Review: Chuwi's $449 Unibook laptop is a funhouse-mirror MacBook Neo
Ars Technica · LC · trust 44/100
bargain hunters beware Review: Chuwi’s $449 Unibook laptop is a funhouse-mirror MacBook Neo The Unibook is a weird entry-level laptop for people with patience.
51 Chuwi's Unibook 304. Credit: Andrew Cunningham Chuwi's Unibook 304. Credit: Andrew Cunningham Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav In another time, the MacBook Neo could have caused a substantial realignment of the lowish-end laptop business. Sure, it has shortcomings compared to the MacBook Air, but it could have at least encouraged PC makers to start shipping consistently decent keyboards, screens, and build quality in the Neo’s $599 price window.
The PC makers did start responding, thanks in part to Intel’s actually new non-Ultra Core Series 3 processors (codenamed Wildcat Lake). Intel has resisted its usual compunction to serve the budget market with aging, re-labeled silicon and has created a lower-end, lower-performance processor with the same building blocks (and the same manufacturing processes) as this year’s high-end, high-performance models.
The likes of Dell, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo began hopping on the Wildcat Lake train fairly quickly, announcing would-be Neo competitors. But it felt like most of them were having trouble matching the Neo’s barebones specs, let alone undercutting them. Dell’s XPS 13 started at $599, but only for students. It would be $699 for everyone else . Acer’s Swift Air 14 was announced at $699 , too. Sure, sometimes these offered features the Neo didn’t have. But the point of the Neo is that it eschews frills and frippery in favor of nailing the basics.
But even the MacBook Neo ended up being too good to be true. Apple raised its price by $100 three months after introducing it.
Yes, if you want a laptop that feels good, looks good, and performs well here in The Year Of The Unforgettable Memory Crisis, it’s hard to find a good deal, even if you’re willing to settle for a middle-shelf processor, the bare minimum amount of RAM that a modern operating system and browser will reasonably run on, and a meager 256GB or inexcessive 512GB storage drive.
There was one US-announced Wildcat Lake system that has managed to undercut the MacBook Air and the rest of the industry, though. Chinese PC company Chuwi has put together the Unibook , a Wildcat Lake computer with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage that it’s selling for an introductory price of $449 (its “normal” price is listed at $569, but it’s not clear whether or when the price might go back up.)
On paper, that looks pretty good. And in practice, the Unibook isn’t completely without its charms. But “you get what you pay for” applies here in multiple ways, and it’s difficult to imagine recommending this machine to anyone other than a computer geek looking for a weird project PC.
The Unibook’s keyboard is pretty good, and its trackpad is pretty bad. Andrew Cunningham At least the Unibook has a lot of ports! On the left, you’ve got a pair of USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and a USB 3 port. Andrew Cunningham At least the Unibook has a lot of ports! On the left, you’ve got a pair of USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and a USB 3 port. Andrew Cunningham On the right, a microSD slot, a headphone jack, a USB 2.0 port, and gigabit Ethernet. Andrew Cunningham On the right, a microSD slot, a headphone jack, a USB 2.0 port, and gigabit Ethernet. Andrew Cunningham At least the Unibook has a lot of ports! On the left, you’ve got a pair of USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and a USB 3 port. Andrew Cunningham On the right, a microSD slot, a headphone jack, a USB 2.0 port, and gigabit Ethernet. Andrew Cunningham Remove the 11 Philips-head screws to access the SSD, Wi-Fi card, and battery. The laptop’s other components are largely not upgradeable. Andrew Cunningham The lid. The laptop’s chassis is mostly thin aluminum—it feels a bit flimsy, but no more so than most cheap laptops. Andrew Cunningham The Unibook looks unassuming at first glance, somewhere in the neighborhood of an Asus Zenbook. It feels like a cop-out to describe something as “nondescript,” but this is a pretty down-the-middle clamshell PC design.
To begin with the good, the Unibook far outstrips the port offerings of the MacBook Neo or the new XPS 13. It offers a pair of USB-C ports, a full-size HDMI port, two 5Gbps USB 3 ports, one USB 2.0 port, a micro-SD card slot, a headphone jack, and even an Ethernet port. I’ve never loved the little folding-out design for Ethernet ports that some laptops use to save a little space—if and when the little hinge breaks, it will start flopping around and looking bad—but so many laptops use thin-and-lightness as an excuse to ship a bare-minimum allotment of ports that it’s nice to see a budget-minded laptop ship with a ton of connectivity options.
The Unibook’s M.2 2280 drive is also pretty easy to replace. Remove the 11 Philips-head screws on the bottom of the laptop, and its bottom pries up with a bit of pressure. If you want a larger drive or just one from a better-known company, it’s easy to put one in (the built-in SSD is made by “HOGE,” a name that means about as much to most North Americans as “Chuwi”). The Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module is also easily accessible; the battery is, too, if you can manage to find a replacement somehow.
Also in the “good” column is the laptop’s perfectly not-bad keyboard. The keys aren’t as firm or satisfying as those on the keyboards in the MacBook lineup or in Framework’s Laptop 12 or Laptop 13, but the typing feel is decent, and the backlight is nice and even. The computer is missing a fingerprint reader (there’s also no face-scanning camera, which means the Unibook has no biometric login option at all), but this is a corner that the MacBook Neo’s base model also cuts.
Judged by the standards of the category, the Unibook’s screen isn’t awful. It’s a 13-inch IPS display panel with a decent 1920 x 1200 resolution and 16:10 aspect ratio, a step…
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