Laptops with 4K displays are becoming increasingly common, but high-resolution displays are usually an expensive add-on for already-expensive computers.

The Chuwi LapBook Plus, on the other hand, is a laptop that sells for under $500 and which features a mix of budget and premium specs — including a 4K display.

It’s up for pre-order from Gearbest for $440 and has a suggested retail price of $499.

While the 4K display with 100 percent sRGB color gamut and HDR support is probably the laptop’s most striking feature, it also has a few other selling points, including an aluminum-magnesium chassis, a backlit keyboard, and dual M.2 slots for up to two SSDs.

The least impressive thing about this laptop is probably its processor: it’s powered by an Intel Atom x7-E3950 Apollo Lake chip. That’s a 1.6 GHz quad-core processor with a 12 watt TDP and Intel HD 505 graphics.

While Chuwi says the processor offers “2 times stronger performance” than a more recent Intel Celeron N4100 Gemini Lake processor, that’s not really saying much since the Celeron N4100 is a chip often found in laptops that sell for $200 – $300.

Chuwi says you should be able to get up to 9 hours of battery life from the laptop’s included 36.5 Wh battery, but I suspect real-world usage will be far less than that when using a machine with a 4K display and a 12 watt processor.

Still, if you’re looking for a 4K laptop on a budget, the Chuwi LapBook is about as cheap as it gets for now.

Here’s a run-down of the key specs in bullet-point form:

  • Intel Atom x7-E3950 processor
  • 15.6 inch, 4K UHD IPS display with HDR support and 100% sRGB color gamut
  • 8GB LPDDR3 RAM
  • 256GB M.2 SSD + second M.2 slot
  • 36.5 Wh battery
  • 802.11ac WiFi
  • Bluetooth 4.0
  • USB 3.0, USB 2.0, micro HDMI, headset, and power jacks
  • MicroSD card reader (Up to 128GB)
  • 2.0MP webcam
  • Stereo speakers
  • 3.4 pounds

Update: NotebookCheck has a review of the Chuwi LapBook Plus and confirms that it looks great, has an excellent display, but offers lousy performance due to the sluggish processor. As expected, battery life is particularly bad, with the system getting around 3.5 hours of real-world usage time while screen brightness is set to 40 percent. 

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7 replies on “Chuwi LapBook Plus might be the cheapest 4K laptop (so far)”

    1. The Gearbest listing at the above link says it does indeed include Windows 10 OS.
      But still… I’ve been very satisfied with the Apollo Lake Celeron N3450-based Chuwi LapBook 12.3 I purchased (for ~$310) several years ago. Similar to the formula for the LapBook 12.3 with its’ 2736 x 1824 display (same panel as in the MS Surface Pro), this LapBook Plus incorporates a high-quality display panel (the same as used in the Lenovo Yoga 730-15IKB) But that display hooked up with such a weak CPU in this case seems like it would make for a very unbalanced system.

  1. I’m not sure about this chip but I’m assuming it’s like the atom x6-z8550, which doesn’t support hevc 10-bit hardware decode. If that’s the case then the screen’s capabilities are almost pointless for multimedia purposes.

    1. Not sure about the 10bit HDR support but it does in fact support everything else, hardware 264 and 265 @4K 60hz with HDR. Multimedia is prolly just fine, games on the other hand…..

      1. Yeah, I had a tablet with the atom x5-z8550 and it could handle 4k and 8-but h.265 but not 10 bit. The thing is that though HDR is technically not the same thing as 10-bit (one is colour, the other is lighting/brightness). I can’t remember having seen an HDR video that’s not 10-bit too. That’s really what I was referring to when talking about the display’s abilities (since they tout the HDR capability).

        And yeah, gaming wasn’t worth mentioning.

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