I have one of these. It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.

I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.

My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.

Used laptops are such a good deal that you could something high quality in excellent condition for so little that I almost can't justify buying something like this. Like used Dell XPS laptops are ridiculously cheap and they're amazing for the used price.

Or really buy any laptop rated highly by Dave2D or other reviewers that's 4 to 5 years old.

I'm owner of this laptop - great device for home bed/couch use and traveling, which is easy to take and feels not risky in terms of potential damage or lost.

The screen isn't terrible. Frequency can be easily overclocked from 50 to 80Hz, making the manufacturer's decision quite odd. Good brightness, and after calibration, the colors are even somewhat normal.

In my case, the keyboard works reliably and isn't annoying, although it does take a little getting used to due to the smaller key size.

Only one thing that frustrates me - they cost-cutted on the battery controller. The OS only receives information about the battery voltage, without details on consumption/cycles/Ah. The consumption is hard-coded, which means the battery life estimate is never nearly accurate.

And yeah, terible touchpad but it's not that bad when you have touchscreen.

I love mine: https://taoofmac.com/space/reviews/2025/05/15/2230 - I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy, besides being able to drive huge external monitors.

I miss my Sony Vaio P series which fitted in a similar sort of niche, the cellphone radio made it just by far the best laptop I've ever used. Modern laptops don't seem to have provision for a LTE/5G radio which always confuses me a bit, in this form factor it would be ideal. I'm surprised nobody has cloned this actually, with phone screens being the right aspect ratio it seems obvious.

https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/2014/10/03/9f923860-4b47-11e4-b6...

Man, I bought a 10" atom Toshiba netbook in 2010 when I found out I was accepted to study abroad. It had 2gb memory and came with Windows XP (even though Vista was the latest).

I had to close everything on the OS just to watch a youtube video at <720p without stuttering. I ended up putting Debian on it which lead to me learning Linux and Ruby on Rails, and booting the dev server (rails server) would take minutes on a hello world.

When I got my first job out of uni, they gave me a Macbook Air, and it was so fast that I felt bad thinking about how much time I wasted waiting for things to happen on that netbook.

17 years later, in my late 30s, I don't think I could go back to such a small screen. But it was cool doing real work on something so small.

Watch out guys, Chinese manufacturer CHUWI was found to be involved in a mislabeling scandal that involved its CoreBook X and CoreBook Plus laptops. The company advertised these laptops as having the AMD Ryzen 5 7430U CPU, but in reality, they used the older Ryzen 5 5500U CPU.

I bought one of these last year, specifically looking for a modern take on the netbook form factor. I run PopOS on mine and absolutely love the machine. It’s a perfect travel laptop and it has largely replaced the iPad mini that I previously used as my travel companion. I sometimes use it with XReal glasses, which is great. I’ve found that a 35 watt phone charger is sufficient to charge it over USB C, so I don’t even need to carry a laptop-class charging brick.

I will note that I also had the screen rotation issue described in the post, but it was easy to solve at the desktop environment level in COSMIC. I didn’t bother dealing with it elsewhere because I honestly don’t mind if the grub menu is sideways.

I have one, and I love it! I don't use it as much as I thought I would, but it brings joy everytime. If you have a need for an extremely portable, not very powerful device on your life, this might be it.

I agree with the complaint about the trackpad, but the keyboard has been just fine for me. Just a bit small, of course. I also find the screen perfectly acceptable for what I use this thing for: youtube, taking notes, writing emails, small bouts of coding and ssh'ing into servers.

My main complaint is related to battery management. May be it's becaused I'm used to Macbooks, but it drives me nuts to go pick the Minibook up and find that it has no power, because I haven't used it in a couple of days and I put it to sleep. I haven't measured, but the power use on sleep is noticeable, and I suspect the leakage while hibernating might be significant too.

