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.
I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use.
But then, if you're travelling on holiday, do you really want serious use? I like your rationale of taking something that's bad enough that you won't want to use it but you have something if you really need it even if it didn't quite work out that way for you.
And, apart from theft, and depending on where I'm travelling, maybe a cheap device that I don't mind the authorities rifling through the storage of wouldn't be such a bad thing. Like I don't necessarily want $RANDOM_CUSTOMS_PERSON_IN_SOME_COUNTRY to have access to my bank statements, account details, or to get into my social media accounts, or whatever.
And it would be nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff if the machine did get stolen (sure, the drive on my main laptop is encrypted, but physical access is always a massive force multiplier when trying to gain access to a system or its contents).
> the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad
I don't have the same problems with my model, possibly theirs is bad. I don't like that the keyboard is teeny and in the ANSI layout but I got used to it.
The trackpad isn't great but that's just yet another reason to avoid using the mouse and do everything with the keyboard.
That being said, I would never use it for fulltime use. I'm not even using it to type this message even though it's right next to me. I use it while travelling and it remains off at all other times.
I've been to a lot of countries (and thus through a lot of customs agents), the most they ever ask me to do, if anything at all, is turn the laptop on. I think the point is they want to make sure it's an actual laptop and not just a shell hiding something else. I've never had an agent touch my machine or show any interest in doing so, and I say that as someone who gets the extra searches often because I carry a lot of odd looking parts and small tools for work. Just pointing that out because I think the paranoia about what customs agents are allowed to do is a bit overblown unless you're suspected of smuggling or transporting something nefarious. They're not interested in what's on your laptop until you give them a reason to be.
I almost got denied boarding for a EU -> US flight ~13 years ago because the TSA agent at the gate noticed my 2011 MBP had 2 screws missing on the bottom panel (I've opened it up a bunch of times and lost some screws in the process). It didn't convince them that I turned it on and logged in etc. They still had doubts because, apparently, missing screws on a macbook was unheard of.. in the end, they held up the plane for ~10 mins due to waiting for a go/no-go decision via phone from some decision maker at the airline (as the final call was apparently theirs to make for some reason). Luckily, they were OK with missing screws and I was let on board.
I think it probably depends where you're going. We have relatives in a country where it might be a bit more of a concern, and we did briefly research taking a trip there to visit them, which is when all of this came up. In the end, for a variety of reasons, we decided it was going to be too risky to take that trip unless and until conditions change.
There are many countries where I wouldn't be at all worried about that, but I'd still be concerned about the possibility of theft (which, let's be real, can happen anywhere: I went on a trip to Switzerland once - generally considered very safe and low crime - where somebody had their laptop stolen from their room).
> "I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use."
Me too. But the tray table compatibility resonates. I had hoped someone would build a modern netbook as a detachable focused on productivity and light gaming (say, Steamdeck class), maintainability and (modular) expandability; a modern road warrior that's also a nice hobbyist machine that stands some abuse. Framework was/is positioned to put something out, but they decided to release the F-12 instead.
I mean for the price I can get used thinkpads (and replace the battery if needed) and not have to deal with the crappy parts - I only have to deal with older parts.
My solution for this use case is a used Thinkpad X270. Unreal battery life and adequate performance. Got mine in like-new condition a couple years ago for $90. It's a fine substitute for factory-spec e-waste. Mine has the cheapo screen, but it was a cheap laptop so whatever. I don't get the author's complaint about the "2K" (whatever that is) display. Cheap laptop has a cheap screen, oh the humanity!
Oh man. I have a ThinkPad L14 as my personal, beater, okay to take on the plane to Japan or whatever machine. And I hate it because it's too big. But I'm also hooked on it because it has pretty decent performance, excellent battery life with the third party battery I put in it, acceptable keyboard, acceptable trackpad.
I read this review with mounting excitement until I got to the part about the things he doesn't like. And yeah, those things would drive me up the wall too.
Although it might be fine if that touchy keyboard works well for touch typists. For me, that's everything.
I just tested and yes - if I press the exact corner of the key with a pencil then it doesn't register correctly. Everywhere else seems absolutely fine and given how small the keys are I genuinely wasn't able to recreate this with my finger. In order to actually press the key I have to push down on enough of the key for it to register.
I feel spoiled because the train table on my train of choice fits my 16in Macbook , almost like it was made with the sole purpose of carrying this laptop on it
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.
As someone who always favors the smaller laptops that don't require me to gear up an entire backpack just to do a bit of work on the go, I'd argue that the difference between a 10" and 13" screen is not nearly as much as it sounds. I've found the Dell XPS 13's to be an excellent choice for stowing in my service bag so I have a small-but-functional machine on a job site. That and the Dell XPS 13 just has better hardware all around, when stood up against the Chuwi.
15", sure, that's a bit big, but smaller models are available.
The thing about a diagonal measurement is it doesn't tell you if it's going to fit on a shitty airline tray table or not. Some laptops with a larger diagonal measurement are not too deep. Others are way too deep.
"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.
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.
I really liked the 12" MacBook (although my all time favourite computer was the 12" PowerBook G4 - chunky by today's standards but I just loved it).
I saw a review of the MacBook Neo where the reviewer was yearning after the 12" - but suggested that Apple has made UI elements so big with such ridiculous spacing and border radius that it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13".
Which would not surprise me in the least - I struggle with my 16" MBP and this crappy UI "framework".
> it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13"
Native resolution on a 13" MacBook Air is already pretty unusable. Out of the box, the 13" MacBook Air (physical screen resolution 2560x1664) is configured with display scaling so that the “looks like” resolution is 1470x956 (i.e., macOS renders everything at 2x1470x956 – 2940x1912 – and then scales it down to match the display for output). If you dial the “looks like” resolution down to 1280x832 (so that the rendering resolution matches the output resolution; because, say, you prefer that every UI element not be a little bit blurry from being scaled down), you'll find yourself unbelievably short (ha) on vertical resolution. You basically have to turn dock hiding on. Even then, fixed-position headers are very common on websites these days, so between that and browser chrome, you'll often find that actual webpage content is crammed into the bottom half of the display.
gotta have dock hiding & menu bar hiding & compact toolbar/tab settings for browser. only 80-90px of wasted height. The rest is web view. I can't think of any website I frequent having that fixed-position header either, so I'm gucci.
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.
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.
Legion Go (1st Gen with the removable controllers) would be better. Without the controllers, it's basically a 8.8 inch PC tablet. Would be a great portable machine. With an added bonus of the controllers converting to a desktop mouse.
I so wanted to love the Steam Deck, but it's a device with a 7 inch screen that occupies a massive volume on your bag. Unless you know you're going to play a fair ammount, it's not worth carrying around.
It's a fantastic console, but a mediocre general purpose computer.
A Steam Deck is a bit more lumpy than the Minibook. I find it a lot easier to put my Minibook into a rucksack as it's thin, so it can just slide between stuff. The Steam Deck is quite a lot bigger, though I often take both on holiday as they fill different needs.
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.
I was running gentoo on a 2011 Macbook Air for years with no problems. These computers are more than fast enough to compile and run code. They aren't going to by my first choice for reencoding video or running a build server, but for local development you really don't need a lot unless you're working on the type of stuff that really actually requires special or very powerful hardware.
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.
Agreed here, with prices for used x1s its a no brainer. Although I get the appeal of super small and lightweight devices and even had eee pc way back, but started having insane headaches after working with small screens, so guess its just not for me.
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.
Sounds like you got a lemon. I also have an X1 carbon, and it's been a great upgrade for me. My biggest complaint is the eraser isn't as easy to use as my old toshiba. The eraser is important to me -- my hand gets numb using a trackpad.
If it was running Windows - no wonder, Windows is horrible at constantly writing … something to disk, and eMMC's are not high endurance devices. The flash itself had nothing to do with Chuwi and was most likely manufactured by either SanDisk or Kingston, it would have failed likewise in ASUS/Lenovo/whoever else made those crap Intel Atom + 4 GB RAM + 64 GB eMMC devices.
