Chinese Company Chuwi Comes With Two More Products Aimed At Microsoft's Surface Line

I'm currently typing this piece on the Hi 13 from Shenzhen-based company Chuwi. The device, as you can see from the photo above, looks like a laptop in the MacBook mold, but it is, similar to the Hi 10 Plus I reviewed two months ago, a 2-in-1 tablet with an extra keyboard add-on. The Hi 13 is better than the Hi 10 Plus in almost every way though. The 13.5-inch display has been bumped up to a cool 3,000 x 2,000 resolution (that's 267 pixels-per-inch), and because it's a tablet, the screen supports 10-point multi-touch.

If you're into 2-in-1 tablets, you may realize those numbers -- it's the same as Microsoft's Surface Book. Chuwi's Hi 13, though, costs just 1/3 the price -- it's currently selling for HK$2,754 (US$350). Of course, the internals are a bit behind Microsoft's offering. The Hi 13 "only" has a 64-bit quad-core Intel Apollo Lake Celeron N3450 processor, which, clocked at 2.2Ghz, isn't going to be the
most powerful device out there. But for me, who mostly uses my laptop/tablet for web browsing, word processing and YouTube (even 4k videos) watching, the Hi 13 hasn't missed a beat.

The Hi13 has enough ports for me, but probably not a more heavy user: micro USB slot, micro HDMI slot, a docking port, and 35mm headphone jack down one edge. Thankfully, the keyboard case has a full sized USB port, which I used to plug in a wireless mouse. I do that despite the Hi13 having a very respectable trackpad (for its price tag). In fact, the keyboard overall is excellent, with more than 2mm of travel and page up/down keys and other shortcuts. I'm typing on it right now and it feels just as good as my Dell desktop's keyboard.

The bezels are a bit large, and the all-metal build is quite heavy (with the keyboard attached, it weights 2.5 pounds), other than that, this device feels premium and performs way above its price tag.

I don't quite like it as a tablet -- unlike the Hi10, this one doesn't have a dual-boot OS, meaning no Android OS. Windows 10 is fine as a PC device, not a tablet. In my week of testing this I almost used it exclusively as a laptop, and it worked just fine for me. I even took it to Singapore and wrote my Galaxy S8 review on it -- the 10,000 mAh battery inside meant I only needed to charge it every other day.

The main selling point for the Hi13, however, has to be the display. It's very sharp for a budget tablet, color accuracy is good and max brightness gets up to 498 lux, which is enough to use out in direct sunlight without problem.

In all, the Hi13 isn't a device that will be a performance beast (the speakers, for example, are sort of meh, and heavy games lead to framerate stutters), but for something that's almost a full grand cheaper than the Surface Book, it's worth taking a look.

If you do need more power, however, Chuwi is currently crowdfunding for its SurBook. The processor is the same as the Hi13, but the Surbook will come shipped with 6GB of RAM. The display gets a bump too, going to 2,736 x 1,834 resolution, which on the 12.3-inch is enough to qualify as a 2k display.

The SurBook's keyboard case is a much slimmer one than the heavy metal Hi13 case, which means it'll be a much lighter device. Pricing hasn't been announced, but you can bet it'll be in the US$300 to $400 range again.

Credit: Ben Sin (Forbes)