I think I may have found a copycat of the Eve V 😐

I might be wrong, but i was browsing Indiegogo and came across this - Chuwi SurBook: Affordable 2-in-1 Intel PC Tablet | Indiegogo

It looks almost identical to the Eve V? Outside of the specs, the physical appearance is very similar. The shape, display, back, kickstand and the keyboard. Actually the keyboard itself isnt even distinguishable the material looks the same, it even has backlight! Then then some specs i.e. the 2k resoloution etc.

Just thought i’d shed some awareness :slight_smile:

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Thanks for pointing out :slight_smile: These news have been out for a few months now, but don’t worry, this isn’t a V copycat. They are very different and even positioned for completely different audience. If anything, Chuwi SurBook closer to Surface Pro 3 than anything. Sort of like a cheap and less powerful version of good old SP3. Keyboard especially looks like they are reusing the SP3 one, which is not a bad thing!

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It is very similar. I was quite surprised at the proposed price. Then, I went to read on the spec sheet. The V has a few features that make it stand out. First it has one more USB-C port (one of the two even has thunderbolt 3!), the keyboard isn’t quite that comparable - between spaced keys, multi-colour backlight and most importantly a bluetooth function, these two couldn’t be more different. Then you suddenly sense reality strucking in. CPU is in Chuwi’s case a miserable and quite frankly disappointingly slow Celeron processor, and even the storage was compromised both on quality (you have to really want to slow down performance to use eMMC!) and on quantity (64GB of storage is not nearly enough for someone’s laptop.

So there you have it. There’s more [flaws] than it meets the eye. At first it might have looked a great proposition but in the end you get to know that compromises are commonplace. And we all know you shouldn’t need to settle for mediocrity :wink:

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I’d just like to also point out tho. Surbook has a magnesium build. One edge over the V’s aluminum build. More options for us. :slight_smile:

How’s the aluminium build is lesser than magnesium all of the sudden?

We chose the Aluminium for V on purpose after long and heated deliberations for the following reasons:

  • Aluminium alloys are stronger and more resilient than magnesium (search ASTM tests not marketing materials)
  • Aluminium can be CNC machined from one piece vs casting for magnesium. It makes a much stronger final product but is a lot more $$$ to make
  • Aluminium can be hard anodized which is many times stronger than painted magnesium (you cannot anodize magnesium).

Why is this important? Just look at used Surface Pro and Book and they are full of scratches vs look at used MacBooks which look new years later.

So yes, the community chose the Aluminium build on purpose and for the same reasons why Apple is using it on all their products.

Hope this helps :blush:

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@doodzilla There are two more points I consider important in addition to those @Alexandr_Smirnov explained:

  • Aluminium is a much better heat conductor and makes it far easier to passively cool a device
  • Related to one of Alexandr_Smirnov’s points, aluminium has far more possible finishes

The only favorable point I can remember for magnesium is that it’s lighter than aluminium.

Community had their say with Eve and aluminium was ultimately chosen. I believe it was the right choice :slight_smile:

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Yes, that’s correct magnesium would be 20-30% less dense and lighter (at expense of strength) The exact difference would depend on the alloys being compared

Hahaha, so Chuwi gets into the 2-in-1 market too! Not really that surprising seeing as most Chinese manufacturers both does and will. I actually own a Chuwi product I imported via AliExpress, my fabulously and extremely cheap Chuwi Hi8 Pro(120$). It has come in handy a few times, especially the dual boot Android/Windows option, and if I remember correctly it even came with a year of Office 365! Basically gave me a free tablet along with the office package(as the office package is kinda mandatory nowadays professionally).

Anyway, the Surbook actually looks like a decent device, but there are a few things to take into consideration when you’re buying such a cheap device. First of all, Chuwi is known as a cheap technology company(despite them saying otherwise) and the quality of their products are most often described as “mediocre at best”. For example, with my Hi8 Pro I got what I paid for, a dirt cheap tablet that actually both feels and looks great(sluggish performance though) and I knew what I was getting into when I bought something with an Atom processor. However, the tablet can’t sleep properly, and I think I had to do a few firmware updates for it to not have a Sleep Of Death issue. When it sleeps now however, it works, but it still drains the battery in a day. Meaning I need to turn it completely off when I’m not using it. Also the SD card adapter bugged out due to the dual OS thing and eventually broke down all together. Still, I don’t regret the purchase as it was so cheap.

