The anti Surface Pro that comes from China
This Chinese Chuwi SurBook presents itself as an economic alternative to the Microsoft Surface Pro range: what better opportunity to evaluate a product from an Asian manufacturer that has recently introduced various mobile proposals featuring designs that recall successful models?
From a daily user of a Surface Pro 4 as a main PC, I initially looked suspiciously, and later with great curiosity, this proposal. Comparable size, a screen with the same resolution and appearance very valid as quality, back kickstand and many more communication ports than Microsoft has implemented in Surface Pro. All this at a much lower cost, with a hardware equipment not screaming but that may be sufficient for the purpose and a mechanical construction that appears valid for the price.
If you stop only to appearances, it is easy to promote a product of this type: very similar to the excellent Surface Pro, but at a fraction of the cost. The configuration tested by us combined with a cover with keyboard and pen is proposed at about € 520, a figure well below the € 1,260 required for the input version of Surface Pro with cover and pen in combination. Microsoft and partners are proposing some versions of Surface Pro, especially the entrance ones, with some interesting price promotions, but we are far from even more than 500 € SurBook. However, we will find out how this difference in cost is justified by quality and performance.
SurBook is offered in two configurations, which differ only in the amount of storage memory that can be equal to 64 or 128 Gbytes. It does not change the system memory, equal to 6 Gbytes, and the Intel Celeron N3450 CPU based on Apollo Lake architecture and based on the Goldmont series CPU cores belonging to the Atom family. This solution has a quad core architecture and a very low TDP, equal to 6 Watt: this value is made possible by the base clock frequency contained in only 1.1 GHz, with the possibility to go up to 2.2 GHz as peak data via Turbo Boost technology. Storage is of the eMMC type, a technical choice that is very often adopted in notebooks with a low cost but which strongly penalizes performance due to the speed of reading and writing of data much more limited than achievable with a traditional SSD.
The construction of the SurBook provides an unibody aluminum chassis, impossible to open if not removing the screen. If the front part is obviously dominated by the display the rear one provides a full-width kickstand, with dimensions actually mirrored to the one implemented in Surface Pro. The Chuwi brand is silk-screened right on the kickstand, under which the product name is placed and some general information always silk-screened.
The overall build quality is discrete considering the reduced purchase cost, but we are far from what was supplied with the Surface Pro family. The chassis materials are valid and the construction is characterized by a certain solidity, but the kickstand provides a feeling less robust than that of Microsoft competitor while working well in supporting the tablet during use.
The kickstand allows you to position the screen at an angle of 125 ° as opposed to the keyboard: it is a value suitable for most uses but lower than that of Surface Pro 4 and Surface Pro. Working with the keyboard this is not it poses problems of any kind, while wanting to interact with the pen the angle to the maximum position is too open to be able to draw in a comfortable way replicating the experience of use that is obtained with paper and pen.
The kickstand hinges are inserted inside the chassis: they have a lower build quality than those used in Surface Pro and this explains the smaller opening angle. In this area the reader was also provided for micro SD memory cards, as well as in Surface Pro: this reader can be used in combination with a high capacity card, so as to combine storage with eMMC a second storage solution dedicated to personal data to leave always inserted in the reader.
On the right side of SurBook are the two USB Type-A ports, flanked by a USB Type-C that also provides power to the tablet. From this point of view, the Chinese company has been able to do better than what is implemented in Surface Pro, reduced to a single USB 3.0 Type-A port that goes alongside a second mounted on the power supply and offers only power and not data signal. The ports are sufficiently spaced between them, with the headphone jack on top.
If the build quality of Chuwi SurBook is in line with the purchase cost, this certainly can not be said of the keyboard cover, with backlighting of the keys. Similar in design to that provided by Microsoft with the Surface Pro 3 models, it is a device that combines a quality in the construction only discrete with a yield in typing that is largely insufficient. The response to pressure with non-isolated keys as from recent trends but side by side, is not very precise and does not make the experience of typing long texts pleasant and not fatiguing. This is accompanied by a touch pad that we could define at least sui generis: inaccurate, very often does not correctly accept the clicks that are given by interpreting these as cursor movements. This keyboard, in terms of feedback feedback, is adequate for very short work sessions: wherever possible it is preferable to connect an external keyboard to ensure speed and accuracy in typing.
The keyboard is connected to the screen through a proprietary connector and can be hooked to the base or left completely resting on the surface. In the first case, the keyboard creates an angle content with respect to the supporting surface, making typing easier. In the sample at our disposal the magnetic coupling between the base of the screen and the keyboard was not uniform for intensity along the entire width of the keyboard, leading to an unpleasant effect of swaying the keyboard as you type. The real problem with this device is that it is compared to the Surface keyboard cover, which gives the Surface Pro 4 version a first-class build quality combined with a typing response that is comparable to of the keyboards implemented in the quality Ultrabooks available on the market. The comparison is decidedly uneven, even considering the significant price difference.
Chuwi provides as an accessory, available as a bundle with the keyboard, even a stylus with 1,024 levels of performance. Also in this case the final judgment is specular to that of the keyboard cover: it is a product that appears more inserted to complete a list of features provided with the intent to provide a different user experience and quality to the user .
Overall mechanical construction therefore valid that of Chuwi SurBook as regards the tablet part, obviously in consideration of the reduced purchase cost; however cheap the keyboard and stylus do not arrive at the sufficiency. If for the second you can do without it, in the case of the keyboard cover the problem is very present and difficult to solve: we are not at the level of the Type Cover that Microsoft had combined with the first generation of Surface Pro, of which we own a sample in editorial and that is our negative benchmark to evaluate the quality of a keyboard in a 2-in-1 device, but it is very difficult to be able to adapt to this device provided by Chuwi when you are sensitive to the quality of the typing experience and maybe one of the new Surface Pro keyboard covers was used.