Chuwi is mainly known for its tablet PCs and laptops. But this manufacturer has been very popular in other niches as well. Say, its iLife series smart vacuum cleaners have no rival when it comes to the price-over-performance ratio. This company has also decided to try its luck in the mini PC market as well. We have managed to review the first product of this brand targeting the mentioned market, and we know it is capable of making eye-catching models. Today we are going to take a look at another mini PC named CHUWI GBox. Not to be confused with the ZBox or XBox, the GBox mini PC targets home theater users and video streamers. At this moment, our protagonist is available at $219.99.
The higher version of this mini PC was announced at CES 2018 along with the Chuwi SurBook Pro powered by the Intel Gemini Lago processor and Hi9 tablet air equipped with Mediatek 8176 SoC running on Android 8 Oreo out of the box. The original Chuwi GBox was announced a bit later. It is considered to be the world’s first mini PC coming with a first Gemini Lake N4100 global chipset.
As you guess, its selling point is the SoC, which provides up to 50% better performance in comparison to the previous-generation chip while consuming less than 10 Watts for the entire unit. This processor supports DDR4 for faster data transfer. Plus, it comes with a 10-bit 4K UHD HEVC support, up to 2.1x the web browsing experience, up to 3.2x faster graphics, integrated Gigabit WiFi, VP9 hardware decoding and up to 10 hours of battery life.
Apart from the brand new Celeron CPU, the GBox comes with a 4GB of RAM, wireless-AC, and 64 GB of ROM expandable to 2TB. USB Type-C, HDMI 2.0, VGA, RJ-45, MicroSD card reader, and 4x USB Type-A (2×2.0 + 2×3.0) complete the overall package.
Thanks to a stylish look and high-level manufacturing that uses unibody stamping, micro-level CNC cutting, and aluminum alloy sandblasting oxidation treatment, powerful hardware, and Windows 10, the Chuwi GBox should be very competitive against popular media players like the Nvidia Shield, Intel NUC, and Zotac’s ZBox series.