I don't really like the laptop form factor. Laptops are the perfect solution for only one use case: using them on your lap. On a table, I'd rather have the computer be just a tablet, to add a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. At my desk, with bigger screens, I'd like the computer to disappear into a small puck or box, like a Mac Mini. With the Minibook, being so small, the form factor makes sense again. It's so portable, so easy to take with me to a coffee shop or on a trip, it's worth it.

A tablet with a keyboard might be a more practical solution, although generally more expensive, but I appreciate that my Minibook runs Linux so well, so I don't have to even think about Apple or Google telling me how to use my computer.

I bought a Chuwi Lapbook[0] for my wife a few years ago. It was great at first, but got unusably slow running Windows within ~1.5 years. I got her a new laptop and put Linux on the Chuwi. It worked fine for checking email and light browsing. The touchpad had strange sensitivity and seemed to be hard-coded so that scroll worked the opposite of my preference. It was tolerable until the keys stopped responding to my typing. I found that if I pushed really hard in the center of the key, it would sometimes register, but required firmer pressing. Ctrl and Shift stopped working altogether after awhile. The problem crept up from the bottom-right side of the keyboard, and I eventually gave up on it at the end of last year.

[0]: https://techtablets.com/chuwi-lapbook-14-1/review/

The Minibook X is obviously targeted at the netbook form factor in the traditional sense, i.e. small and cheap. If you're like me and appreciate the netbook/UMPC form factors (for travel purposes in my case) but also need better specs to actually get any work done -- and you're willing to fork out a bit more to get that -- I would recommend looking at GPD's Pocket and MicroPC series. I own both a Pocket 4 and MicroPC 2 with Linux on them, and I'm quite satisfied. The only issue I've noticed is the same screen rotation quirk described here, for which the same workarounds apply.

I wish there were more laptops with a similar form factor. I was looking forward to the MacBook Neo before it was officially announced; I thought it was going to be more like an upgraded MacBook 12", but it ended up being more like a downgraded MacBook Air 13". Nobody likes small things anymore :(

I just unpacked my eee PC from college after a move. 8gb of RAM and can barely run a very stripped down version of windows 7. Just the thought of writing my final year project on that little machine again is giving me RSI.

I'll stick with my 13" MBP going forward. Netbooks served a purpose but I'm not sure they make much sense anymore

The article immediately makes me think of my PineBook Pro. Blinded by its $300 price tag and "Arm Inside(tm)", I jumped the gun at the second batch in early 2021. The display panel is shit. The keyboard is shit. The trackpad is shit. The webcam is shit. The speaker output is shit. The various hardware bugs are shit. The overall performance is shit. But, finally, after many years of changes and back-and-forth with the Linux kernel, the SoC and platform is finally-well supported, and it gets the simple jobs done.

I have an original Chuwi Minibook and would not recommend buying from them unless you're willing to treat the hardware as disposable. Their support is REALLY bad, warranty is useless (cheaper to buy replacement parts yourself on AliExpress) and the hardware has some baffling cost cutting decisions- I replaced the included jet turbine with a much quieter fan for a couple bucks, but most people won't want to solder their own harness to replicate this mod.

Glad to still see options for small portable laptops on the market, but nothing out there has drawn me away from the 2015 11" MacBook Air. Good keyboard and trackpad, and single core speed is comparable to the newer (albeit lower TDP) Minibook. It's enough for everyday use, and the fan allows for better sustained performance (though it's rarely needed).

My main pain point is RAM (even with zram), but considering the MacBook Neo was just launched with the same amount I don't think I'll need to stop using it unless it finally decides to kick the bucket. A lot of laptops like the Minibook are better on paper but the build quality isn't there.

So where can you buy one of these mythical notebooks for 350€$!?!?

Every time I try to search, it's either unavailable or 100s€$ over the original price?

Crash Override boot screen made me genuinely LOL. Nice touch.

https://photos.tylercipriani.com/2026-05-31_chuwi-boot-smol....

