Review: Chuwi MiniBook X N150 laptop (2025)

Review unit provided by Chuwi

The first Chuwi MiniBook was released in May 2021 and there have been several newer models since then. The latest model released in early 2025 is called the Chuwi MiniBook X N150, and as the name suggests, it comes with the Intel N150 processor (4-core).

Price isUSD 352 at the time of review, and that may or may not include free shipping depending on your location.

Bottom line

This is a mini laptop with a 10.5-inch LCD display and runs Windows 11 Home. Before you buy this such a small laptop, you should know what to expect. The selling point here is thecompact and portable design, and the limitation is the small display affects productivity and user experience.

You can think of this as the smaller brother to the 14-inch Chuwi FreeBook N100 (review) released in 2024 that comes with the Intel N100. There are benchmark differences but user experience is quite similar. Unless you really want an ultra portable laptop, I recommend the 14-inch laptop instead if you have to work on it for long periods of time.

Overall performance is smooth for office type work that do not require intensive processing power. This laptop is not ideal for gaming since it's not that powerful, and even light gaming may require you to drop the resolution below 1080P.

Audio quality from the speakers sound hollow, not surprising.

One potential deal breaker is the display refresh rate is only 50Hz. It may be possible to increase the refresh rate, and more on that later. But 50Hz is alright for office type work.

Specs

• Operating System: Windows 11 Home
• Display: 10.51-inch touchscreen IPS LCD
• Resolution: FHD+ (1920×1200), 16:10, 50Hz
• CPU: Intel Twin Lake N150 (4 Cores, 4 Threads, 6 MB L3 Intel Smart Cache, up to 3.6 GHz)
• GPU: Intel Graphics (24 EUs, 1 GHz)
• Memory: 12GB LPDDR5
• Storage: 512GB PCIe 3.0 SSD (1× M.2 2280 PCIe SSD Slot)
• Battery: 28.88 Wh (7.6V/3800mAh)
• I/O Ports: 2× Full-featured USB 3.0 Type-C Ports, 1× 3.5mm Audio Jack
• Wireless Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2
• Webcam: 2 MP Front Camera
• Power Adapter: 12V/3A USB-C Power Adapter
• Size: 244 × 166.4 × 17.2 mm
• Weight: About 920g
• What's in the Box: 1× MiniBook X N150, 1× USB-C Power Adapter, 1× User Manual, 1× Warranty Card, 1× Inspection Report

Things included

The box only has the laptop and a 36W charger with USB-C connector. The plug may vary depending on country.

Shown above is the laptop beside a 6.7-inch iPhone and A5 sized sketchbook.

The aluminium alloy body has a matte texture throughout. The metal surface feels more like plastic because there's no cold touch of metal. Build quality is solid with no flex at all for the display and keyboard deck.

The design is clean and simple. The touchscreen display is quite glossy and reflective. There's no pen support.

The display can be folded to the back and laptop can be deployed in tent mode. Hinge is quite stiff so the display hold its angle easily.

The laptop can also be used as a tablet when the display is folded all the way to the back. 10.5-inch display is still big enough for reading comics. Using this as a tablet is not ideal though since it's a 920g tablet. Most tablets of this size are almost half the weight.

Keyboard is disabled when in tablet mode, and Windows desktop UI will switch to tablet UI.

The display has auto-rotation for tablet and tent mode.

The display is a 10.5-inch IPS LCD with 1920 x 1200 resolution (16:10 aspect ratio). Colours look good out of the box. I measured colour support for 93% sRGB and a maximum brightness of 254 nits.

Colour accuracy is decent for a laptop at this price. Visuals are sharp and pixelation is not really noticeable unless you look real close. Visual quality is decent.

254 nits of maximum brightness is more than sufficient for use in a bright indoor environment, but not high enough for outdoors near sunlight.

Main downside for the display is refresh rate is 50Hz. From what I have researched online, it seems that increasing the refresh rate to 60Hz is possible (with 2023 model) using Custom Resolution Utility (CRU).

