Chuwi UniBook review: New Intel silicon makes it an affordable laptop, but it comes with a few caveats
by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/mark-pickavance · TechRadarTechRadar Verdict
Based purely on price, the Chuwi UniBook seems a fantastic deal, but it has some limitations you need to be aware of. The one that concerns me most is 8GB running Windows 11, but apparently Microsoft has plans to make this work better than it does currently.
Pros
- +Affordable
- +Lots of ports, including a Gigabit LAN
- +Latest Intel silicon
Cons
- -Only 8GB of RAM that can’t be upgraded
- -No USB4 or USB 3.2 Gen 2
- -SSD is only Gen 3 in a Gen 4 slot
- -AI is below Copilot Plus certification
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Chuwi UniBook: 30-second review
The Chuwi UniBook is a 14-inch Windows laptop built around Intel's newly launched Core 3 304 processor, part of the Wildcat Lake family and the first Series 3 chip to appear in a laptop at this price. It weighs a claimed 1.2 kg, comes housed in an anodised aluminium chassis, and pairs a 16:10 IPS display with 8GB of memory and a 256GB SSD.
Positioning this model directly against Apple's MacBook Neo, undercutting it by around $250 while offering a larger screen, the same memory and storage as the base Neo configuration, and a far wider set of ports. Early benchmarks of the Core 3 304 from other devices suggest genuinely strong single-core performance for a chip this cheap, which makes the UniBook one of the more interesting budget launches of the year on paper.
The critical caveat is that macOS runs reasonably well with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, where Windows 11 is a singularly less spectacular experience.
While you can upgrade the storage to any Gen 3 or 4 NVMe 2280 drive, the amount of RAM isn’t able to be expanded.
Price is therefore the trade-off, which means the UniBook isn’t ideal for substantial tasks, even if it's acceptable for light work. One side benefit of not being especially powerful is that the battery will last easily more than a working day, and it might even stretch to two.
From a value perspective, the Chuwi UniBook looks like an excellent deal, but the specification precludes it from being one of the best business laptops.
Chuwi UniBook: Price and availability
- How much does it cost? From $450
- When is it out? Available now
- Where can you get it? Direct from Chuwiretailers
Chuwi initially opened pre-orders for the UniBook at $449 US dollars, positioning it as the cheapest laptop yet built around Intel's Wildcat Lake platform. At the time of writing, using the Global Chuwi store, it's priced at $449 for US customers, £335 for the UK and €449 for Europeans.
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