Battery can be an issue though. In particular, replacement batteries can be a PITA to get if the model gets discontinued or parts are only available through corporate channels.
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.
I'm owner of this laptop - great device for home bed/couch use and traveling, which is easy to take and feels not risky in terms of potential damage or lost.
The screen isn't terrible. Frequency can be easily overclocked from 50 to 80Hz, making the manufacturer's decision quite odd. Good brightness, and after calibration, the colors are even somewhat normal.
In my case, the keyboard works reliably and isn't annoying, although it does take a little getting used to due to the smaller key size.
Only one thing that frustrates me - they cost-cutted on the battery controller. The OS only receives information about the battery voltage, without details on consumption/cycles/Ah. The consumption is hard-coded, which means the battery life estimate is never nearly accurate.
And yeah, terible touchpad but it's not that bad when you have touchscreen.
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!
Yeah, in particular it looks like the complaint was about having to hit the center of the keys exactly, which seems quite bad.
I’ll learn a weird layout for a netbook, some compromise is expected to get the small size (side note: I think “unfamiliar layout” issues are over-represented in reviews because they usually describe the reviewer’s experience when they are first getting used to the device, I get used to a layout in the medium term anyway and then it isn’t really a problem anymore (side side note: we should separate out the concepts of unfamiliar and bad layouts, they are different things, the former is overcome over time, the latter gives you repetitive stain injuries over time)).
Having the nail the keys in the middle, though, is just a sign of poor keyboard design. That probably won’t be overcome, if anything it is a sign of bad build quality and will probably get worse over time.
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-...
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.
Not quite the same thing, but you can build a similar thing to run linux relatively easily, and the keyboards can be really good that way. You can swap out the SBC for one of your choice eg. https://www.lattepanda.com/lattepanda-iota (why don't AMD do small SBCs?)
and cut a space on the left/right hand side for a trackpoint/optical trackpad (operate from the side)
I have one, and I love it! I don't use it as much as I thought I would, but it brings joy everytime. If you have a need for an extremely portable, not very powerful device on your life, this might be it.
I agree with the complaint about the trackpad, but the keyboard has been just fine for me. Just a bit small, of course. I also find the screen perfectly acceptable for what I use this thing for: youtube, taking notes, writing emails, small bouts of coding and ssh'ing into servers.
My main complaint is related to battery management. May be it's becaused I'm used to Macbooks, but it drives me nuts to go pick the Minibook up and find that it has no power, because I haven't used it in a couple of days and I put it to sleep. I haven't measured, but the power use on sleep is noticeable, and I suspect the leakage while hibernating might be significant too.
I don't really like the laptop form factor. Laptops are the perfect solution for only one use case: using them on your lap. On a table, I'd rather have the computer be just a tablet, to add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. At my desk, with bigger screens, I'd like the computer to disappear into a small puck or box, like a Mac Mini. With the Minibook, being so small, the form factor makes sense again. It's so portable, so easy to take with me to a coffee shop or on a trip, it's worth it.
A tablet with a keyboard might be a more practical solution, although generally more expensive, but I appreciate that my Minibook runs Linux so well, so I don't have to even think about Apple or Google telling me how to use my computer.
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.
Man, I bought a 10" atom Toshiba netbook in 2010 when I found out I was accepted to study abroad. It had 2gb memory and came with Windows XP (even though Vista was the latest).
I had to close everything on the OS just to watch a youtube video at <720p without stuttering. I ended up putting Debian on it which lead to me learning Linux and Ruby on Rails, and booting the dev server (rails server) would take minutes on a hello world.
When I got my first job out of uni, they gave me a Macbook Air, and it was so fast that I felt bad thinking about how much time I wasted waiting for things to happen on that netbook.
17 years later, in my late 30s, I don't think I could go back to such a small screen. But it was cool doing real work on something so small.
Watch out guys, Chinese manufacturer CHUWI was found to be involved in a mislabeling scandal that involved its CoreBook X and CoreBook Plus laptops. The company advertised these laptops as having the AMD Ryzen 5 7430U CPU, but in reality, they used the older Ryzen 5 5500U CPU.
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.
That's fair; the keyboard layouts are definitely an acquired taste. Not that I've quite acquired said taste myself... but for devices that I mainly use when traveling, I just don't particularly care that much. It'd probably be more of an issue if I was using one of them as my daily driver - but I still very much prefer my workstation at home for that.
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 only started using GPD products with the Pocket 4, so unfortunately I can't speak to your experience with the Pocket 2. I certainly hope the battery doesn't degrade that fast on their newer models...
The only thing I can say is that they seem to have significantly improved the thermals; IME, the Pocket 4 only gets moderately warm to the touch during full CPU load, and that's even with the quiet fan mode.
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.)
Depends on what you're doing I suppose? I'm able to work on Zig with both of the devices I mentioned. Of course I'm limiting the test cases to the subset that's actually relevant to the area or target I'm working on. But that would be the case on a beefy full-size laptop too; even there, the full Zig test suite would take many hours and murder the battery in the process.
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 :(
When you look at each dimension in isolation, the difference is fairly small. But the 12” is 60% of the volume and 75% of the weight of the Neo. It’s significantly more portable by these metrics.
I just unpacked my eee PC from college after a move. 8gb of RAM and can barely run a very stripped down version of windows 7. Just the thought of writing my final year project on that little machine again is giving me RSI.
I'll stick with my 13" MBP going forward. Netbooks served a purpose but I'm not sure they make much sense anymore
> 8gb of RAM and can barely run a very stripped down version of windows 7
Not sure what you're doing, but Win7 itself uses 1 GB of RAM or less. Even just 2 GB of total system RAM was enough for basic usage, like document editing and single-tab web browsing.
I feel the same way. I had a eee and later a Samsung netbook, but eventually ordinary laptops got light enough that a netbook is now just a laptop with a smaller screen. I'll always have a soft spot for them, but I doubt I'll use one again as a daily driver.
The article immediately makes me think of my PineBook Pro. Blinded by its $300 price tag and "Arm Inside(tm)", I jumped the gun at the second batch in early 2021. The display panel is shit. The keyboard is shit. The trackpad is shit. The webcam is shit. The speaker output is shit. The various hardware bugs are shit. The overall performance is shit. But, finally, after many years of changes and back-and-forth with the Linux kernel, the SoC and platform is finally-well supported, and it gets the simple jobs done.
I’ve heard the keyboards were hit and miss, from shit to halfway decent. I got one I consider halfway decent. It’s pretty good, really, for what the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro were meant to be. I’ve never tried the webcam. The rest of the parts are pretty bad compared to most laptops, but for a super early ARM-powered laptop at its price point I’m still glad to have this little curiosity.
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.
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.
Apple hasn't provided a security update in years, let alone a proper MacOS release. But just about any modern amd64 Linux distro works out of the box on these machines. With a few small tweaks battery life is decent as well.
As for size and dimensions, the difference is under 200 grams, with the MBA being smaller than the 2009-ish era netbooks the blog post compares the Minibook to. Everything is a matter of trade offs.
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.
For on-the-go compute I am using a 2017 12-inch Macbook (AS1534). This is a lesser known model, it was simply called "12 inch MacBook" (not air or pro) [0].
It has the aluminium body, it is ridiculously thin (3,5mm thinnest point, 13mm thickest point, feet included), it weighs just 920 gram. It charges via USB-C. It has a very good 2304 × 1440 (16∶10) IPS "retina" screen.
I run mine with MacOS/Linux dual boot, I charge it using my phone charger. It keep it in my go-bag at all times. I never have to worry being without it.
What to love:
- Super small, yet very sturdy.
- Can be found for relatively cheap (I paid €300 for mine 2 years ago)
- Really nice screen.
- Keyboard size is really good, though travel is obviously minimal with such a thin laptop.