When playing 60FPS Youtube videos, the conversion to 50Hz seems smooth enough. Video gameplay at 50FPS seems slightly choppy to me but this is not a gaming laptop anyway.

The only branding visible is on the sticker pasted underneath the laptop. I did not open the back to check if you can upgrade the RAM or SSD storage. 12GB RAM and 512GB of storage is sufficient for a small laptop that I'll mostly be using for media consumption.

There's one visible fan on the back, four rubber feet and downward facing speakers at the corners. Speakers are loud but sound hollow. Fan noise is not audible under normal load.

For some reason, when playing Youtube videos on an external display, there's audible coil whine. There's no coil whine playing Youtube videos on the laptop when external display is to connected.

The left side has a 3.5mm audio jack and the fan exhaust.

The laptop does get warm with usage but not hot, and the fans won't rev or are audible unless you're playing games. And even when fans are spinning at full speed, the noise isn't too loud.

The other side has the power button, two USB 3.0 type C ports with video output. Only one of two USB-C ports can be used for charging.

The keyboard is almost full size except for some keys which are made smaller to fit the keyboard deck. It will take some time to get used to the size.

Typing experience is good. Keys have good travel and feedback. Keys have backlight that will turn off automatically with inactivity.

Function keys default to F1 to F12, but you can press F2 during startup to switch them to more convenient shortcut keys.

Touchpad is challenging to use due to its small size. The touchpad has left and right click areas and the centre cannot be pressed down. Design of the touchpad makes it difficult to click and drag files or folders around, or select text.

You're better off using the touchscreen or a mouse instead of the touchpad.

Using Windows on such a small display feels restrictive or limiting. The UI feels cramp. Increasing the scale of UI elements such as tools or palettes means your working area will be smaller.

The small display does not show much content so when web browsing expect to scroll more. When web browsing, I prefer fullscreen (F11) mode for more space.

The small display is probably better for media consumption and light computing tasks. I can't imagine typing for hours on such a small display. You'll also probably want to get a laptop stand to raise the display higher to a more ergonomic height.

Thankfully you can always connect a larger external display to the laptop.

Performance

This laptop with Intel N150 and 12 GB RAM is perfectly capable of multi-tasking and handling light computing tasks such as office type work, checking emails, watching videos, web browsing.

Overall performance is smooth and lag-free. Laptop can boot quite quickly and apps launch fast enough, but big apps will take more time to load.

I measured wifi download speed of 440 Mbps which to me is quite fast.

Laptop does not produce much heat with office type work.

Battery life

Battery life is around 4-5 hours depending on usage and maximum brightness. It would be good to pair this laptop with a power bank that can at least provide 30W charging or higher..

I measured charging speed of 20W which is considered slow for a laptop.

A mini laptop definitely has its own compromises. So whether the Chuwi MiniBook X N150 is suitable for you will come down to what you're buying it for.

Overall performance is good, smooth and can handle multi-tasking well.

Main downsides would be the hollow audio quality, 50Hz refresh rate and 4-5 hours battery life.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Design looks good
+ Solid build quality
+ Compact and portable
+ There's tent and tablet mode
+ Touchscreen is useful
+ 2x USB-C video ports, but only one can be used for charging
+ Keyboard quality is good
+ Backlit keyboard
+ Smooth performance and can handle multi-tasking for office-type work
+ 12GB RAM and 512GB storage (474GB usable)
+ Does not produce much heat
+ Fan noise not audible
+ No bloatware
- No face or fingerprint unlock
- Very reflective display
- 10.5-inch display is quite limiting
- Battery life is 4-5 hours
- Charging speed is slow
- 50Hz instead of 60Hz refresh rate
- Hollow sounding quality
- Touchpad is challenging to use
- Has coil whine when playing Youtube videos on external displays

Availability

The Chuwi MiniBook X N150 is available from Chuwi online store

You may find this at a lower price on AliExpress