For on-the-go compute I am using a 2017 12-inch Macbook (AS1534). This is a lesser known model, it was simply called "12 inch MacBook" (not air or pro) [0].

It has the aluminium body, it is ridiculously thin (3,5mm thinnest point, 13mm thickest point, feet included), it weighs just 920 gram. It charges via USB-C. It has a very good 2304 × 1440 (16∶10) IPS "retina" screen.

I run mine with MacOS/Linux dual boot, I charge it using my phone charger. It keep it in my go-bag at all times. I never have to worry being without it.

What to love:

- Super small, yet very sturdy.

- Can be found for relatively cheap (I paid €300 for mine 2 years ago)

- Really nice screen.

- Keyboard size is really good, though travel is obviously minimal with such a thin laptop.

- Plenty of battery life (and new batteries still available at Mac store last time I asked)

- upgraded model has 1.4Ghz dual core i5, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, which is still more than enough for on-the-go use.

What not to love:

- Has only 1 I/O port (USB-C), which is also used for charging.

- No longer receives MacOS updates, if you find a 2017 production model you get updates up to MacOS 13.

- Linux support is not great. The WiFi/Bluetooth chip (BCM15700A2) is not fully supported in Linux, WiFi works but Bluetooth doesn't. Audio via headphone jack works, but speakers don't. There are some experimental patches to get BT and speakers somewhat working, but it's not great.

If you can find it, get a late production model (2017) with the 1.4Ghz CPU upgrade, it will have 16gb RAM instead of 8gb (earlier models) and receive MacOS updates up to MacOS 13.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-inch_MacBook

Here's my notes on the device from last year with various setup tips https://muxup.com/2025q2/chuwi-minibook-x-n150

I can't say I agree with the author's assessment of the keyboard in this submission. I find it more pleasant to use than the other laptops I have access to.

This is my daily driver laptop. It's pretty good for what it is. Runs Linux perfectly, not trying to be especially too fast, very nice pixel density, all metal case, sturdy build. Battery life is not the best. Beautifully compact.

I dunno. I never got the hang of what the hell to do with a netbook or netbook likes. I have old Surface 3 tablets, Lenovo Yogo, small HP, Acer and other notebooks.

All have this "not enough" vibe to me. They are cute, but have no performance and no purpose my iPhone can't fullfil. Maybe because i never work on documents, sheets or listings while i'm commuting or traveling. I do work on those when at work or at home, on a ProBook. But never while on the road or something. I do refurbish old HP ProBooks whenever i can get my hands on them (or Dell, Lenovo equivalent) by putting in more ram and more capacity nvme. Sometimes even upgrading the wifi board. This works for me. ProBooks are nice. Not that heavy, pretty upgradable (except CPU/GPU) and full size keyboards. It's amazing what people sometimes throw away.

I think the MacBook Neo has really made it hard for companies to compete. This would have been exciting a few years ago, but now it just feels overpriced. But I love love it can run Linux and is more open.

I feel like this is another “Framework 12 vs Neo” type of deal.

I can get a used MacBook Air M1 for £250 which beats the Minibook in every regard and it can run Linux.

Me: I want this

Also me: just a month ago I bought a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for my phone because they are completely sufficient for the work emergency use case along with the termux app

Starlite Mk IV is my favourite "netbook" successor. 0.9 kg, 11.6 1080p IPS display and Linux-first, with coreboot. Unfortunately it is a couple years old by now and you can feel that (Intel N5030 and 8GB of RAM). Sadly the company changed the form factor of Mk V to a detachable but if you can live with that it's also an option.

I got one of these a couple of years ago, put Linux on it, and was pleased as punch: https://www.mahnamahna.net/blog/linux-chuwi-minibook-x/

It's actually the keyboard that surprises me the most: I think it's really good (and I consider myself a bit of a keyboard snob). I've never had any issue like the author describes, of having to strike keys just-so.

used of one these and its terrible. out of all the laptops i have used this one has by far the worst build quality. the hinge is just horrible and snaps in half after a few months of use.

i also removed windows and installed omarchy and one of the speakers does not work. :( and no its not a skill issue. tried every solution and nothing works. check reddit for the user reviews on literally every product from this brand. you'll understand my frustration.