- Plenty of battery life (and new batteries still available at Mac store last time I asked)
- upgraded model has 1.4Ghz dual core i5, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, which is still more than enough for on-the-go use.
What not to love:
- Has only 1 I/O port (USB-C), which is also used for charging.
- No longer receives MacOS updates, if you find a 2017 production model you get updates up to MacOS 13.
- Linux support is not great. The WiFi/Bluetooth chip (BCM15700A2) is not fully supported in Linux, WiFi works but Bluetooth doesn't. Audio via headphone jack works, but speakers don't. There are some experimental patches to get BT and speakers somewhat working, but it's not great.
If you can find it, get a late production model (2017) with the 1.4Ghz CPU upgrade, it will have 16gb RAM instead of 8gb (earlier models) and receive MacOS updates up to MacOS 13.
I had this laptop and I loved it, but it was underpowered even for basic web development by 2023. It struggled to play YouTube videos in the background while I worked.
I really wish they brought back this format with the modern M processors. On the other hand, my M2 Macbook Air is around 300 grams heavier, but I don't need to carry a power adapter most of the time, and the device is much better in every conceivable 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 dunno. I never got the hang of what the hell to do with a netbook or netbook likes. I have old Surface 3 tablets, Lenovo Yogo, small HP, Acer and other notebooks.
All have this "not enough" vibe to me. They are cute, but have no performance and no purpose my iPhone can't fullfil. Maybe because i never work on documents, sheets or listings while i'm commuting or traveling. I do work on those when at work or at home, on a ProBook. But never while on the road or something.
I do refurbish old HP ProBooks whenever i can get my hands on them (or Dell, Lenovo equivalent) by putting in more ram and more capacity nvme. Sometimes even upgrading the wifi board. This works for me. ProBooks are nice. Not that heavy, pretty upgradable (except CPU/GPU) and full size keyboards. It's amazing what people sometimes throw away.
I use mine as semi-disposable device I wouldn't be afraid to lose or get stolen, it is mostly thin client for my bigger devices (over ssh and rarely vnc), encrypted disk and when lid closes it automatically shuts off, so it's a perfect device to always carry including in shadier areas when traveling.
I think the MacBook Neo has really made it hard for companies to compete. This would have been exciting a few years ago, but now it just feels overpriced. But I love love it can run Linux and is more open.
If you used Neo you would see that while it is decent laptop, it is not nearly as small as 12" should be, clacky touch pad and overall a slab of metal that can easily be dented like any macbook.
It is good as Macbook Air just cheap, but it isn't nearly as portable as something Minibook X should represent. Old Apple 12" plastic one if you remember would be more perfect for such use case if it would be recreated.
I have a 14" MBP M4 lying around unused, but yesterday picked it up to have my daughter watch her evening cartoons and at 1.6kg it struck me how light it was. The Zephyrus G14 that's also collecting dust and weights essentially the same also felt handy (just can't ever start from 0% battery powered via PD).
Neither fits in the palm of one's hand, but how often is that a problem really?
I have the first GPD Pocket which I used when traveling for a while (it's now fairly outdated and always had some annoying quirks but that's another story). It weighs 480g. The great thing with that is that you can just drop it in your bag and basically forget it's there while walking/traveling around.
This is definitely not the case with my 1.23kg Macbook Air.
Starlite Mk IV is my favourite "netbook" successor. 0.9 kg, 11.6 1080p IPS display and Linux-first, with coreboot. Unfortunately it is a couple years old by now and you can feel that (Intel N5030 and 8GB of RAM). Sadly the company changed the form factor of Mk V to a detachable but if you can live with that it's also an option.
Also me: just a month ago I bought a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for my phone because they are completely sufficient for the work emergency use case along with the termux app
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've got the N150 model, dual booting Ubuntu and Windows (very rarely use Windows to be honest though). I hadn't noticed any issues with the keyboard either, though the touchpad can do strange things at times, so I usually plug in a mouse. Also, I think the screen is really nice too.
I have a GPD Mini, the very first preproduction one.
Stock Ubuntu runs just fine since about 24.04 or 23.10 (do not remember). Keyboard is fine. Trackpoint instead of a cheap trackpad which is great. Touch screen.
And incredibly mind-bogglingly slow eMMC storage. Like, makes it impossible to use.
So as cute as it is, I haven't found any use for it for the last ~10 years that I own it. Maybe I have used it for emergency ssh from the mountain hike once or twice.
How about the Panasonic Let's Note? Still made, although not for the American market. A little thicker so that it can have an adequate battery and be small at the same time. I love it, but I didn't know it existed until my recent trip to Japan, and I didn't come across quite the right used machine before coming home.
used of one these and its terrible. out of all the laptops i have used this one has by far the worst build quality.
the hinge is just horrible and snaps in half after a few months of use.
i also removed windows and installed omarchy and one of the speakers does not work. :(
and no its not a skill issue. tried every solution and nothing works. check reddit for the user reviews on literally every product from this brand. you'll understand my frustration.
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.
To get around the crappy display/keyboard/touchpad issue, one could also buy a used x86 Chromebook and install Linux on it and get very nearly the same (or better) experience.
contemplated getting one of these a while back opted for an m3-8100Y Surface Go 2 instead because they were far easier to find and much cheaper. Managed to find one for £70 with the keyboard. Nowhere near as powerful as the Minibook X but does the job for when I'm not carrying my Macbook Air around with me. If the Surface Go 4 had a 16gb RAM option I'd've jumped at it.
Have had a couple of Chuwi devices in the past, they're always a painful mix of really impressive with baffling cost cutting measures so I'm a bit wary of spending more than £50 on one.
I feel like what I really want is a phone that can do this. I've been trying to figure out a reasonable workflow with a tiny mouse, an expandable keyboard, and a phone with termius (SSH Client) + a remote devserver. It's so close, the only issue is the screen is a tad bit too small to get anything real done other than ad hoc vibe coding.
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.
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.
FWIW, I had a 4K monitor from 2016 - 2019 that I had to run at 24 Hz due to hardware limitations in a KVM switch. I used this for my day job and experienced no noticeable side effects, even for CAD work. Then again I always disable all animations in my OS.
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.
Could someone please recommend a small, lightweight 2in1 style x86 laptop? Weight should be way under 1000g/2.2p. Best guess until now was some used Surface model, but those seem to be of really random quality and have overheating issues.
The Surface Book or whatever is going to be your best option because you want the 2-in-1 features. We had a few at my job before I switched to an XPS 13 since I never used it as a tablet and it was a weighty thing to have in my bag. Didn't hate using it like a laptop, though. Unfortunately, the price tag is also going to reflect the branding, so it won't be cheap. Same thing with a Lenovo Yoga or X13. That kind of functionality with good hardware is almost always going be pricy, I guess.
Can I ask why you want 2-in-1? I've personally never found the convert-to-tablet useful, and I have to imagine only visual artists might. I bought a nice case with a keyboard for my iPad Mini thinking I'd use it as a tiny laptop on the go, but in all honesty, I forgot the keyboard existed until I started typing this.
Not knocking your needs, just curious what kind of user those are for since I am obviously not the market
2in1s make a laptop immensely more versatile and useful:
- Tent mode is a much better to watch movies on or play games (via controller)
- In tent mode you can position a keyboard how you like, and you can put a secondary screen more how you would on a proper desktop. This way you can create a comfortable full desktop work environment on every desk.
I wouldn't even care much about the touchscreen otherwise, although it's a nice way to read articles on a train.
Seems like this discussion creates a lot of interest in the Minibook X - researching the device on Google shows lower prices than on the actual pages behind the search results, so they must have become higher very recently.
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").
Speaking of which, is there ever going to be another IRL linux.conf.au? I really miss those, and the good old LUG meetups. I'm surrounded by Microsoft people at work day in and day out and I'm desperate to reconnect with my kind.
