Chuwi Hi10
The Chuwi Hi10 Pro is a cheap tablet that dual-boots Windows 10 and Android Lollipop and to which you can add a stylus and keyboard to turn it into a cheap portable laptop. But is it any good?
Price
You won’t find a Windows 10 tablet much cheaper than this, with the Chuwi Hi10 Pro currently costing £128 at GearBest (gearbest.com). The optional keyboard dock (a recommended purchase) is an extra £29, also from Gearbest, while the HiPen H2 stylus can be bought from Geekbuying (geekbuying.com) for £11.16. That’s a total price of £169, but note that you could be asked to pay import duty upon its arrival to the UK that would take the total price closer to £200.
Buying products from China typically returns huge savings, but you should always take into account the risks. Products can take several weeks to arrive, depending on which shipping option you select, and if they are faulty you’ll have the hassle of returning them at your cost and dealing with customer services in a non-EU country with different legislation.
Design
You might be paying less than £200, but you wouldn’t think it to look at Chuwi’s range of Windows 10 hybrids. In common with its brothers, the Hi10 Pro has a full metal build with chamfered edges that is reasonably stylish and feels built to last.
There are some giveaways of its budget roots, for example some rather thick screen bezels, a display that attracts fingerprints and some unsightly legends on the rear, but on the whole build quality is good.
The display, bar the fingerprint issue, is among the highlights, an IPS panel with a full-HD resolution of 1920x1200 pixels. It’s clear and bright enough in all but the sunniest conditions, and its 16:10 aspect ratio is well suited to media. Colours are realistic and viewing angles are good; perhaps more importantly, at 10.1in on the diagonal it makes for a very portable laptop.
The Hi10 Pro measures 261.8x167.3x8.5mm and weighs 562g, making it easy to slip into a bag and carry wherever you want. Adding the keyboard roughly doubles the weight, but it’s still an easily portable package.
This tablet-laptop hybrid is the Pro version of the older Chuwi Hi10. We haven’t reviewed that device, but from what we can understand this is a thinner version that swaps full-size USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports for a faster-charging and reversible USB-C port. Both tablets also feature Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI ports, though only the USB-C port will charge the Hi10 Pro (you’d be better off using this port for charging since it supports 3A even if you had the choice).
As a result of the slimmer build (8.5- versus 9.5mm) an insignificant 100mAh has been knocked off the battery, which is not enough to make a huge impact on runtime. Whereas you could get around eight hours from the Hi10, according to Chuwi, the Pro can still offer a good seven hours-plus, which should get you through the working day. The Pro version also adds the HiPen H2 stylus support.
Despite the Pro moniker it’s running Windows 10 Home rather than Pro, though this version of the Hi10 does also boot into Android. It’s geriatric Android 5.1 Lollipop, customised with the colourful Remix 2.0 UI, but we like the fact it opens
The Hi10 Pro’s screen is clear and bright enough in all but the sunniest conditions, and its 16:10 aspect ratio is well suited to media
the door to a range of third-party software options that are otherwise not available in Windows 10.
Chuwi supplied to us the compatible keyboard and stylus, which are otherwise paid-for optional extras. The HiPen H2 is an active electronic stylus, which means it won’t work with tablets that don’t support it and must be turned on for the Hi10 Pro to recognise it, though it is quick to charge via the Micro-USB port at one end and easy to click on and off.
We like the thin nib, which makes handwriting more accurate and legible, while Chuwi says it’s also good for drawing artwork onscreen if you have the talent. If you use the Edge browser or OneNote app built into Windows 10, you’ll appreciate the stylus for taking advantage of Edge’s ability to annotate web pages and for making quick handwritten notes in OneNote if nothing else.
The stylus supports 256 levels of pressure sensitivity, though we were possibly pushing a little too hard since its rubber tracks were visible on the panel when we switched off the display.
The keyboard is of greater use to us, a magnetic docking version that is powered by a connection on the tablet, meaning you don’t need to remember to keep it topped up. The hinge is very sturdy, and does a good job keeping the Hi10 Pro propped up at a comfortable angle in laptop mode, without allowing it to tip back so far that the Chuwi becomes unstable.
The keyboard also adds two full-size USB ports to the tablet, which will come in handy if you want to plug in a USB drive or mouse, though the one-piece trackpad built into this keyboard is an improvement over that of the Chuwi Hi12 and nowhere near as erratic.
This is a US keyboard, which is annoying for UK users, but it’s comfortable to type on with reasonably large and well spaced keys. It makes tapping out emails and documents much easier than using the onscreen keyboard, and as such we’d highly recommend it as an additional purchase for the Hi10 Pro.
The only real problem we found with the build is the stereo speakers, which are low down on either side of the tablet and easily muffled by the hand when used as a tablet rather than a laptop. They’re also not as loud as we’d like, and rather tinny at full volume. But there’s nothing to stop you plugging in a pair of headphones via the 3.5mm jack.
You also get 2Mp cameras at the front and rear of the tablet. You might use the front camera for Skype video chats, but you’re unlikely to want to take any photos with the rear camera.
Performance
In common with all the budget Chinese Windows 10 tablet/laptops we’ve reviewed, the Chuwi Hi10 Pro runs the 1.44GHz Intel Atom X5 (Cherry Trail) Z8300 chip with 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 64GB of flash storage. There’s also support for up to 128GB via microSD, which may come in handy given that some of that built-in storage is shared with the Android partition and very little is going spare. Of the 58.2GB available to Windows 10, 49.5GB had been consumed once we had installed our benchmarks.
It’s not the most powerful hardware combination, and won’t make for a gaming laptop, but for web browsing, social media and emails it’s an ideal selection that won’t place a massive strain on the battery.
As you would expect performance is in line with those other laptops, with 2144 points scored in Geekbench 4 and 1041 in PCMark 8. We were unable to install our GFXBench graphics benchmark on the Hi10 Pro, but would expect it to achieve similar performance to the Chuwi HiBook.
Verdict
The Chuwi Hi10 Pro is an excellent value Windows 10 laptop-tablet hybrid with the addition of Android (albeit old Android) and a pleasing build for the money. We take issue with its fingerprint-prone screen and tinny, poorly placed speakers, but in all other respects this is a very decent device for the money. It’s not a fast device, and we wouldn’t recommend it to gamers, but it’s fast enough for most daily Windows tasks. Marie Brewis