Chuwi HeroBook review: 14-inch netbook cheaper than smartphone

The advantages of netbooks on ultra-efficient mobile processors are undeniable: lightness, compactness,

autonomy. But the small 10 ... 12-inch display put by him by definition is not very convenient, and the truncated or reduced keyboard is completely inconvenient. Therefore, the idea of releasing a “plus size” netbook with a 14-inch display, in which there is room for a full keyboard (if not for the layout, then at least for the size of the keys), looks quite logical. Chuwi HeroBook is just such a device.

What is it

Chuwi HeroBook is a budget laptop onThe "netbook" Intel Atom x5-E8000 processor, designed for simple everyday tasks like working with text and tables, web surfing - is all that most people do on the Internet. It has a modern design in the style of Apple macbooks, a 14-inch IPS-display with a resolution of 1920 × 1080, a large touchpad with support for multi-touch gestures and a comfortable full-size island-style keyboard. HeroBook is equipped with a built-in 64 GB SSD and a separate compartment for installing additional solid-state data storage. And you can expand the storage resources of this laptop using a conventional microSD card.

What is in the box

The Chuwi HeroBook comes in a not-so-bulky box with excellent damage protection. Only a small power supply, documentation and keyboard stickers are included.

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How nice is the look of the Chuwi HeroBook

HeroBook looks unpretentious: silver plastic, rounded corners, beveled profile (the back of the case is slightly thicker than the front).

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The plastic case, frankly, is flimsy. The display cover easily bends when opening around the corner, and the main part of the case, if you click on one of the nearest corners, bends noticeably and creaks. But the relatively light weight of the laptop allows you to carry it without problems in a simple fabric backpack behind your shoulders.

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The name of the model, as well as the designation of connectors,indicators and other inscriptions on the case are engraved, and depending on the lighting and viewing angle, they are either darker than the case, or lighter than it, or unreadable until completely invisible, this can be seen in the photo below and other photographs in the review.

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HeroBook has two USB ports, an audio output andcard reader, as well as an HDMI port for connecting an external display. All this, together with a power connector and a charging indicator, is located on the sides of the case, closer to the far edge, where the case is thicker. On the left side, there are places for additional ports (apparently for older versions). There is no Ethernet port, but it is not really needed here. A highly specialized card reader is only suitable for microSD cards. Those connectors, the purpose of which is not in doubt, did not even begin to sign - to save, so save. On the underside of the case there are tiny holes for microphones. But in this model there is only one microphone - on the right.

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On the bottom of the case, under the small cover, there is a slot for an additional SSD of M.2 format, size 2242 or 2280.

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Above the display is a webcam with a resolution of ... 0.3 megapixels. Seriously? in 2019? The image she gives is the expected quality.

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The display has a standard resolution of Full HD(1920x1080 pixels) and not too thick frames. The matte finish does not glare, the backlight is uniform and has a good adjustment range. The image is well read from any angle. The backlight brightness is adjusted separately for battery and mains operation, therefore it can change when the power supply is connected or disconnected. There is a night mode with a blue filter, which can be turned on manually or according to a schedule.

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Checking with a colorimeter showed that the display onsurprise is well calibrated in all respects, but its color gamut is much less than the standard sRGB color space. This in itself does not catch the eye, but when compared with a high-quality desktop display, it becomes noticeable that HeroBook colors are less vibrant and saturated. This is especially true for portraits. Nevertheless, for my money the display is very good, to be honest, I expected the worst.

The maximum measured brightness is 223.737 lumens, the minimum is 0.426 lumens, and the static contrast is 525: 1.

Keyboard with large, conveniently sized keyshas an abbreviated layout without a digital block. It is emulated by a group of letter keys using the Fn modifier, if you need to enter several numbers once, or by turning on the NumLock mode, if you intend to enter a large number of numbers.