A few things contributed to its demise: less industry money sloshing around for travel and sponsorships, a growing sense that "Linux" didn't represent the entire community, and a pandemic.
Which left "Everything Open" launching weaker in every sense.
But I don't think Linux or Open Source feel sufficiently radical or inspiring to sustain that kind of community-building (local or global) these days... maybe a "Fuck AI" tech conference. :-D
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.
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.
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.
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?
> 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 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
My suggestion? If you want a Chromebook to run Linux, look for surplus school laptops instead. My throwaround workshop laptop is an Asus that to me looks like it was clearly sold in an educational Chromebook format as well--partially ruggedized, partially waterproof, 12", N100, plastic blank where the camera should be, still only $120
Basically, if you're lucky, you can find Chromebook-class PCs with less restrictions. Admittedly I'm in a lucky locale for such things, but the one in question i bought from a normal retailer
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.
AI can't make the Mandalorian or The Last of Us play, though. This may have been fixed or worked around now, but for sure Disney+ and HBO were holdouts that refused to work on a Linux Chrome, Widevine be damned.
I mean, sure, I can torrent a copy or whatever. But there's a point at which you just don't want to deal with that nonsense. ChromeOS is Linux, in all the ways I care to measure. But it codes as "not Linux" to all the corporate overlords afraid of the nerds and hippies, and that has value too.
I'm missing netbooks so much, there's just no decent 10" laptops on the market anymore.
I got myself a 150$ N150 chromebook, yoinked a Linux on it and using that, despite the terrible screen and build quality, but at least it is disposable.
I have a 1netbook with the same form factor and capabilities - I absolutely love the foldable screen which turns it into a tablet device - but it is really a problem to use as a tablet device while gripping it, because naturally that grip will press buttons on the keyboard.
Does the Chuwi Minibook X have sensors that minimize this 'bug'? I've been looking for a way to disable the keys on tablet mode, but can't really seem to get it right (Ubuntu Studio) ..
Are the specifications listed in the article reliable?
It's difficult to trust them, considering Chuwi has a history of misrepresenting CPU specifications.
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.
1. Per ark[1], "Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type)
16 GB" - you wouldn't be doing much with modular RAM, anyway
2. Swapping BGA package RAM actually isn't THAT hard. If you invest a few hundred monetary units now in a hot air station, some flux, a few relevant stencils, some solder paste and/or appropriately sized balls, fine tweezers, and (for extra credit) a €£$60 AliExpress LCD microscope, you never have to cry again when the laptop you prefer has soldered RAM, a soldered M.2 1216 SMT Wi-Fi module, a flaky USB-C charge port (ThinkPad plague), etc. Guess how many Raspberries Pi 4 I've upgraded to 8GB RAM!
It's not particularly cheap. There are cheaper 14.1" laptops which are probably better-built, with a more responsive keyboard etc. Not sure why the poster chose this one.
i was seriously considering one of these about one year ago, but i was not 100% convinced and I ended up deciding to wait and see what else would came out (mostly driven by the rumors about a cheap macbook).
I ended up buying the macbook neo and frankly i think i made the right choice.
of course the macbook does not run gnu/linux (for better or for worse).
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.
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.
> It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.
I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use.
But then, if you're travelling on holiday, do you really want serious use? I like your rationale of taking something that's bad enough that you won't want to use it but you have something if you really need it even if it didn't quite work out that way for you.
And, apart from theft, and depending on where I'm travelling, maybe a cheap device that I don't mind the authorities rifling through the storage of wouldn't be such a bad thing. Like I don't necessarily want $RANDOM_CUSTOMS_PERSON_IN_SOME_COUNTRY to have access to my bank statements, account details, or to get into my social media accounts, or whatever.
And it would be nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff if the machine did get stolen (sure, the drive on my main laptop is encrypted, but physical access is always a massive force multiplier when trying to gain access to a system or its contents).
> the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad
I don't have the same problems with my model, possibly theirs is bad. I don't like that the keyboard is teeny and in the ANSI layout but I got used to it.
The trackpad isn't great but that's just yet another reason to avoid using the mouse and do everything with the keyboard.
That being said, I would never use it for fulltime use. I'm not even using it to type this message even though it's right next to me. I use it while travelling and it remains off at all other times.
I've been to a lot of countries (and thus through a lot of customs agents), the most they ever ask me to do, if anything at all, is turn the laptop on. I think the point is they want to make sure it's an actual laptop and not just a shell hiding something else. I've never had an agent touch my machine or show any interest in doing so, and I say that as someone who gets the extra searches often because I carry a lot of odd looking parts and small tools for work. Just pointing that out because I think the paranoia about what customs agents are allowed to do is a bit overblown unless you're suspected of smuggling or transporting something nefarious. They're not interested in what's on your laptop until you give them a reason to be.
I almost got denied boarding for a EU -> US flight ~13 years ago because the TSA agent at the gate noticed my 2011 MBP had 2 screws missing on the bottom panel (I've opened it up a bunch of times and lost some screws in the process). It didn't convince them that I turned it on and logged in etc. They still had doubts because, apparently, missing screws on a macbook was unheard of.. in the end, they held up the plane for ~10 mins due to waiting for a go/no-go decision via phone from some decision maker at the airline (as the final call was apparently theirs to make for some reason). Luckily, they were OK with missing screws and I was let on board.
I think it probably depends where you're going. We have relatives in a country where it might be a bit more of a concern, and we did briefly research taking a trip there to visit them, which is when all of this came up. In the end, for a variety of reasons, we decided it was going to be too risky to take that trip unless and until conditions change.
There are many countries where I wouldn't be at all worried about that, but I'd still be concerned about the possibility of theft (which, let's be real, can happen anywhere: I went on a trip to Switzerland once - generally considered very safe and low crime - where somebody had their laptop stolen from their room).
> "I think, realistically, the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad - would drive me up the wall for any kind of serious use."
Me too. But the tray table compatibility resonates. I had hoped someone would build a modern netbook as a detachable focused on productivity and light gaming (say, Steamdeck class), maintainability and (modular) expandability; a modern road warrior that's also a nice hobbyist machine that stands some abuse. Framework was/is positioned to put something out, but they decided to release the F-12 instead.
I mean for the price I can get used thinkpads (and replace the battery if needed) and not have to deal with the crappy parts - I only have to deal with older parts.
How doeos it compare to the GPD Win mini laptops?
My solution for this use case is a used Thinkpad X270. Unreal battery life and adequate performance. Got mine in like-new condition a couple years ago for $90. It's a fine substitute for factory-spec e-waste. Mine has the cheapo screen, but it was a cheap laptop so whatever. I don't get the author's complaint about the "2K" (whatever that is) display. Cheap laptop has a cheap screen, oh the humanity!
Oh man. I have a ThinkPad L14 as my personal, beater, okay to take on the plane to Japan or whatever machine. And I hate it because it's too big. But I'm also hooked on it because it has pretty decent performance, excellent battery life with the third party battery I put in it, acceptable keyboard, acceptable trackpad.
I read this review with mounting excitement until I got to the part about the things he doesn't like. And yeah, those things would drive me up the wall too.
Although it might be fine if that touchy keyboard works well for touch typists. For me, that's everything.
I just tested and yes - if I press the exact corner of the key with a pencil then it doesn't register correctly. Everywhere else seems absolutely fine and given how small the keys are I genuinely wasn't able to recreate this with my finger. In order to actually press the key I have to push down on enough of the key for it to register.
Thanks!
I feel spoiled because the train table on my train of choice fits my 16in Macbook , almost like it was made with the sole purpose of carrying this laptop on it
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.
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.
As someone who always favors the smaller laptops that don't require me to gear up an entire backpack just to do a bit of work on the go, I'd argue that the difference between a 10" and 13" screen is not nearly as much as it sounds. I've found the Dell XPS 13's to be an excellent choice for stowing in my service bag so I have a small-but-functional machine on a job site. That and the Dell XPS 13 just has better hardware all around, when stood up against the Chuwi.