How about the Panasonic Let's Note? Still made, although not for the American market. A little thicker so that it can have an adequate battery and be small at the same time. I love it, but I didn't know it existed until my recent trip to Japan, and I didn't come across quite the right used machine before coming home.

I have a GPD Mini, the very first preproduction one.

Stock Ubuntu runs just fine since about 24.04 or 23.10 (do not remember). Keyboard is fine. Trackpoint instead of a cheap trackpad which is great. Touch screen.

And incredibly mind-bogglingly slow eMMC storage. Like, makes it impossible to use.

So as cute as it is, I haven't found any use for it for the last ~10 years that I own it. Maybe I have used it for emergency ssh from the mountain hike once or twice.

Dump the desktop. Switch your login shell to emacs and you have an overpowered WritersBook that’ll fit in a coat pocket.

To get around the crappy display/keyboard/touchpad issue, one could also buy a used x86 Chromebook and install Linux on it and get very nearly the same (or better) experience.

Similar vibes as my GPD Micro PC: https://blog.danieljanus.pl/i-love-my-gpd-micro-pc/

I use a GPD Win Max 2 for this purpose (https://fluctlight.net/gpd_win_max_2) and while it has its quirks, the performance of a Ryzen APU is significantly better than the Chuwi Minibook X.

I think my desire for this kind of product is something lighter, but this set of notes on the Chuwi feels like the compromises GPD gives you but with less power.

contemplated getting one of these a while back opted for an m3-8100Y Surface Go 2 instead because they were far easier to find and much cheaper. Managed to find one for £70 with the keyboard. Nowhere near as powerful as the Minibook X but does the job for when I'm not carrying my Macbook Air around with me. If the Surface Go 4 had a 16gb RAM option I'd've jumped at it.

Have had a couple of Chuwi devices in the past, they're always a painful mix of really impressive with baffling cost cutting measures so I'm a bit wary of spending more than £50 on one.

I love small laptops but this thing would really benefit from a better processor. It's about 4x slower than the Snapdragon 8 elite, a 2 year old smartphone chip.

16GB ram is cool though.

I feel like what I really want is a phone that can do this. I've been trying to figure out a reasonable workflow with a tiny mouse, an expandable keyboard, and a phone with termius (SSH Client) + a remote devserver. It's so close, the only issue is the screen is a tad bit too small to get anything real done other than ad hoc vibe coding.

I have one of these and run Debian 13 on it. I love it. Having only two USB ports is annoying and I ended up buying a relatively expensive PD Thunderbolt hub, and there are some compromises that come with the territory (middling battery life, trackpad certainly isn't Macbook-quality). In general, though, it's great and it feels fun in way that I haven't felt about laptops in a long while.

As others have noted the company has done some pretty shady things with some of their other products, and I would not really expect a warranty, so this isn't really a recommendation. But my personal experience after ~six months of use has been good.

What's the problem with 2K 50Hz screen? Too high resolution?

Lots of 15.6" Windows laptops come with 1080p screen which is painful to look at.

Snap! The US only keyboard is a bit of a pain, and the trackpad sometimes glitches, but when travelling light this is excellent.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gadget-review-chuwi-miniboo...

Got no clue about the benches, but I love the design. Very cartoon-ey

Could someone please recommend a small, lightweight 2in1 style x86 laptop? Weight should be way under 1000g/2.2p. Best guess until now was some used Surface model, but those seem to be of really random quality and have overheating issues.

It looks nice but I feel like a bear riding a tiny unicycle using these kinds of computers.

Also got it last year.