Chinese manufacturers are also known for exaggerating. Read through the IGG campaign and you’d notice how they say it’s so “powerful” and that it can run 3D games. I tried playing league once on my i5 SP3; never again. It’s simple, you won’t get good gaming performance in such thin devices because of size and thermal limitations. The Celeron N3450 performs below the M3, even though it specwise boast two more cores and higher clock speed. To be frank though, and to its credit, it has 90% of the M3’s multi core benchmark score(but less than half single core performance). The N3450 also has a TDP of 6W compared to the 4,5W of the M3. The 10 Ah capacity given can also be arbitrary as the real energy capacity is found in Watt-hours(you need to time the Ah with the voltage to get Wh. It’s unknown which internal voltage is used. I don’t know if the industry uses a common voltage so the mAh values are fairly compared to each other or not. SP4 seems to use 7,5V). The higher TDP will also create higher temperatures, which can mean that it’s likely to throttle since it’s so cheap that I doubt a proper cooling solution is installed.
See this link for CPU comparison: http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_celeron_n3450-659-vs-intel_core_m3_7y30-657

Most likely though, the Surbook will be a totally adequate device. I’d get one to use for pdf’s if it wasn’t for the fact my old SP3 will have that job as soon as I get my V(going to uni, hopefully paperless), but I wouldn’t get it because I expected a premium device. I would have gotten it because it would be cheap and adequate to that purpose.

As also pointed out. It doesn’t have the extra USB-C, TB3 port that V has, and neither has the alcantara, colored backlit, Bluetooth keyboard either. The SSD capacity only goes up to 128GB too. There are no words on the stylus performance beside the 1024 pressure levels either, but one could assume that it’s using the N-Trig protocol of the surface line as it seems to have the same screen.

And yeah, customer support would probably also be difficult.

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If you read the comments it seems people are unhappy with the campaign they keep extending the deadline some people even think it’s a scam due to false information given by the company and lack there of information

There is always somebody on indigogo campaigns that claim the whole thing is a scam as soon as any delay is announced, whether the delay is big or small. According to the timeline they are only going to be a week or two behind schedule.

Besides they are a well established company it wouldn’t make sense for them to randomly scam people.

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This is nowhere near the V. ChuWi’s been in the 2-in-1 game for quite some time now, but their offerings are barely usable if you are multitasking. To me, the SurBook is a budget offering meant for typing up documents. As for whether this is a scam, since ChuWi’s been around for a while (at least in Hong Kong), I don’t think that they won’t be able to deliver. But this is quite different from what they were offering, so delays are not surprising at all.

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I briefly intended to get the Surbook. Had pledged and all that. Before I remembered that I swore after my first real paycheck came in not to buy cheap technology I’ll hate using eventually, found out about the V, and snuck in under the refund window. That money is now sitting in a fund waiting for Eve’s store to open and I’m adding to it as I wait.

I bought my first laptop because it’d be ‘adequate.’ It’s not something I feel like repeating if I can avoid it, at least not for a while.

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I might be wrong, but I can remember Konsta mentioned that Chuwi asked EVE to collaborate with their 2in 1. Eve said “No, thanks”…

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Looks more like a cheap copy of the Surface Pro 4…

Still, might work for some…

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More like Surface Pro 3 :wink: Especially the keyboard

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Well, actually it looks so cheap it could be a cheap copy of the first surface…

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My personal opinion about Chuwi is poor. After many bios problems, driver failures, install and recover disasters, and virtually no tech support, my 10" Chuwi now lives at the local dump. Actually I should thank Chuwi for helping me to discover Eve.

Well, wasn’t the initial idea behind surface line, that Microsoft was pushing the industry to make new kind of PC’s. The sad thing is that most are just copying or “copying” the current design.
Eve is one of the rare ones to actually develop the concept further rather than just copying.

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Where did eve develop the design???

  • complete passive cooling without slowingv down
  • wireless and pogo-pinned keyboard in one (!!!)
  • biggest battery in-class
  • anti reflection coating to actually use the device in bright light
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