15", sure, that's a bit big, but smaller models are available.
The thing about a diagonal measurement is it doesn't tell you if it's going to fit on a shitty airline tray table or not. Some laptops with a larger diagonal measurement are not too deep. Others are way too deep.
A used x1 carbon is a better deal, faster, and weighs about the same with a bigger screen.
"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.
Absolutely. The 11" MacBook Air was the best laptop Apple ever made.
It was nice, but the screen bezel was huge. The latest 13 is about the same size and weight.
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.
I loved mine but I'd be lying if I said it gave me three years of acceptable performance.
Sure, I can blame Chrome and JS, but ultimately, the core 2 duo and 8GB RAM did not keep up very long.
There was an 11” air with an i5/i7 - i splurged for 16gb of ram when i bought it in 2015 and it lasted me 10 years.
It still works, but a few specific apps started to really drag on it.
It really pays longevity wise to get max ram!
Sure, but the 11" MBA I bought was max specs at the time it was released and the point is: it didn't last long.
I guess, but that kinda means I would've needed to improve my 11" MBA's longevity by buying another, more recent, 11" MBA though. :)
I yearn for an updated version of the 12” MacBook with modern specs and keyboard. The 13” Air is way too large to be the smallest MacBook ;_;
I really liked the 12" MacBook (although my all time favourite computer was the 12" PowerBook G4 - chunky by today's standards but I just loved it).
I saw a review of the MacBook Neo where the reviewer was yearning after the 12" - but suggested that Apple has made UI elements so big with such ridiculous spacing and border radius that it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13".
Which would not surprise me in the least - I struggle with my 16" MBP and this crappy UI "framework".
> it would be almost unusable at anything less than 13"
Native resolution on a 13" MacBook Air is already pretty unusable. Out of the box, the 13" MacBook Air (physical screen resolution 2560x1664) is configured with display scaling so that the “looks like” resolution is 1470x956 (i.e., macOS renders everything at 2x1470x956 – 2940x1912 – and then scales it down to match the display for output). If you dial the “looks like” resolution down to 1280x832 (so that the rendering resolution matches the output resolution; because, say, you prefer that every UI element not be a little bit blurry from being scaled down), you'll find yourself unbelievably short (ha) on vertical resolution. You basically have to turn dock hiding on. Even then, fixed-position headers are very common on websites these days, so between that and browser chrome, you'll often find that actual webpage content is crammed into the bottom half of the display.
gotta have dock hiding & menu bar hiding & compact toolbar/tab settings for browser. only 80-90px of wasted height. The rest is web view. I can't think of any website I frequent having that fixed-position header either, so I'm gucci.
Yes, same here. I can’t help but think they had an iPhone SOC planned for it (tiny motherboard, only one usb-c) but the hw/os team weren’t ready.
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.
I guess. 14" is about as small as I can use personally, that already hurts my hands
With laptop sized screens, I’m always tempted to try to have two windows side by side. 10 inch netbooks effectively dissuade that bit of folly.
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.
a Steam deck with a small form factor keyboard?
Legion Go (1st Gen with the removable controllers) would be better. Without the controllers, it's basically a 8.8 inch PC tablet. Would be a great portable machine. With an added bonus of the controllers converting to a desktop mouse.
I so wanted to love the Steam Deck, but it's a device with a 7 inch screen that occupies a massive volume on your bag. Unless you know you're going to play a fair ammount, it's not worth carrying around.
It's a fantastic console, but a mediocre general purpose computer.
A Steam Deck is a bit more lumpy than the Minibook. I find it a lot easier to put my Minibook into a rucksack as it's thin, so it can just slide between stuff. The Steam Deck is quite a lot bigger, though I often take both on holiday as they fill different needs.
A "programming" laptop should be powerful enough to run code, no?
If your code won’t run on this machine, you’re the problem not the machine (outside of niche processor heavy stuff like video editing and ai crap).
Compiling Rust is expensive, for instance.
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.
I was running gentoo on a 2011 Macbook Air for years with no problems. These computers are more than fast enough to compile and run code. They aren't going to by my first choice for reencoding video or running a build server, but for local development you really don't need a lot unless you're working on the type of stuff that really actually requires special or very powerful hardware.
Switch to a backpack or just leave the laptop in your car...?
So I would have to buy a car to carry a laptop?
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.
Agreed here, with prices for used x1s its a no brainer. Although I get the appeal of super small and lightweight devices and even had eee pc way back, but started having insane headaches after working with small screens, so guess its just not for me.
apples to oranges. people that buy minibooks are looking for smaller screens
The whole point is people want to pay extra for superior portability. There is no x1 carbon with this weight and form factor.
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.
Sounds like you got a lemon. I also have an X1 carbon, and it's been a great upgrade for me. My biggest complaint is the eraser isn't as easy to use as my old toshiba. The eraser is important to me -- my hand gets numb using a trackpad.
Previously my daily driver was a Thinkpad X1 Gen 6, it's a bit of troublesome.
Now it's X1 Gen 10, it has been largely trouble free.
Probably my next laptop will be the next Gen X1 with the new upgradeable LPCAMM2 RAM.
Surface laptop go/surface go match perfectly. Same size screen, with decent build quality and no software quirk afaik.
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.
If it was running Windows - no wonder, Windows is horrible at constantly writing … something to disk, and eMMC's are not high endurance devices. The flash itself had nothing to do with Chuwi and was most likely manufactured by either SanDisk or Kingston, it would have failed likewise in ASUS/Lenovo/whoever else made those crap Intel Atom + 4 GB RAM + 64 GB eMMC devices.
it was running linux and it died within the first few months of barely any use. i don't know what vendor the eMMC came from but they chose it.
Battery can be an issue though. In particular, replacement batteries can be a PITA to get if the model gets discontinued or parts are only available through corporate channels.
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.
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.
I use a 16gb ram 1tb ssd 200USD m1 macbook air. Works great!
The fact that it’s listed is meaningless. You need to ask the seller what’s wrong with it.
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.
Could be boot locked to the original owner Apple account.
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.
Lenovo T495s.
I'm owner of this laptop - great device for home bed/couch use and traveling, which is easy to take and feels not risky in terms of potential damage or lost.
The screen isn't terrible. Frequency can be easily overclocked from 50 to 80Hz, making the manufacturer's decision quite odd. Good brightness, and after calibration, the colors are even somewhat normal.
In my case, the keyboard works reliably and isn't annoying, although it does take a little getting used to due to the smaller key size.
Only one thing that frustrates me - they cost-cutted on the battery controller. The OS only receives information about the battery voltage, without details on consumption/cycles/Ah. The consumption is hard-coded, which means the battery life estimate is never nearly accurate.
And yeah, terible touchpad but it's not that bad when you have touchscreen.
> Frequency can be easily overclocked from 50 to 80Hz, making the manufacturer's decision quite odd.
99% it was done to extend battery life. It's probably in the order of 5%, but most likely not the only such decision.
I love mine: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 - I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy, besides being able to drive huge external monitors.
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 complaints about the keyboard sound more significant than the screen.
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!
Yeah, in particular it looks like the complaint was about having to hit the center of the keys exactly, which seems quite bad.
I’ll learn a weird layout for a netbook, some compromise is expected to get the small size (side note: I think “unfamiliar layout” issues are over-represented in reviews because they usually describe the reviewer’s experience when they are first getting used to the device, I get used to a layout in the medium term anyway and then it isn’t really a problem anymore (side side note: we should separate out the concepts of unfamiliar and bad layouts, they are different things, the former is overcome over time, the latter gives you repetitive stain injuries over time)).
Having the nail the keys in the middle, though, is just a sign of poor keyboard design. That probably won’t be overcome, if anything it is a sign of bad build quality and will probably get worse over time.
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...
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.
I'm on an X1 Yoga, and it has a SIM card slot and antennas, so it just requires an m.2 modem to get going.
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.
