The next low-cost laptop from Chinese PC maker Chuwi is a model with a 13.3 inch full HD display, an aluminum chassis, and a slim design: the Chuwi LarkBook measures less than half an inch thick and weighs about 2.2 pounds.

With a 6-watt, quad-core Intel Celeron N4120 processor, it’s not exactly going to be a speed demon. But it should be fast enough for basic computing.

Chuwi hasn’t announced global pricing yet, but the LarkBook goes on sale December 15th, and starting now, customers can sign up to get a coupon for $50 off when it is available.

A listing on AliExpress also indicates that the retail price will likely be somewhere in the $400 to $450 range.

Chuwi says the laptop features DTS audio and has four speakers and two microphones. The laptop has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. And the screen is an IPS display with wide viewing angles and up to 220-nits of brightness.

Ports include a USB-C port, two USB-A ports (at least one of which is USB 3), a headset jack, a mini HDMI port, and a microSD card reader.

While it’s not unusual to see cheap Chinese notebooks with low power Intel processors, the LarkBook stands out at least a little bit due to its design, size, weight, and speaker system. It’s also interesting to see Chuwi using the “Lark” prefix for this model, apparently in an attempt to tie it to the Chuwi LarkBox and LarkBox Pro mini computers that launched earlier this year.

Both of those devices are 2.4″ x 2.4″ x 1.7″ desktop computers with 10-watt Intel Gemini Lake Refresh processors, which means they have a little more horsepower than the LarkBook. But what they have in common is that the LarkBox is very small by desktop standards, while the LarkBook is… reasonably small by notebook standards.

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11 replies on “Chuwi LarkBook is a 2.2 pound budget laptop”

  1. I forgot to mention, but this is interesting. This laptop may have legitimate DTS sound but for some reason none of the Chinese PC makers can license HDMI legitimately to their PCs so Chuwi just wrote HD to the HDMI port on their graphic:

    https://img.chuwi.com/Home/LarkBook/LarkBook-a1_11.jpg

    If Chinese PC makers want to make it in the West they should invest in a few servers for the benefit of their overseas customers outside the Great Firewall.

  2. Nitpick: N4100 or N4120, not that there is any difference, just the name.

    My problem – I want one (chuwi/teclast/bmax/jumper/etc) but I can’t get. Buying from China to Europe:
    – unknown delivery period
    – unknown extra costs at customs
    – no warranty even for Death-on-Arrival

    I wish couple of them do like Lenovo and go global.
    I wish more ARM PC (not chromebooks) next year
    I wish to thank Apple for the M1 and the fanless Macbook Air, now every piece of software will gain native ARM support.
    I wish all the above finally makes the major US (HP/Dell) and Taiwan (Acer/Asus) brands do something and stop making waste!

    1. Chuwi, also a few weeks ago quietely added “HeroBook Plus”. As it customary in China naming tech products is random.

      I regulary check Europe|an EU Ebays but close to nothing.

      Work-From-Home and Study-From-Home really affect the pricing and availability of such type of devices. If you search a little you will see Chuwi had the same spec devices 2 years ago at half the price.
      First word problems.

    2. Have you tried Amazon.de? Here’s one Chuwi laptop which came up in the search, it’s got pretty good reviews:

      https://www.amazon.de/Laptops-CoreBook-Pro-i3-6157U-Graphics/dp/B08JPMVKKN

      And 2020’s popular, boxy mini PC, which hasn’t got the same good reviews:

      https://www.amazon.de/Mini-PC-CHUWI-Larkbox-Processor-Computer/dp/B08GP5T197

      Both are sold by CHUWI-Direct and Fulfilled by Amazon. I still wouldn’t risk them, why would I? The major brands (Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo) choosing not to compete with Chuwi in some capacity got me thinking, though.

      1. Thanks, yes I tried, actually on your link there are 3 options: CoreBook Pro , CoreBook X, AeroBook Pro. But these 400E+ prices don’t work for me.

        The chinese brands have not penetrated out of China.

        The major brands have mid and high end tiers and don’t want to “cannibalize” them by the low end where the margins are the smallests.
        The Chinese brands have only the low-end and don’t care.

        Major brands have costs for marketing, distribution, service and support, legal.
        Chinese brands don’t have such. Their R&D are also lower.

        I still wish in 2021, 720p displays and 4GB soldered RAM (either 8GB+ or slots) are gone for good.

    3. N4120, according to Chuwi. They used the wrong chip in some of their graphics, but tell me the Larkbook will ship with a Celeron N4120 processor.

      1. Thanks, before commenting I checked their website and aliexpress listing – both the images and the text.
        Anyway it doesn’t matter, it’s the same thing.

  4. Does this charge via USB? And if so, can it charge on a phone-voltage charging block?

    I’m also a bit amused seeing statements like “should be fast enough”. This is 2020. As long as modern encryption and video codecs are supported, any processor from the last 20 years will be fast enough for far more than “basic computing”. I’m running what so-called “enthusiasts” would call a terrible chip: an Atom x5 at 1.44 GHz. Yet I can have hundreds of browser tabs open, scores of Notepad++ tabs, LibreOffice, multiple web servers, multiple Python scripts running while VS is compiling C++, Steam running, etc with no slowdown. And if I was running a VM or a so-called “AAA” game, I would be RAM or GPU limited, not CPU limited. Even an i3 is massive overkill for 99%+ of users. I would like to see more of these low-watt systems that I can run off any USB phone block anywhere in the world—don’t chase the big, shiny, and often unimportant CPU speed/core/model numbers!

    1. But I hope you have lots of RAM, a fast SSD, and a non-bloated OS. On the other hand the base model Surface Laptop Go has only 4 GB of RAM, eMMC storage, and it has to struggle with all the bloat that Windows 10 is. I’m not an expert at building configurations, so I don’t know.

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