Chuwi Announces The LapBook 12.3 With 3:2 267 PPI Display
by Brett Howse on April 8, 2017 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Apollo Lake
- Chuwi
Chuwi is a relatively unknown company in the PC space, but only about a month ago we took a look at the Chuwi LapBook 14.1, and came away very impressed. They are shaking up the low-cost segment of the PC market with some low cost, but well featured devices. The LapBook 14.1, for instance, ships with a 1920x1080 IPS display, 4 GB of RAM, and 64 GB of storage, all for less than $300 USD. Normally when you see notebooks around these price points, they come with several serious compromises which really detract from the experience, but the LapBook 14.1 made some great trade-offs to offer a good machine for a low price.
Today Chuwi reached out with some news that they are going to be releasing the LapBook 12.3 at the end of April. It features the same CPU as the LapBook 14.1, with an Intel Celeron N3450, which is a quad-core Apollo Lake. Performance is not as good as a Core based laptop, but the experience is reasonable for less demanding tasks. Chuwi is pairing this with 6 GB of RAM, and 64 GB of eMMC flash storage, so the experience should be similar to the LapBook 14.1, but with more RAM so you can multitask a bit more. They are also keeping the 802.11ac Wi-Fi, which is probably the same 1x1 card found in the larger LapBook.
Probably the most interesting part of the LapBook 12.3 is that it is shipping with a 2736x1824 3:2 display at 12.3-inches. That gives a density of 267 pixels per inch, and eagle-eyed readers might have noticed that this is the same resolution and size as the display in the Surface Pro 4, so it is likely the same panel that Microsoft is using in their tablet. Chuwi didn’t confirm if it was an IPS display, but it most likely is. It's similar to their Hi 13 2-in-1 which uses a 3000x2000 13.5-inch display, so they are clearly using Microsoft's influence to source components which is great to see.
| Chuwi LapBook 12.3 | |
| CPU | Intel Celeron N3450 4C/4T 1.1-2.2 GHz 2MB L2 Cache 6W TDP |
| GPU | Intel HD Graphics 500 12 Execution Units (Gen 9) 200-700 MHz |
| Memory | 6 GB Dual-Channel |
| Display | 12.3" 2736x1824 3:2 Aspect Ratio |
| Storage | 64 GB eMMC |
| Dimensions | 300 x 223 x 16.7 mm 11.8 x 8.78 x 0.66 inches |
| Weight | 1.45 kg / 3.18 lbs |
| Wireless | 802.11ac |
| Launch | April 30, 2017 |
| Price | TBD |
The new LapBook 12.3 measures in at 300 x 223 x 16.7 mm (11.8 x 8.78 x 0.66 inches), and weighs in at 1.45 kg (3.18 lbs), so despite the small and thin design, it’s not as light as a more expensive Ultrabook would be at this size.
Chuwi hasn’t announced pricing yet, but considering the rest of their lineup, it should be very competitive.
Look for the LapBook 12.3 when it launches at the end of April.
Source: Chuwi
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watersb - Sunday, May 7, 2017 - link
I refurbish obsolete laptops for a tedious hobby, and I have seen that device longevity is determined by RAM capacity, more than processing speed.Now that the industry is moving away from sockets and parts, I would buy the most RAM I could afford. It takes far *more* computing expertise to use older kit. I can't give the old stuff away. Unless it has enough RAM to look familiar.
webdoctors - Sunday, April 9, 2017 - link
Looks like these support Ubuntu:http://forum.chuwi.com/thread-3571-1-1.html
Looks like I have my next laptop picked out!
damianrobertjones - Sunday, April 9, 2017 - link
"64 GB eMMC"Well... At least it's not 16GB! I hope it has an SDCard slot otherwise the new Win 10 builds are going to push things slightly.
Visual - Monday, April 10, 2017 - link
They probably do (a lot of other cheap Chineze tablets and laptops do) but it's still not a good substitute to enough internal storage. The ones I've tried did 10MB/s writes, with Samsung cards that advertised being able to do 20MB/s. I can't be 100% sure it's the cardreader's fault and not the card's fault, as I didn't have any of the expensive Pro cards that advertise 60-90MB/s, but you'd do well to keep a grain of skepticism about the reader until you find some reviews showing it's good.Still, there is some hope. The tablets that I've dealt with were from the previous generation, right before USB 3.0 speeds (tho 20M/s should have been easy even if they used 2.0 connection). Maybe things will improve on this generation.
BrokenCrayons - Monday, April 10, 2017 - link
Chuwi's doing some good things. I hope the company becomes a disruptive force in the laptop market in the US. A 12 inch notebook is more in line with what I'd be interested in purchasing and the specs are good except for one minor quibble. I know it's a primary selling point of the product, but I don't really care for the high screen resolution. It's not necessary for the work I would expect to perform so it seems like it'd be unnecessary. If its possible to run the panel at half resolution like say 1368x912, then it'd mitigate some of the problems, but I just don't see a need to drive that many pixels with a relatively weak iGPU.