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.
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/14/photos-of-a-prototype-m...
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.
Not quite the same thing, but you can build a similar thing to run linux relatively easily, and the keyboards can be really good that way. You can swap out the SBC for one of your choice eg. https://www.lattepanda.com/lattepanda-iota (why don't AMD do small SBCs?) and cut a space on the left/right hand side for a trackpoint/optical trackpad (operate from the side)
https://github.com/penk/penkesu
I have one, and I love it! I don't use it as much as I thought I would, but it brings joy everytime. If you have a need for an extremely portable, not very powerful device on your life, this might be it.
I agree with the complaint about the trackpad, but the keyboard has been just fine for me. Just a bit small, of course. I also find the screen perfectly acceptable for what I use this thing for: youtube, taking notes, writing emails, small bouts of coding and ssh'ing into servers.
My main complaint is related to battery management. May be it's becaused I'm used to Macbooks, but it drives me nuts to go pick the Minibook up and find that it has no power, because I haven't used it in a couple of days and I put it to sleep. I haven't measured, but the power use on sleep is noticeable, and I suspect the leakage while hibernating might be significant too.
I don't really like the laptop form factor. Laptops are the perfect solution for only one use case: using them on your lap. On a table, I'd rather have the computer be just a tablet, to add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. At my desk, with bigger screens, I'd like the computer to disappear into a small puck or box, like a Mac Mini. With the Minibook, being so small, the form factor makes sense again. It's so portable, so easy to take with me to a coffee shop or on a trip, it's worth it.
A tablet with a keyboard might be a more practical solution, although generally more expensive, but I appreciate that my Minibook runs Linux so well, so I don't have to even think about Apple or Google telling me how to use my computer.
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/
Man, I bought a 10" atom Toshiba netbook in 2010 when I found out I was accepted to study abroad. It had 2gb memory and came with Windows XP (even though Vista was the latest).
I had to close everything on the OS just to watch a youtube video at <720p without stuttering. I ended up putting Debian on it which lead to me learning Linux and Ruby on Rails, and booting the dev server (rails server) would take minutes on a hello world.
When I got my first job out of uni, they gave me a Macbook Air, and it was so fast that I felt bad thinking about how much time I wasted waiting for things to happen on that netbook.
17 years later, in my late 30s, I don't think I could go back to such a small screen. But it was cool doing real work on something so small.
Watch out guys, Chinese manufacturer CHUWI was found to be involved in a mislabeling scandal that involved its CoreBook X and CoreBook Plus laptops. The company advertised these laptops as having the AMD Ryzen 5 7430U CPU, but in reality, they used the older Ryzen 5 5500U CPU.
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...
That's fair; the keyboard layouts are definitely an acquired taste. Not that I've quite acquired said taste myself... but for devices that I mainly use when traveling, I just don't particularly care that much. It'd probably be more of an issue if I was using one of them as my daily driver - but I still very much prefer my workstation at home for that.
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
I had the GPD pocket 2 and:
- the keyboards was terrible
- the battery didn't last more than 2h30 after only 6 months of use
- it ran super hot
I only started using GPD products with the Pocket 4, so unfortunately I can't speak to your experience with the Pocket 2. I certainly hope the battery doesn't degrade that fast on their newer models...
The only thing I can say is that they seem to have significantly improved the thermals; IME, the Pocket 4 only gets moderately warm to the touch during full CPU load, and that's even with the quiet fan mode.
The specs on this thing look pretty great. Which part do you find insufficient?
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.)
> building software and running medium/large test suites on it would be far too slow
I'd figured remote development was the only viable workflow for these devices anyway?
Depends on what you're doing I suppose? I'm able to work on Zig with both of the devices I mentioned. Of course I'm limiting the test cases to the subset that's actually relevant to the area or target I'm working on. But that would be the case on a beefy full-size laptop too; even there, the full Zig test suite would take many hours and murder the battery in the process.
I've done all my dev work on devices much less powerful than this. After all, that's all that existed at the time :)
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 :(
Isn’t the Neo almost identical to the 12”? It’s only ~1cm wider
When you look at each dimension in isolation, the difference is fairly small. But the 12” is 60% of the volume and 75% of the weight of the Neo. It’s significantly more portable by these metrics.
I just unpacked my eee PC from college after a move. 8gb of RAM and can barely run a very stripped down version of windows 7. Just the thought of writing my final year project on that little machine again is giving me RSI.
I'll stick with my 13" MBP going forward. Netbooks served a purpose but I'm not sure they make much sense anymore
> 8gb of RAM and can barely run a very stripped down version of windows 7
Not sure what you're doing, but Win7 itself uses 1 GB of RAM or less. Even just 2 GB of total system RAM was enough for basic usage, like document editing and single-tab web browsing.
I think OP actually meant the size of SSD. Eee PCs shipped with SSDs of up to 8GB.
I feel the same way. I had a eee and later a Samsung netbook, but eventually ordinary laptops got light enough that a netbook is now just a laptop with a smaller screen. I'll always have a soft spot for them, but I doubt I'll use one again as a daily driver.
The article immediately makes me think of my PineBook Pro. Blinded by its $300 price tag and "Arm Inside(tm)", I jumped the gun at the second batch in early 2021. The display panel is shit. The keyboard is shit. The trackpad is shit. The webcam is shit. The speaker output is shit. The various hardware bugs are shit. The overall performance is shit. But, finally, after many years of changes and back-and-forth with the Linux kernel, the SoC and platform is finally-well supported, and it gets the simple jobs done.
I’ve heard the keyboards were hit and miss, from shit to halfway decent. I got one I consider halfway decent. It’s pretty good, really, for what the Pinebook and Pinebook Pro were meant to be. I’ve never tried the webcam. The rest of the parts are pretty bad compared to most laptops, but for a super early ARM-powered laptop at its price point I’m still glad to have this little curiosity.
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.
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.
Apple hasn't provided a security update in years, let alone a proper MacOS release. But just about any modern amd64 Linux distro works out of the box on these machines. With a few small tweaks battery life is decent as well.
As for size and dimensions, the difference is under 200 grams, with the MBA being smaller than the 2009-ish era netbooks the blog post compares the Minibook to. Everything is a matter of trade offs.
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.
Tragic that with a modern efficiency oriented SoC it still has such dissapointing battery life. Expected an improvement over X series thinkpads.
At least it can charge off a powerbank, but that's pretty standard now.
For on-the-go compute I am using a 2017 12-inch Macbook (AS1534). This is a lesser known model, it was simply called "12 inch MacBook" (not air or pro) [0].
It has the aluminium body, it is ridiculously thin (3,5mm thinnest point, 13mm thickest point, feet included), it weighs just 920 gram. It charges via USB-C. It has a very good 2304 × 1440 (16∶10) IPS "retina" screen.
I run mine with MacOS/Linux dual boot, I charge it using my phone charger. It keep it in my go-bag at all times. I never have to worry being without it.
What to love:
- Super small, yet very sturdy.
- Can be found for relatively cheap (I paid €300 for mine 2 years ago)
- Really nice screen.
- Keyboard size is really good, though travel is obviously minimal with such a thin laptop.
- Plenty of battery life (and new batteries still available at Mac store last time I asked)
- upgraded model has 1.4Ghz dual core i5, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, which is still more than enough for on-the-go use.
What not to love:
- Has only 1 I/O port (USB-C), which is also used for charging.
- No longer receives MacOS updates, if you find a 2017 production model you get updates up to MacOS 13.
- Linux support is not great. The WiFi/Bluetooth chip (BCM15700A2) is not fully supported in Linux, WiFi works but Bluetooth doesn't. Audio via headphone jack works, but speakers don't. There are some experimental patches to get BT and speakers somewhat working, but it's not great.
If you can find it, get a late production model (2017) with the 1.4Ghz CPU upgrade, it will have 16gb RAM instead of 8gb (earlier models) and receive MacOS updates up to MacOS 13.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_MacBook
I had this laptop and I loved it, but it was underpowered even for basic web development by 2023. It struggled to play YouTube videos in the background while I worked.
