of the EMTEC X250 M.2 SATA drives and be done with that. I think a Bluetooth mouse will share that USB. All in all, for the $338 I paid, I'd happily recommend the CoreBook Pro. It's a quirky little device and is exactly what I was looking for. TL; DR: Wanted a small laptop with decent specs (> Chromebook) to run a standard Linux based distro. Returned a GemiBook with video issues for the CoreBook Pro. Running KDE Neon is REALLY GOOD with some minor input device tweaks. 4-5 hours of use, comfortable backlit keyboard, AWESOME screen. I'm very happy so far.