For the whole of last year my eroge machine was the Chuwi Minibook. It’s got plenty of small problems, but I thought it was fine — good enough for playing games. Then at the start of this year I lost my laptop bag, and the Chuwi Minibook went with it, so I started thinking about getting a new machine. My requirements were pretty clear by then: A good screen. The Chuwi Minibook uses PWM dimming, which is a pain over long sessions. Good battery life. A galgame machine doesn’t need much power, but the battery has to be biiiig. Enough cooling. The Chuwi Minibook got scorching hot when I ran it, and the fan sounded like a plane taking off. Expandable storage, at least NVMe. 16GB of RAM. I like leaving a ton of stuff open in the background. USB-C for docks and charging. After shopping around, the only thing that fit was the GPD P2 MAX, so I grabbed one on Taobao.

Why I bought it: I’ve always used a Surface Pro 4 as my “secondary machine.” The reason is simple: I need Windows, especially for playing Galgame. Unfortunately my Surface Pro 4 later went to my wife, so I no longer had a Windows machine. I started thinking about getting a new one, and that’s when I saw the Chuwi Minibook project on Indiegogo. I was hooked instantly. I compared it against other similar products, including the GPD Pocket 2 MAX and the One-Netbook, and each had its merits, but the Chuwi Minibook had these highlights: Supports Yoga-style tablet flipping Front camera quality better than the GPD Pocket 2 MAX User-replaceable/expandable NVMe SSD The Chuwi Minibook has the biggest keyboard buttons (typing is no problem) Internals are closer to a real laptop, with metal shielding — less of the knockoff feel than GPD and the like Cheap, cheap, cheap! The One-Netbook with the same specs as the Chuwi Minibook costs more, GPD isn’t cheaper than Chuwi, and it doesn’t support Yoga mode either Keyboard backlight, which GPD doesn’t have Pressure-sensitive stylus support, which GPD doesn’t have I figured the Chuwi was the most well-rounded overall and fit my needs well, so I joined the crowdfunding campaign and picked the 16GB RAM / 8100Y version. The campaign ended in August, with a few free spec upgrades along the way, plus a stylus and an EVA hard shell case thrown in. It didn’t arrive until October, though. As everyone knows, Chuwi is a Shenzhen shanzhai factory, so I didn’t have to wait for an international package like the other foreigners on Indiegogo. Mine came by SF Express. But that was only the start of a whole saga.