Review: Chuwi Corebook X Intel i5-12450H (2025)

Review unit provided by Chuwi

The Chuwi Corebook X Intel i5-12450H is a powerful 14-inch Windows 11 laptop released for 2025. Price at the time of review is USD 395. You can think of this as an option for people who prefer something more powerful than the Intel N100 or N150 laptops that Chuwi also sells.

Right now, the CoreBook series has

• 14-inch CoreBook X Intel i9-13900HK
• 15.6-inch CoreBbook X Intel i5-12450H (1080P resolution)
• 14-inch CoreBook X Intel i5-12450H
• 14-inch CoreBook X Intel i5-1235U
• 14-inch CoreBook X Intel i3-1220P

In case you don't know what those suffix letters mean:

• H-Series: High-performance (gaming, content creation). HK is unlocked
• U-Series: Ultra-low power for thin and light laptops.
• P-Series: Balances performance and power efficiency.

You can think of this as the more powerful version of the USD 369 Chuwi Freebook N150 I've reviewed few months ago. And shown below is the comparison table of the two:

What's not shown in the specifications is the Chuwi FreeBook has slightly better quality keyboard, smaller and lousy touchpad, and better build quality because of the metal body.

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Things included

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Design

The Chuwi CoreBook X is a good looking laptop. Build quality is solid and much better than expected for a budget laptop. Weight of 1.4kg is still quite portable for a 14-inch laptop.

Ports on the left are barrel power, USB-A 3.0, full-size HDMI, USB-C video that supports charging. Hopefully Chuwi can replace the barrel power port with a USB-C port with their next model.

Ports on the right are USB-A 3.0, 3.5mm audio jack and microSD.

Read and write transfer speed of the two USB-A ports and single USB-C port is around 450MB/s.

The back has five rubber feet with good grip. There's a removeable plate where you can replace the NVMe SSD. Speakers are near the front and downward facing. Audio is loud enough but slightly hollow, but not too bad, still serviceable.

I wish there could be an extra USB-C port so that one can be used for charging, while the other is a spare. To get more ports, you'll have to find a USB-C dock that can also charge the laptop, e.g. Minisopuru MD808A.

The keyboard is full-size and comfortable to work with. Keys are probably a 4/5 stars to me since they feel slightly plasticky, but typing experience is still satisfactory with good travel and feedback.

Function keys work as F1 to F12 by default, but you can press F2 upon bootup to change them to shortcuts instead.

The right Shift key is shorten and arrows are full-size. I don't like this because I keep hitting the Up Arrow often due to muscle memory.

There's also an extra column of keys for power, Home, End, PageUp and PageDown. This column of keys pushes the main keyboard layout to the left and causes me to hit other keys by mistake quite often. Anyway, this will just take some time to get used to.

Touch pad is big with left and right click areas, and thankfully the middle can be pressed down too, but for some reason in the middle you can press down hard for a double click. Touchpad also supports finger gestures.

There's low and bright lights for the keys.

Display

The 14-inch LCD has 2160 x 1440 resolution. The display is sharp with no noticeable pixelation unless you look real close.

The 3:2 aspect ratio is a huge selling point for me since it makes the desktop area look and feel spacious. The height of this display is almost similar to the height of a 15-inch 16:9 display. This aspect ratio is noticeably better for productivity compared to 16:10 and 16:9 displays.

I measured colour support for 98% sRGB, 68% NTSC, 73% AdobeRGB, 73% P3 and a maximum brightness of 199 nits brightness. Viewing angle is decent with minimum colour shift.

The display is (too) glossy and not a touchscreen.

Performance

The Intel i5-12450U processor is a powerful processor.

I have been using a Huawei Matebook D16 from 2022 with the same processor for almost two years. That laptop is still as fast today as it is on day one, and has never lagged.

For the Chuwi, there are three performance modes to choose: Eco, Balanced and Turbo. I find that even with Eco mode, the fans would rev quite often, though not loud. I personally don't find much difference between the three modes because I can't really push the limit of the processor with just graphic design and photo editing work.

With such a powerful processor on the laptop, the battery life isn't that great. I can get around 4-6 hours of battery life with normal usage, e.g. web browsing, writing, watching videos.

The main difference between this vs the Chuwi laptops with Intel N100 or N150 is the CoreBook X is more powerful which is more responsive when doing graphic design or editing photos. But downside is fans would rev more often, and battery life is shorter. If you're just getting a laptop for simple computing tasks, for education or office type work, the Intel N100 or N150 processor is actually powerful enough.

One strange thing I noticed is when laptop is charging, typing will lag, e.g. letters would not appear instantly. This has happened on a few occasions. Switching between the Eco, Bal, Turbo modes did not help. What helped was going into Settings -> System -> Power/battery -> change the power mode to Best Performance when plugged in. And on that page, you may also want to set Best Power Efficiency when On Battery. I noticed with these settings, the fans won't rev as much even when the laptop is charging.

16GB of RAM is good for multi-tasking.

There's no dedicated graphics card but this laptop can be used for some light gaming. I was able to play Hades 2, a hack and slash game, at 1080P resolution at 60 FPS without drop frames.

Windows 11 Home is stable and runs well. Overall responsiveness is great. Interestingly, there's no bloatware.

Battery life

Battery capacity is 46.2 Wh and that's not much.

Battery life is one of the main downsides of this laptop. 4-6 hours of battery life with normal usage is not unexpected from a budget laptop. If you have to use this laptop outdoors often, I recommend you get a laptop power bank, one that is 20,000 mAh (3.7V 74Wh).

Battery life has always been the downsides of Windows or Intel processors. I can't say I'm surprised here.

Conclusion

The Chuwi CoreBook X Intel i5-12450H has a processor that's powerful enough to last for years. Build quality is good. So the only thing that would affect its longevity would be the battery health.

A laptop that has to be charged often will run up the charge cycle fast, and that will degrade the battery health fast. In years to come, chances are it may still be feasible to just change the battery rather than buy a new laptop because this processor is really good. Plus you get 16GB of RAM.

This laptop has good specifications except the battery, and to get this at USD 395 is quite a decent deal. Just factor in extra money to buy a portable laptop power bank if you have intention to use this outdoors often.

If you're looking for a powerful compact laptop at a budget price point, this is one to consider.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Good colour support
+ Sharp display
+ Useful 3:2 display aspect ratio
+ Decent selection of ports
+ Powerful performance
+ Good typing experience
+ Good touchpad
+ Backlit keyboard
+ Easy access to upgrade NVMe SSD
+ No bloatware
- Typing becomes slow when laptop is charging
- 4-6 hour hour battery life
- Eco, Balanced, Turbo mode do not have any difference
- Fans would rev often. Performance mode needs to be set properly to minimise fan noise
- Speakers sound hollow
- Keyboard layout will take time to get used to

Availability

The Chuwi CoreBook X Intel i5-12450H is available on AliExpress.