Chuwi MiniBook X

Pros (Assuming Linux is installed)

  1. SCREEN:
    1.  quite good. 
    2. ~2k 16/10 aspect ratio, very nice.
    3.  60hz (or 50hz ???).
  2. KEYBOARD:
    1. Fullsize-enough keyboard. Typing on it feels fine. Wouldn't want to write a novel on it, but good enough for quick touch typing with familiar muscle memory.
    2. The key positions and sizes are sane and predictable.
    3. Has F1-F12 keys :D
  3. Great price. It was $317 shipped in December 2023.
  4. 12GB Ram is a nice amount. 512 GB SSD is good-enough.
  5. I really, really like the small form factor.
  6. Decent-seeming build quality. I think it's plastic but it feels nice.
  7. Headphone jack present.
  8. 2x USB C, no USB A.
  9. Has a fan. Older models were just passively cooled.
  10. Battery lasts a long time with systemctl enable --now tlp.service               
  11. Closing the lid puts it to sleep in Linux. Wow incredible.
  12. Touchpad works well. As a matter of fact, it works better on linux than it does on windows (On windows, I couldn't get 3 finger tap to map to middle mouse. Which is weird because 3 finger drag and other 3 finger gestures did work)

Cons

  1. Pretty weak processor (4 core intel n100). No discrete GPU either (expected).
    1. No GPU has advantadges in terms of power draw, thermals, and price.
  2. Typing on the keyboard with the backlight on causes the keyboard to slightly flicker. Especially on the lower of the two brightnesses. This gets distracting (for me) in the dark, but I'm pretty sensitive to noticing these types of things. Setting the keyboard backlight to the higher brightness setting nearly completely fixes this. 
  3. It comes with windows 11, but it's not activated. Doesn't matter to me because I installed Linux anyway.
  4. SCREEN
    1.  I's a rotated portrait (tablet?) screen. You can fix this in whatever OS you're using by setting the display to rotate 90º, but things like the boot screen or TTYs will generally display sidways. 
    2. Because of the rotation, screen tearing happens vertically as it renders left to right. IMO, vertical is not any better or worse than horizontal, but still worth noting. I will say, though, screen tearing is common given the low graphical performance of the device.
    3. I still have to correct the touch input for the rotated screen.
      1. correct the rotation by running (note that 9 is my touchscreen device found by xinput list):

         xinput set-prop 9 --type=float "Coordinate Transformation Matrix" 0 1 0 -1 0 1 0 0 1
      2. link to docs (Right rotate counterclockwise 90°)
    4. Nitpick: corners of the screen are slightly rounded, which looks kinda nice, but cuts of a some pixels in the corners from displaying anything.
    5. I'm currently stuck using 50hz. For some reason, 60hz blacks out the screen and doesn't work. 99% of the time this doesn't really matter.
  5. Just 2 USB C ports for all connectivity (+ headphone jack). No MicroSD slot.
  6. Only charges on the right side, no ports on the left.
  7. Not much documentation/support online, as this laptop is not used by many.
  8. Speakers are quiet
  9. This may or may not be a linux problem, but wifi performance doesn't seem that great. The connectivity isn't as good as my thinkpad or my phone.

Product Page

https://web.archive.org/web/20231221121445/https://www.chuwi.com/product/items/chuwi-minibook-x.html

To get to bios / boot drive selection in order to replace OS

For some reason, there is not any official or unofficial documentation on this

  1. Reboot Computer
  2. Kind of mash f7
  3. Choose boot drive

Note: ventoy did not work for installing linux. ventoy starts fine, but when you select the desired ISO, there's some UEFI error. Workaround is to not use ventoy and burn the iso directly to the USB.

Using Arch on this laptop

Things mostly work like a charm but there's a couple rough edges:

  • Screen must be rotated to right as it is sideways on launch
    • also it's stuck at 50hz, but that's no big deal, really
    • I have to figure out how to rotate the touch screen, too. thread
  • Wifi Issues
    • couldn't connect to password-protected wifis at first, confusing journalctl errors. Could have been a fluke, idk.
    • after a full day of testing stuff, this finally fixed the wifi: source
      • NOTE: this increases wifi connectability, but lowers wifi performance
echo "options iwlwifi disable_11ax=1" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/iwlwifi.conf

reboot

Other Notes

  • In ~2012 my first personal laptop ever was an Acer Aspire One D270 netbook. It came with windows but I installed Linux on it. This Chuwi is similar in form factor, but modern.