Chuwi is a Chinese company that is no longer completely unknown. The manufacturer builds notebooks, tablets, and mini-PCs for a small price. Usually, you can buy the products directly. With the Chuwi MiniBook, you have gone a different way. The mini-notebook with 8-inch display is not sold directly but funded by crowdfunding. The Chuwi MiniBook is a real crowdfunding success. The Chinese company has collected more than 700,000 USD from Indiegogo to build a small but powerful notebook.
We’ve been closely following the crowdfunding campaign of the new tiny laptop from Chuwi – Minibook – which ended one day ago over on Indiegogo. 3,595 backers pledged $790,544 to get their own Chuwi Minibook, which were selling below the retail price to entice people to pay up. The original goal was just was $25,508, but that was accomplished almost immediately after the campaign went live. The company managed to collect 3000-percent more funds than it needed to kick off the production.
Chuwi has brought two versions of the MiniBook to Indiegogo, the cheapest of which starts at US$430. Both versions feature an 8-inch IPS touchscreen, which operates natively at 1,920 x 1,200. Chuwi claims that the display should reach a maximum brightness of 250 cd/m² lumens, which seems rather dim. The company will equip both models with a 26.6 Wh (7.6 V) battery, Windows 10 Home 64-bit and a 2.4 GHz/5 GHz Wi-Fi modem that supports up to the IEEE 802.11 n standard.
The MiniBook weighs 0.66 kg (~1.46 lbs) and measures 201 x 128.6 x 19.3 mm. Chuwi has incorporated a USB Type-C port, two USB Type-A ports, a headphone jack, a mini HDMI port, a microSD card reader and a fingerprint scanner integrated within the power button. Both models will come with 128 GB of eMMC flash storage too. Chuwi is positioning the MiniBook as a competitor to the MacBook Air and Surface Go, although we would not compare an ultra-mobile PC (UPMC) with no trackpad against an ultrabook and a detachable 2-in-1. At any rate, it would still make a more portable alternative to a conventional laptop while maintaining much of the same functionality.
The crowdfunding campaign for the Chuwi MiniBook has exceeded all expectations, having achieved over 3,000% of its funding goal. This would be an impressive feat in a full campaign period. The Chuwi MiniBook is an 8.0-inch ultra-mobile convertible laptop that starts at US$430 for the Celeron N4100 model and US$530 for the Core m3-8100Y model on Indiegogo. The Chuwi MiniBook will ship worldwide in September.