After reviewing the Chuwi Vi8 slate and finding it pretty solid, I guess it’s time to check out another Chuwi product. This one is called Chuwi Hi8 and stands out once again through an affordable price, via a Gearbest promo, that has it at below $100. Below you can check out the first impressions related to the slate.
Packaged inside the usual beige cardboard box, the device looks pretty inconspicuous at first sight. The tablet came to us in a white version, made of polycarbonate and with a special texture that makes it pretty much dust proof. The grip is pretty solid and the Chuwi Hi8 also has two special metal portions on the sides, for a more solid design and possibly to better survive potential drops.
Moving on from the polycarbonate shell, we find a Windows button upfront, below the display and also reasonably thick bezels. There’s a brightness sensor at the, as well as a front VGA camera, while at the bottom rests a microphone. Up at the top we can also find the 3.5 mm audio jack and the microUSB 2.0 port. The Power and volume buttons are placed on the right and they’re made of plastic, not metal in case you’re wondering. On the same right side we can find the microSD card slot, supporting up to 64 GB of extra storage.
At the back there’s the speaker, with a pretty high volume. Overall, the whole device weighs 304 grams and measures 8 mm in thickness, being reasonably fine to use with a single hand. Specs-wise, the Hi8 brings an 8 inch IPS panel with a 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution, while inside we find a quad core Intel Atom Z3736F CPU, clocked at 2.16 GHz, together with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage.
There’s a back 2 MP shooter and on the connectivity front we’ve got WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, a microUSB 2.0 port and audio jack. Powering up the slate is a 4000 mAh battery, that should offer 5 hours of gaming. Bundled with the product is an USB OTG cable, charger, USB cable and manual. Chuwi Hi8 is a dual boot model, that runs both Windows 8.1 and Android 4.4.4 KitKat, switching between the OSes via a special virtual button. (UPDATE: Chuwi Hi8 offers support for Windows 10 installation)
Once the button is pressed, the tablet restarts and enters the new OS. It’s interesting to notice the partitioning here, with 16 GB dedicated to Android and 16 GB to Windows 8.1, of which 10.2 GB are free on the Microsoft OS, while the Android portion gets only 7 GB. After playing with the slate for a bit I can say it handles Full HD YouTube playback easily and the sound has quite a high volume.
The device works best as a combo of productivity, video watching, multimedia and casual gaming. Of course, you’re wondering about the price, so you must know that GearBest is running a promotion these days, taking the price of the tablet down by 62%, reaching $93. The delivery is free and the product reaches the customer in 25 days tops.
The device supports the update to Windows 10, in case you’re wondering. We’ll be back with an unboxing soon and also a full review.