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Pleased with the full cursor keys andfull set of Shift, Ctrl and Alt. The top row of the keyboard is reduced in height, and the functions of its keys are not assigned to the keys as I was used to on other mobile PCs. By default, they work like control buttons - adjusting the volume, brightness, disabling wireless interfaces, Pause (who else knows why this button?), Insert and Print Screen are placed here, and Delete shares the key with Num Lock. The standard functions of the F1 – F12 keys work through Fn (but what? Logical though). Hot keys for switching between own and third-party displays are not provided, this will have to be done in the screen settings, if you suddenly need to.

The keyboard is not initially localized, on itonly English layout. The kit includes stickers with the Cyrillic alphabet, which can not be called high-quality. I’m not saying that they peel off or the characters on them are erased - no, this did not happen during testing. Either they are designed for reduced narrow keys, or they simply saved them, I don’t know, but they look ugly on full-size square buttons, and even Latin letters are much smaller and thinner than Cyrillic ones, and this is confusing. And at night, in the light of the display, the Latin alphabet and additional characters (including the numbers on the virtual digital block, which in the original are highlighted in blue, and on the stickers are the same white) are almost invisible, unlike the Cyrillic alphabet. Maybe this is not a minus for everyone, but those who often use the English layout will definitely not like it.

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In general, the keyboard is very convenient, you get used to it almost instantly, and the return to the standard desktop keyboard suddenly brought some discomfort.

The HeroBook's touchpad is large and comfortable. In the lower part there are hidden “mouse buttons” - the idea is so-so, because when you hover over a link and then move your finger to the “button”, the cursor often moves. It would be better if these keys were separate, outside the touch surface.

However, it is quite possible to do without them - the touchpad supports standard for Windows 10 multiple touches and gestures with several fingers. A little more about this for those who are not in the know.

2 fingers:

a touch brings up a context menu (similar to the right mouse button);
two-finger scrolling - scrolling content in application windows;
mixing and raising fingers - scaling.

3 fingers:

a touch brings up a search bar, which is performed over the entire contents of the internal drive;
gesture up calls dispatcher openapplications, and if you scroll below - there is the history of the opened files and applications (Timeline) over the past few days. If desired, the depth of history can be increased to 30 days.
gesture down minimizes all windows.
a gesture left-right, you can switch between open windows (analog Alt + Tab).

4 fingers:

a touch brings up a notification bar and switches at the right edge of the display;
left-right gesture, you can switch between desktops, if there are several. It is a pity that you can not assign your wallpaper to each table.
the up and down gesture is similar to the three-finger gesture.

Having mastered this control system, I easily managedwithout a mouse and touchpad buttons. The only habit that I had to abandon because of an obvious inconvenience was drag-n-drop files or text fragments. However, nothing prevents connecting the mouse to the USB port or via Bluetooth (the corresponding transceiver is built into the laptop).

What's inside?

And inside HeroBook has a 64-bit 4-coreMobile processor Intel Atom x5-E8000, made by 14-nanometer technology, with a base clock frequency of 1.04 GHz and a maximum of 2 GHz. RAM in the amount of 4 GB operates at a frequency of 1066 GHz. Part of the RAM is allocated to the integrated Intel HD N3000 video core operating at a frequency of 320 MHz.

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No active cooling, visiblethere are no openings for ventilation, but there is a suspicion that they go into the gap between the case and the display unit - it feels warm when the computer is working. It's hard to look there, and only 4 openings for the speakers of the built-in stereo system are clearly visible.

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Unfortunately, the netbook does not support Wi-Fi networks.a / ac operating at a frequency of 5 GHz, but “out of the box”, without additional applications, can work as an access point for other devices, expanding the coverage of the wireless network.

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Software

HeroBook preinstalled Windows 10 HomeEdition, by default with the English language of the interface, but the Russian and Ukrainian language packs were installed without problems. Avast antivirus is included in the basic package; Office 365 is proposed to be used for office tasks.