I used to play with omarchy. It is good enough for a lot of use cases. For powerful work I just connect to remote session.

Perfect for planes in economy

Seems like this discussion creates a lot of interest in the Minibook X - researching the device on Google shows lower prices than on the actual pages behind the search results, so they must have become higher very recently.

What I wouldn't give for this machine with a thinkpad keyboard

> Keyboard is terrible – it only registers keystrokes when you hit the exact center of each key.

I'm a big believer in cheap, small, low-power laptops. For simple tasks, you don't need that much compute.†

But you can't skimp on the keyboard! Especially because, one of the big advantages of a low-power laptop should be for writing!

------

† Okay, Electron exists... you shouldn't need all that compute.

Alan Cox had a pre-netbook netbook smaller than a VHS tape at linux.conf.au 2001, and milled about chatting with colleagues and fanboys while his kernel builds scrolled by in the background. Everyone would gawk at the strange little machine.

It was Japanese, naturally.

At linux.conf.au 2007 we chose a smaller conference bag, designed to carry your electrical accessories and nick-knacks... it turned out to be the perfect size for the new EeePC (and later the MacBook Air 11").

> "Netbooks are dead"

Not if you buy an eeepc off ebay and put a light linux on it, then they're as good as always. Love me a good netbook

Why must he say Hackers is a classic film. It was a pivotal part of my life. I'm not even that old

I loved the Netbook class; the MSI Wind was such a fun device that you could take everywhere. Decent battery, good screen and fantastic keyboard.

This is how I feel about Emacs.

The appeal isn't necessarily the end result. It's the process of tinkering, learning, and gradually making the tool your own.

I have this laptop, and it is amongst the best laptops I have ever owned, despite being awful in many ways. It has almost completely replaced my use of my M4 Macbook Pro, simply because I always have it with me. That, and it can run Linux.

I don't share the complaints of the OP about the keyboard or the screen, though. The keyboard is fine, I can hit about 110WPM on it, slower than my regular pace, but enough that there's no dramas. The layout is great: Occasionally there's keys that are too small (looking at you, apostrophe) but everything is at least in the right spot, which is way more important.

The 2K display at 10" is high enough DPI that everything is totally crisp, and you can unlock ~95Hz (bad for video, good for everything else) with a bit of a tweak. You can also smash a byte into the EC at the correct offset and access the full unrestricted BIOS -- mostly to crank the RAM up to 4800MT/s.

I'm running vanilla Arch with Niri and Noctalia, and it's a dream. It's my primary dev machine, used in combination with a remote server with a tonne more grunt. If it broke tomorrow, I'd buy another - and I wouldn't do that with my macbook.

To the OP:

* Accelerometer support, EC-byte-bashing to get BIOS unlock: https://github.com/greymouser/minibook-x-tools

* 95Hz EDID fix: https://github.com/sonnyp/linux-minibook-x/issues/7#issuecom...

Why did they use x86_64 in the article instead of AMD64?

This vs Dells new XPS 13? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48351808

That $350 price tag is good for that configuration. Not sure how fast the USB-c ports are. It should have an HDMI 2.0/2.1 port. Mini PC's with the N150 CPU support 2 4k@60Hz monitors.

Would the rotated panel mean that any screen tearing is vertical or is the screen update order also changed when the screen rotation is changed in the settings?

> Keyboard is terrible – it only registers keystrokes when you hit the exact center of each key.

So, unusable for blind typing.

920g for a 10" is also crazy much. LG make 14" laptops under a kg.

I want something like the Sony Z4 tablet. About 600g with keyboard dock. Thin, waterproof (not the keyboard), days of standby, 4G supported, the keyboard was excellent.

If it would be possible to run a current version of Android on it, it would be perfect.

I have a Chuwi Lark Box from a few years ago. The volume less than my fist, it's great for doing occasional Windows stuff.

The Crash Override boot up screen tho. HACK THE PLANET!

