Chuwi MiniBook 8 inch laptop now available for $430 (retail price)

The Chuwi MiniBook is a tiny laptop with an 8 inch touchscreen display, a 360-degree hinge, and Windows 10 software.

It’s also one of the most affordable mini-laptops around — it went up for pre-order for about $430 and up during an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign earlier this year, and now it’s available from Banggood for just about the same price — no pre-orders or crowdfunding required.

The only catch is that Banggood is only selling the entry-level model with an Intel Celeron N4100 processor. If you didn’t back the crowdfunding campaign you might have to wait a little longer for a model with a more powerful processor.

Chuwi has been making inexpensive Windows laptops and tablets for a number of years, but the MiniBook is the company’s first foray into the recently booming mini laptop space.

I got a chance to test a pre-release prototype this summer. It has a halfway decent keyboard, a decent selection of ports, a not-that-great webcam (but at least it has one), and most importantly, a compact design: the MiniBook measures about 0.7 inches thick and weighs just 1.5 pounds.

You can use it as a notebook or tablet. It features a full HD touchscreen display, backlit keys, stereo speakers, a fingerprint sensor, and an M.2 slot that you can use to add an SSD.

The entry-level model has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage. It’s not the fastest little laptop around, but it’s one of the cheapest.

Just make sure you know what you’re in for before buying a mini laptop like the Chuwi MiniBook. The 8 inch screen makes this little computer more portable than most full-fledged Windows PCs. But it can be a little awkward to do any serious multitasking on a display that small. The keyboard is a little cramped and some keys are awkwardly placed. There’s an optical touch sensor instead of a touchpad. And the MiniBook only gets around 4.5 hours of battery life.

That said, if you’ve had your eye on mini-laptops, but you’ve been turned off by the relatively high price tags for these machines, it’s nice to have a relatively affordable option.

For what it’s worth, you could also spend $440 and pick up a One Mix 1S Yoga with a 7 inch display and an Intel Celeron 3965Y processor instead. The upside is that you’d get better graphics performance by paying $10 more.  But the downside is that you’d get weaker CPU performance and an even smaller screen and keyboard.

via Tablet Monkeys