How he shows himself in work

The laptop was mainly used at home, and a littlein the office. He accessed the network through a home or office router, as well as through an access point in a smartphone. I really liked the fact that it is absolutely silent, and the keyboard left a pleasant impression. There were no problems with the stability of the system and installed applications. The system boots quickly, shutting down and rebooting also does not make you wait long. But the applications run quite slowly. The brightness of the display on the street under direct sunlight is not enough, for normal operation you need to look for a shadow. But the netbook is not a smartphone, it is not used on the go, and in most cases there is shelter from the sun where you can sit down and put it somewhere. The minimum level is quite comfortable for night work in a dark room.

As for the multimedia features, theyquite correspond to the class of the device. The speakers reproduce sound cleanly and without distortion at maximum volume, but frankly there is not enough low frequencies, because of this the sound is “bright”, sharp, a bit unpleasant. The sound quality in the headphones, of course, depends heavily on themselves, but even with the mid-level “earbuds” the HeroBook sounds good. No background noise or interference was noticed during the operation of the device.

“Out of the box,” that is, using Windows MediaPlayer, the netbook without any problems plays files in Full HD, shot by a smartphone and a camera, in MP4 and MOV formats. Packed in .mkv, a full-length movie downloaded from a torrent (solely for the sake of experiment) refused to play in the preinstalled application, and in VLC it hung tight at the 8th second.

How long (and how fast) Chuwi HeroBook has been running

The laptop lives on one charge for quite some time. In the mode of periodic web surfing and communication in social networks, he easily lasted all day, so that when traveling for 1-2 days, not involving intensive work on the computer, the power supply can not be taken. Video in MOV format and FullHD resolution with a stream of about 20 Mbps was played for about 5 hours (at full brightness of the display and half volume).

In the first couple of days, testing a laptop at home, I wasvery disappointed with its performance when watching online video. It turned out that video from Youtube in Full HD is very slow, at 720 p it goes jerky, and only at 360 p it is smooth, but you yourself understand how it looks in full screen mode. Somehow, it was poorly believed that the “hero ”’s hardware was already so bad. The review almost turned out to be "abusive", but ... when I brought HeroBook to work, he was completely rehabilitated and without any problems played the same video in 1080p. Apparently, I have a problem with my router or provider at home. By the way, here the Ethernet port was really not enough to connect to the network directly, bypassing the router, and find out the reason.

Trying the “heroic book” with heavy games I don’tbecame - he certainly will not master the new ones, but the old ones are of little interest to anyone. Yes, and the built-in SSD is tight for the game library. But I did 3D Mark tests for the sake of order. Here are their results:

PC Mark tests - Home, Work andCreative (although the latter was clearly superfluous), each in two versions - regular and Accelerated (using OpenCL). It took all daylight. Having run the next test, I estimated the speed of its passage and went for a walk with the dog for half an hour. When I returned, I saw that progress had barely exceeded half. As a result, HeroBook was ahead of only 5% of devices that passed the PCMARK 8 Home test.

Regarding simple tasks like web surfing andcommunication in social networks, then HeroBook copes with this normally, but you cannot call it fast. Full loading of the main Facebook page takes 15–20 seconds (until the drawing of all visible elements is completed), and then when scrolling, new information is also loaded with a noticeable delay. Scrolling is a bit torn, not perfectly smooth.

There are no special complaints about the operation of the wireless network,although there was a feeling that the power of the wireless transceiver is small. Copying files over the network from a home computer, also connected via a single-band Wi-Fi adapter, occurred at a speed of up to 3.5 MB / s.

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The disk subsystem test produced the following results:

Internet connection speed reached 22-23Mbit / s next to the router, and at a distance of about 10 meters through 3 partitions Speedtest on the laptop showed only 5-7 Mbit / s with a gigabit connection to the provider and speeds of about 200 Mb / s on a PC with a wired connection.

In the slowness of the test subject, of course,blame the Intel Atom processor developers or Chinese engineers who “can’t cook it,” but I’m inclined to think that its resources are simply not enough for the normal operation of Windows 10. Out of 4 GB of RAM, idle mode, without a single running application (except for the pre-installed antivirus Avast), 1.8-1.9 GB are already taken, the processor load at rest is at the level of 70%. When you start the browser (Firefox) and when loading any page in it, or when 5-6 open sites are simply loaded and left alone - the memory is almost exhausted, the processor is 100% loaded. The pre-installed Edge browser consumes memory significantly more economically, but the processor loads the same way. In my opinion, we see a clear discrepancy between the hardware and the hardware requirements of the system. Save the situation can only more “light” OS. Perhaps even with Windows 7 there would already be a completely different picture, not to mention any light Linux distributions or an adapted version of Android.