I'll take my gpd pocket 4 over this for sure, though funnily enough it has essentially the same screen problem.

For that price, I'd get an old, second hand, Thinkpad X1 carbon with a new battery.

I'm missing netbooks so much, there's just no decent 10" laptops on the market anymore.

I got myself a 150$ N150 chromebook, yoinked a Linux on it and using that, despite the terrible screen and build quality, but at least it is disposable.

I love netbooks and I am curious to get one of these at some point - I can’t justify one right now.

I do have my ASUS EEEPC 701 4G Surf still working. I think it is 18 years old at this point? It is rocking Antix, in its 3.6 GB hard drive. It broke the S key in the keyboard last night and I ordered a replacement.

I use it as writer deck and to ssh to my server and raspberry pi from the sofa.

It is built in a very resistant way? Survived my kid so far.

Netbooks aren't dead, they're just called Chromebooks now

> Keyboard is terrible – it only registers keystrokes when you hit the exact center of each key.

I wish laptop manufacturers would pay more attention to this. I'm stuck using older laptops because modern laptops can't reliably pick up keystrokes.

I have a 1netbook with the same form factor and capabilities - I absolutely love the foldable screen which turns it into a tablet device - but it is really a problem to use as a tablet device while gripping it, because naturally that grip will press buttons on the keyboard.

Does the Chuwi Minibook X have sensors that minimize this 'bug'? I've been looking for a way to disable the keys on tablet mode, but can't really seem to get it right (Ubuntu Studio) ..

Are the specifications listed in the article reliable? It's difficult to trust them, considering Chuwi has a history of misrepresenting CPU specifications.

where can i pick one up thats reputable?

Zimablade chose the same 12v/2a power. It's in the original spec for usb-c pd negotiation.

Client side (device) sets the current draw. Weird take to not use the supplied psu.

> 16 GB RAM – LPDDR5-6400 – soldered [crying cat emoji]

No need to cry:

1. Per ark[1], "Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 16 GB" - you wouldn't be doing much with modular RAM, anyway

2. Swapping BGA package RAM actually isn't THAT hard. If you invest a few hundred monetary units now in a hot air station, some flux, a few relevant stencils, some solder paste and/or appropriately sized balls, fine tweezers, and (for extra credit) a €£$60 AliExpress LCD microscope, you never have to cry again when the laptop you prefer has soldered RAM, a soldered M.2 1216 SMT Wi-Fi module, a flaky USB-C charge port (ThinkPad plague), etc. Guess how many Raspberries Pi 4 I've upgraded to 8GB RAM!

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/241636/...

Bummer that it has a fan

It's not particularly cheap. There are cheaper 14.1" laptops which are probably better-built, with a more responsive keyboard etc. Not sure why the poster chose this one.

Sounds like the netbooks of 2008: bad in every way, but hey, it's small?

i was seriously considering one of these about one year ago, but i was not 100% convinced and I ended up deciding to wait and see what else would came out (mostly driven by the rumors about a cheap macbook).

I ended up buying the macbook neo and frankly i think i made the right choice.

of course the macbook does not run gnu/linux (for better or for worse).

I have a couple of x86 tablets from Chuwi where I run Debian with plasma-mobile.

Battery life is crap, on the new one the webcams aren't supported by linux because they aren't v4l.

With plasma-mobile there is no need to mess with configuration about the orientation since it just flips the screen the way I'm holding it.

I contributed a couple of patches to KDE to improve the experience on touch devices but overall there is lots of applications that already work fine on a touchscreen. Alligator, kasts, a few kdegames, angelfish.

A notebook that weighs more than a kilo is simply not a good thing

– Linus Torvalds

If you are an adult, able-bodied human male, and you even notice a laptop being "heavy" becauase it's over 1000 grams, I am sorry but your health is fucked. I am not a strong man. But if you are so weak 200grams extra or whatever bothers you, sort your life out. Seriously. You will feel so much better.