I really wish they brought back this format with the modern M processors. On the other hand, my M2 Macbook Air is around 300 grams heavier, but I don't need to carry a power adapter most of the time, and the device is much better in every conceivable way.
Crash Override boot screen made me genuinely LOL. Nice touch.
https://photos.tylercipriani.com/2026-05-31_chuwi-boot-smol....
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 dunno. I never got the hang of what the hell to do with a netbook or netbook likes. I have old Surface 3 tablets, Lenovo Yogo, small HP, Acer and other notebooks.
All have this "not enough" vibe to me. They are cute, but have no performance and no purpose my iPhone can't fullfil. Maybe because i never work on documents, sheets or listings while i'm commuting or traveling. I do work on those when at work or at home, on a ProBook. But never while on the road or something. I do refurbish old HP ProBooks whenever i can get my hands on them (or Dell, Lenovo equivalent) by putting in more ram and more capacity nvme. Sometimes even upgrading the wifi board. This works for me. ProBooks are nice. Not that heavy, pretty upgradable (except CPU/GPU) and full size keyboards. It's amazing what people sometimes throw away.
I use mine as semi-disposable device I wouldn't be afraid to lose or get stolen, it is mostly thin client for my bigger devices (over ssh and rarely vnc), encrypted disk and when lid closes it automatically shuts off, so it's a perfect device to always carry including in shadier areas when traveling.
So where can you buy one of these mythical notebooks for 350€$!?!?
Every time I try to search, it's either unavailable or 100s€$ over the original price?
I think the MacBook Neo has really made it hard for companies to compete. This would have been exciting a few years ago, but now it just feels overpriced. But I love love it can run Linux and is more open.
I disagree, it's cheap for an apple laptop but the chuwi is still half the price for double the RAM and storage
If you used Neo you would see that while it is decent laptop, it is not nearly as small as 12" should be, clacky touch pad and overall a slab of metal that can easily be dented like any macbook.
It is good as Macbook Air just cheap, but it isn't nearly as portable as something Minibook X should represent. Old Apple 12" plastic one if you remember would be more perfect for such use case if it would be recreated.
I feel like this is another “Framework 12 vs Neo” type of deal.
I can get a used MacBook Air M1 for £250 which beats the Minibook in every regard and it can run Linux.
It's much bigger and heavier. I hope Apple will bring back a 11" notebook one day.
Is weight such a concern in this day and age?
I have a 14" MBP M4 lying around unused, but yesterday picked it up to have my daughter watch her evening cartoons and at 1.6kg it struck me how light it was. The Zephyrus G14 that's also collecting dust and weights essentially the same also felt handy (just can't ever start from 0% battery powered via PD).
Neither fits in the palm of one's hand, but how often is that a problem really?
If you carry your notebook around every workday, it makes a big difference.
If you're on a long journey, it's even more of an issue.
I have the first GPD Pocket which I used when traveling for a while (it's now fairly outdated and always had some annoying quirks but that's another story). It weighs 480g. The great thing with that is that you can just drop it in your bag and basically forget it's there while walking/traveling around.
This is definitely not the case with my 1.23kg Macbook Air.
Can it use an external display under Linux?
Starlite Mk IV is my favourite "netbook" successor. 0.9 kg, 11.6 1080p IPS display and Linux-first, with coreboot. Unfortunately it is a couple years old by now and you can feel that (Intel N5030 and 8GB of RAM). Sadly the company changed the form factor of Mk V to a detachable but if you can live with that it's also an option.
Me: I want this
Also me: just a month ago I bought a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for my phone because they are completely sufficient for the work emergency use case along with the termux app
I got one of these a couple of years ago, put Linux on it, and was pleased as punch: https://www.mahnamahna.net/blog/linux-chuwi-minibook-x/
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.
Very different reports of the keyboard in this thread. Are there different builds of this or something? Or is it just a very polarising keyboard?
It’s possible at this price point that it’s a normally decent keyboard but with horrible quality control.
I've got the N150 model, dual booting Ubuntu and Windows (very rarely use Windows to be honest though). I hadn't noticed any issues with the keyboard either, though the touchpad can do strange things at times, so I usually plug in a mouse. Also, I think the screen is really nice too.
Dump the desktop. Switch your login shell to emacs and you have an overpowered WritersBook that’ll fit in a coat pocket.
I have a GPD Mini, the very first preproduction one.
Stock Ubuntu runs just fine since about 24.04 or 23.10 (do not remember). Keyboard is fine. Trackpoint instead of a cheap trackpad which is great. Touch screen.
And incredibly mind-bogglingly slow eMMC storage. Like, makes it impossible to use.
So as cute as it is, I haven't found any use for it for the last ~10 years that I own it. Maybe I have used it for emergency ssh from the mountain hike once or twice.
maybe try a linux distro like tinycore or porteus? it puts the rootfs in ram so things run insanely fast, and sync changes to disk before shutdown
It's got 8GB ram. Not sure whether that will help.
Also some support from distribution is needed, because the screen is rotated as well, fan needs software support, etc
How about the Panasonic Let's Note? Still made, although not for the American market. A little thicker so that it can have an adequate battery and be small at the same time. I love it, but I didn't know it existed until my recent trip to Japan, and I didn't come across quite the right used machine before coming home.
used of one these and its terrible. out of all the laptops i have used this one has by far the worst build quality. the hinge is just horrible and snaps in half after a few months of use.
i also removed windows and installed omarchy and one of the speakers does not work. :( and no its not a skill issue. tried every solution and nothing works. check reddit for the user reviews on literally every product from this brand. you'll understand my frustration.
Similar vibes as my GPD Micro PC: https://blog.danieljanus.pl/i-love-my-gpd-micro-pc/
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.
To get around the crappy display/keyboard/touchpad issue, one could also buy a used x86 Chromebook and install Linux on it and get very nearly the same (or better) experience.
contemplated getting one of these a while back opted for an m3-8100Y Surface Go 2 instead because they were far easier to find and much cheaper. Managed to find one for £70 with the keyboard. Nowhere near as powerful as the Minibook X but does the job for when I'm not carrying my Macbook Air around with me. If the Surface Go 4 had a 16gb RAM option I'd've jumped at it.
Have had a couple of Chuwi devices in the past, they're always a painful mix of really impressive with baffling cost cutting measures so I'm a bit wary of spending more than £50 on one.
I feel like what I really want is a phone that can do this. I've been trying to figure out a reasonable workflow with a tiny mouse, an expandable keyboard, and a phone with termius (SSH Client) + a remote devserver. It's so close, the only issue is the screen is a tad bit too small to get anything real done other than ad hoc vibe coding.
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.
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.
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.
When confronting confusion between film and video, I wasn't about to get into FIELDS per second. :-D
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.
FWIW, I had a 4K monitor from 2016 - 2019 that I had to run at 24 Hz due to hardware limitations in a KVM switch. I used this for my day job and experienced no noticeable side effects, even for CAD work. Then again I always disable all animations in my OS.
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
Snap! The US only keyboard is a bit of a pain, and the trackpad sometimes glitches, but when travelling light this is excellent.
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gadget-review-chuwi-miniboo...
Could someone please recommend a small, lightweight 2in1 style x86 laptop? Weight should be way under 1000g/2.2p. Best guess until now was some used Surface model, but those seem to be of really random quality and have overheating issues.
The Surface Book or whatever is going to be your best option because you want the 2-in-1 features. We had a few at my job before I switched to an XPS 13 since I never used it as a tablet and it was a weighty thing to have in my bag. Didn't hate using it like a laptop, though. Unfortunately, the price tag is also going to reflect the branding, so it won't be cheap. Same thing with a Lenovo Yoga or X13. That kind of functionality with good hardware is almost always going be pricy, I guess.