In the dry residue

Chuwi HeroBook - relatively compact and lightweighta laptop suitable for simple everyday tasks. It is convenient for working with text, it is a great “typewriter” and a good tool for web surfing, socializing in social networks and instant messengers. It has an IPS display with large viewing angles and FullHD resolution, a good keyboard and a huge touchpad with support for multi-touch gestures. For serious work with photos and videos (considering the color gamut of the display and low performance) HeroBook is unsuitable, which can hardly be called a disadvantage at its price. Due to the small amount of internal storage, watching videos on it and listening to music is better online. If you don’t overload it with overwhelming tasks, it will be a good “workhorse” for web surfing and working with documents and tables, and after installing an additional SSD - and for storing a small library.

You can buy HeroBook on AliExpress. Its price on the day the review was completed was ridiculous $ 206 with free shipping. For another $ 7 you can add an envelope case to it, and for $ 13 you can add a bag. But Ukrainians should bear in mind that the nearest authorized service is located in Russia, and also do not forget about the need to pay a fee of more than 100 Euros (we have separate material that describes the algorithm for calculating the fee for orders abroad).

3 reasons to buy a Chuwi HeroBook:

you need a convenient and “long-playing” tool for frequent work with text outside the home / office;
It is important for you to maintain the user experience and the full compatibility of the formats of your work files
A great choice for the first laptop student.

2 reasons not to buy a Chuwi HeroBook:

it is not suitable for photographers and designers who need the most accurate color rendering;
gamers should look for something more powerful and with a large drive volume.

Specifications of Chuwi Hero Book

Display
14 inches, 1920x1080 (16: 9), IPS

Dimensions and weight
330x220x15 mm, 1.47 kg (2.0 kg per pack)

operating system
64-bit Microsoft Windows 10

CPU
Intel Atom x5-E8000

Ram
4 GB DDR3-1066 MHz

Graphics
Intel HD Graphics N3000

Power supply
external, 12 V, 2 A

Storage device
SSD 64GB eMMC

Communications
IEEE 802.11b / g / n 2.4 GHz, Bluetooth 4.1

Connectors
2xUSB 3.0 Type-A, 1xHDMI, 3.5mm audio jack

Camera
0.3 MP

Battery
Lithium Polymer, 5000 mAh

Chuwi herobook

A laptop for simple tasks: cute, comfortable, inexpensive

This 14 inch relatively light laptop withThe "netbook" Intel Atom processor and SSD-drive attracts a convenient island-type keyboard, a large touchpad with multi-touch gestures and the ability to easily increase the volume of the drive using external microSD memory cards and another bay for a second SSD. The Chuwi HeroBook has a modern design, low weight and modest dimensions at a low price, making it a great buy for the first ever portable Windows computer.

Buy on Aliexpress

great price

Another reason to spend gg-koin

This laptop can be picked up by spending your accumulated gg-coins. Followers gg they know that we have a “game currency” on our site,which is accrued for each visit to the site, each comment left. So far, ggc could be used to pay for a site without ads (in this case, you won’t see a single banner - it’s even better than a banner cut because all banner places simply collapse, and do not remain with holes). In this case, you need to go to your account settings, select the gg-coins tab and transfer 0.5 gg-coin to Tekhnoslav Bergamot user (this is not so small as it looks). We will send this laptop to the one who makes the translation first. The rest of the transfer will be sent back, notifying everyone that the device has found its owner. If you do not have enough gg-coins on your account, do not worry - this is an occasion to start collecting them right now (read the instructions on how to do this and how to use them).

P.S. The laptop is leaving avik. Transaction time is 14:42.