Review: Chuwi HiPad XPro - 10.5-inch tablet under US $149

Review unit provided by Chuwi

Chuwi HiPad XPro is a 10.5-inch Android 12 tablet priced at US $149. You can find this tablet on AliExpress too.

Chuwi is a company from China that's known for their budget laptops, mini PCs and tablets. They release many new products each year and the prices are extremely competitive and a huge selling point. I had review the US $180 Chuwi HiPad Air in late 2021 and that was a good tablet. The Chuwi HiPad XPro is an even better tablet and the price is even lower.

Bottom line:
The Chuwi HiPad XPro is for people looking for an affordable no-frills tablet. The visual quality of the display, audio quality and performance are pretty good for budget tablet. You do get what you pay for, and more. It's not the best tablet but it provides a lot of value for money.

Video review

Key specs:

• CPU: Unisoc T616 (2 x A75@2.0 GHz + 6 x A55@1.8 GHz)
• GPU: ARM Mali G57MP1 GPU
• RAM: 6GB
• Storage: 128GB
• Display: 10.51-inch IPS capacitive
• Resolution: 1920 x 1200
• WiFi: 2.4G/5G, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Bluetooth: v5
• Front camera: 8.0 MP
• Rear camera: 13.0 MP AF
• MicroSD card slot: Yes
• SIM: dual, nano
• Speakers: 4
• Size: 246.4 x 161.51 x 7.3mm
• Weight: ~500g

The cut cost to get the price low, there's no packaging design to speak of. Nice, and I mean that in a positive way.

Items included are 10W charger, USB-A to USB-C charging cable, manual and warranty card.

Design

The tablet comes with a screen protector that's already applied. I find the glossy plastic screen protector to have too much resistance with my finger so I've removed that and have the glass exposed. This tablet is so affordable that I don't mind having scratches on the glass.

This is a good looking tablet. The display is 10.5-inch IPS LCD with 1920 x 1200 resolution. Colours look good and are much better than I expected. Visuals look sharp enough. Refresh rate is just 60 Hz.

Chuwi did not mention the maximum brightness of the LCD display, but it seems bright enough for me. Downside is there's no adaptive brightness feature which Android 12 is supposed to have.

Bezels are thin, corners and LCD are rounded off, and sides are flat. The display is laminated so there's no gap between the glass and LCD. FYI, even the iPad (2022) which is 3 times more expensive is still using a laminated display.

The overall look and feel reminds me instantly of the more expensive Samsung Galaxy Tab S7/S8 tablets.

At the bottom you will find the 3.5mm audio jack at the left corner, USB-C port, speaker, micro SD card and SIM tray. The power and volume buttons are located near the SIM tray.

You can either use 2 SIM cards or 1 SIM and a micro SD card.

The volume and power buttons are located on the right lower side. When holding the tablet vertically, you can feel the buttons there on your right hand. But thankfully accidental presses are rare.

The back is almost full metal with matte texture except for the plastic edge near where the cameras are. The back cameras are 13MP main and 0.3MP depth. The front facing camera is a is 8MP landscape. Face unlock is fast enough.

You get 4-way speakers with this tablet and the audio is loud and clear enough but sounds slightly hollow. Audio quality is maybe 3.5 out of 5 stars but still much better than many budget tablets I've tested. Overall video watching experience is good due to the good colours and decent audio quality.

The tablet supports Widevine L1 so there's no restriction on HDR and resolution. I'm not able to test Widevine L1 support since I don't subscribe to video streaming services except for Amazon Prime Video which works well.

Performance

The tablet uses Unisoc T616 chip which is an 8-core chip with 2 x A75@2.0 GHz and 6 x A55@1.8 GHz. GPU is ARM Mali G57MP1.

Overall performance of the tablet with stock Android 12 is smooth. 6GB RAM works fine for mulit-tasking. I installed a Nova Launcher and performance and navigation still feels smooth.

Gaming performance is decent as long as you don't mind lower visual quality. With Genshin Impact, I had to choose the Lowest graphic quality for gameplay to be smooth and lag-free. With Low settings, gameplay is mostly smooth but after every few seconds you can see drop frames.

The tablet weighs 500g and is lightweight enough to hold for long periods of time.

Battery life

I measured 8.5 hours of battery life with AccuBattery Pro app.

Charging to 100% takes around 2 hours with the fastest charger I have.

Conclusion

Chuwi HiPad XPro provides good value for money for tablet that's just US $149. The display looks good, audio sounds good enough, overall performance is smooth. The main area lacking would be gaming performance but that's to be expected for a tablet at this low price point. The placement of the power and volume button could be more conventional but it's not a downside.

Android 12 features are quite limited so you'll probably want to install your own launcher. One feature I miss is the ability to turn off specific types of notifications for an app, and not turn off all notifications for an app. And there's no adaptive brightness feature.

To conclude, the quality of this tablet gets 4/5 stars and value for money is 5/5 stars.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Good looking design with thin uniform bezels
+ Compact and lightweight (500g)
+ Solid build quality
+ Can hold 2x SIM, or 1x SIM and micro SD card
+ 10.5-inch displays have good colours
+ Laminated display
+ Bright display
+ Comes with screen protector already applied
+ 1920 x 1200 resolution is sharp enough for a 10.5-inch display
+ 3.5mm headphone jack
+ Extremely attractive pricing
+ Smooth overall performance and multi-tasking
+ 4-way speakers with decent audio quality but has slight hollow effect
+ Widevine L1
+ 8.5 hour battery life
- Power and volume button located near the bottom.
- Limitation to gaming performance, expected
- Slow charging speed
- Screen protector (removable) has bubbles beneath
- No keyboard connector
- No auto brightness feature
- Cannot mute specific notifications within apps

Availability

You can find the Chuwi HiPad XPro on Chuwi online store and AliExpress