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.

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.

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 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...

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.

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.

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.

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

Bummer that it has a fan

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

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

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.

> 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").

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

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.

where can i pick one up thats reputable?

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...

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