Can I ask why you want 2-in-1? I've personally never found the convert-to-tablet useful, and I have to imagine only visual artists might. I bought a nice case with a keyboard for my iPad Mini thinking I'd use it as a tiny laptop on the go, but in all honesty, I forgot the keyboard existed until I started typing this.
Not knocking your needs, just curious what kind of user those are for since I am obviously not the market
2in1s make a laptop immensely more versatile and useful: - Tent mode is a much better to watch movies on or play games (via controller) - In tent mode you can position a keyboard how you like, and you can put a secondary screen more how you would on a proper desktop. This way you can create a comfortable full desktop work environment on every desk.
I wouldn't even care much about the touchscreen otherwise, although it's a nice way to read articles on a train.
It looks nice but I feel like a bear riding a tiny unicycle using these kinds of computers.
Also got it last year.
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
Got no clue about the benches, but I love the design. Very cartoon-ey
What I wouldn't give for this machine with a thinkpad keyboard
Seems like this discussion creates a lot of interest in the Minibook X - researching the device on Google shows lower prices than on the actual pages behind the search results, so they must have become higher very recently.
> 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").
Speaking of which, is there ever going to be another IRL linux.conf.au? I really miss those, and the good old LUG meetups. I'm surrounded by Microsoft people at work day in and day out and I'm desperate to reconnect with my kind.
Perhaps one day...
A few things contributed to its demise: less industry money sloshing around for travel and sponsorships, a growing sense that "Linux" didn't represent the entire community, and a pandemic.
Which left "Everything Open" launching weaker in every sense.
But I don't think Linux or Open Source feel sufficiently radical or inspiring to sustain that kind of community-building (local or global) these days... maybe a "Fuck AI" tech conference. :-D
HP used to have extremely small laptops in the early 90s, specifically the omnibook 300
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_OmniBook
The HP LX series (95LX, 100LX, 200LX) is one of my favorites. It also fits the description "smaller than VHS casette"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_95LX
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_200LX
don't forget the Jornadas. i guess those were PocketPC-powered but i def bought one circa 2005 for like $90 and i would do it again right now
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...
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.
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.
Somewhat common with Chuwi and GPD's netbook type devices. IIRC it's because they repurpose tablet screens
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.
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 :)
> "Netbooks are dead"
Not if you buy an eeepc off ebay and put a light linux on it, then they're as good as always. Love me a good netbook
my battered linux-running eeepc900a and I would agree. They also take some standard parts to upgrade SSD or WiFi modules (Mini Pcie).
I loved the Netbook class; the MSI Wind was such a fun device that you could take everywhere. Decent battery, good screen and fantastic keyboard.
This is how I feel about Emacs.
The appeal isn't necessarily the end result. It's the process of tinkering, learning, and gradually making the tool your own.
Why did they use x86_64 in the article instead of AMD64?
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.
This vs Dells new XPS 13? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48351808
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?
> 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 a Chuwi Lark Box from a few years ago. The volume less than my fist, it's great for doing occasional Windows stuff.
The Crash Override boot up screen tho. HACK THE PLANET!
I'll take my gpd pocket 4 over this for sure, though funnily enough it has essentially the same screen problem.
For that price, I'd get an old, second hand, Thinkpad X1 carbon with a new battery.
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.
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.
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.
>So replace the OS: https://docs.mrchromebox.tech/
How's the Windows support with this flow?
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
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.
I'm surprised you want to run real CAD software on a netbook. I think your use case is pretty unusual.
Also drivers are often better on Linux.
tbh I suspect it would be just fine. even the really cheap ones tend to have at least a few gigabytes of RAM.
>I'm surprised you want to run real CAD software on a netbook. I think your use case is pretty unusual.
CAD has been around since before IBM PC came out. It's not necessarily a demanding piece of software.
Still, scratch CAD. My favorite VST synths are Windows-based.
And I don't want to lug around extra kilograms just to make some noise.
I think you missed the point of a netbook.
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).
>I think you missed the point of a netbook.
I think you missed the point of the question.
> the rest is workstation stuff
Yes, I want to be able to run workstation stuff on the small computer I carry everywhere, so that I don't have to carry my workstation everywhere.
get a workstation laptop then?
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.
Your e-bike can’t tow a carriage either, that’s not strange.
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.
How's nTop Linux support coming along?
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
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
My suggestion? If you want a Chromebook to run Linux, look for surplus school laptops instead. My throwaround workshop laptop is an Asus that to me looks like it was clearly sold in an educational Chromebook format as well--partially ruggedized, partially waterproof, 12", N100, plastic blank where the camera should be, still only $120
Basically, if you're lucky, you can find Chromebook-class PCs with less restrictions. Admittedly I'm in a lucky locale for such things, but the one in question i bought from a normal retailer
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).
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?
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.
> 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.
> 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.
> I'm too old for that.
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.
AI can't make the Mandalorian or The Last of Us play, though. This may have been fixed or worked around now, but for sure Disney+ and HBO were holdouts that refused to work on a Linux Chrome, Widevine be damned.
I mean, sure, I can torrent a copy or whatever. But there's a point at which you just don't want to deal with that nonsense. ChromeOS is Linux, in all the ways I care to measure. But it codes as "not Linux" to all the corporate overlords afraid of the nerds and hippies, and that has value too.
I'm missing netbooks so much, there's just no decent 10" laptops on the market anymore.
I got myself a 150$ N150 chromebook, yoinked a Linux on it and using that, despite the terrible screen and build quality, but at least it is disposable.
> Keyboard is terrible – it only registers keystrokes when you hit the exact center of each key.
I wish laptop manufacturers would pay more attention to this. I'm stuck using older laptops because modern laptops can't reliably pick up keystrokes.
I have a 1netbook with the same form factor and capabilities - I absolutely love the foldable screen which turns it into a tablet device - but it is really a problem to use as a tablet device while gripping it, because naturally that grip will press buttons on the keyboard.
Does the Chuwi Minibook X have sensors that minimize this 'bug'? I've been looking for a way to disable the keys on tablet mode, but can't really seem to get it right (Ubuntu Studio) ..
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.
where can i pick one up thats reputable?
Apple. Or, what do you mean by one?
Zimablade chose the same 12v/2a power. It's in the original spec for usb-c pd negotiation.
Client side (device) sets the current draw. Weird take to not use the supplied psu.
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.
> 16 GB RAM – LPDDR5-6400 – soldered [crying cat emoji]
No need to cry:
1. Per ark[1], "Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 16 GB" - you wouldn't be doing much with modular RAM, anyway
2. Swapping BGA package RAM actually isn't THAT hard. If you invest a few hundred monetary units now in a hot air station, some flux, a few relevant stencils, some solder paste and/or appropriately sized balls, fine tweezers, and (for extra credit) a €£$60 AliExpress LCD microscope, you never have to cry again when the laptop you prefer has soldered RAM, a soldered M.2 1216 SMT Wi-Fi module, a flaky USB-C charge port (ThinkPad plague), etc. Guess how many Raspberries Pi 4 I've upgraded to 8GB RAM!
[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241636/...
Bummer that it has a fan
It's not particularly cheap. There are cheaper 14.1" laptops which are probably better-built, with a more responsive keyboard etc. Not sure why the poster chose this one.
Sounds like the netbooks of 2008: bad in every way, but hey, it's small?
i was seriously considering one of these about one year ago, but i was not 100% convinced and I ended up deciding to wait and see what else would came out (mostly driven by the rumors about a cheap macbook).
I ended up buying the macbook neo and frankly i think i made the right choice.
of course the macbook does not run gnu/linux (for better or for worse).
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.
I travel with strict luggage limits (both size and weight) and hike all day. Removing weight absolutely helps.
The differenxe between a "heavy" and "light" laptop is about 250 grams, or the weight of a single apple.
If you can hike all day there is no way you are weak enough for this to even register.
You most certainly aren't familiar with heavy laptops.
Depends how far you have to walk…