The Chuwi AeroBook Review: One Small Step For Chuwi

Display Analysis

One of the main reasons Chuwi has been easy to recommend at the low-end of the PC price scale is that they generally offer an IPS display, meaning great viewing angles, on many of their budget offerings. The Chuwi AeroBook continues this trend, although at the $499 price point, it’s less of a luxury and more of an expectation.

The 13.3-inch panel offers a 1920x1080 resolution, which is perfect for this size of notebook, and although a 3:2 offering would possibly be better, the panel choices are slimmer for the company trying to hit a price target when you move away from 16:9.

To see how the Chuwi AeroBook display performs, we tested it with Portrait Display’s CalMAN software with a custom workflow. For contrast and brightness readings, and X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter was used, and for color accuracy testing, the X-Rite i1Pro2 spectrophotometer gets the call.

Brightness and Contrast

At 305 nits peak brightness, the AeroBook is well under the average for laptops in this price range, but still reasonable bright. The black levels though are quite high, meaning the panel isn’t doing a great job of blocking the backlight when requested, and this means the contrast ratio is quite a bit lower than the other notebooks. At one point, 1000:1 was pretty good for an IPS display on a notebook, but improvements to panel design and aligned displays have moved the bar. So on this result, the display is OK but not great. For those that are curious, the display goes down to 19 nits at its lowest brightness, which is likely fine for a notebook, but quite a bit higher than many models which can offer sub-10 nit levels at 0% brightness.

Grayscale

Portrait Displays CalMAN

We often discuss factory calibrated displays, like Microsoft does on the Surface lineup, and that most companies do not individually calibrate displays. But that doesn’t mean no effort is spent on calibration, since some work can be done at the batch level, and while it won’t lead to perfect results, it can still get a display in the range. Unfortunately, Chuwi doesn’t appear to do batch calibration either, which a horrendous result on the grayscale test. The red levels drop away dramatically, and the gamma level is not even close to the desired 2.2 level. As a budget device, this can be somewhat forgiven, but as Chuwi creeps up the price range with higher-priced options, it’s a negative against this device.

Gamut

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Some devices in this price range skimp on the backlighting, meaning they can’t even do the full sRGB gamut. That is not the case here, with Chwui able to achieve a good result on sRGB, although the actual colors don’t quite hit the mark.

Saturation

Portrait Displays CalMAN

Gamut tests the primary and secondary colors at 100% levels, but the saturation test checks the primary and secondary colors across the entire range, in 4-bit steps. On the primary colors, blue and red do a reasonable job hitting the correct axis, but green is quite a bit off. On the secondary colors, magenta is the one that is most affected. The end result isn’t great.

Gretag Macbeth

Portrait Displays CalMAN

The Gretag Macbeth tests an assortment of colors rather than just focusing on the primary and secondary results, and includes the important skin tones. With no calibration at all, the AeroBook struggles here on almost every target.

Display Conclusion

As mentioned previously, offering an IPS display on Chuwi’s budget offerings makes them stand out against the competition which often still includes TN displays in those price ranges, but the AeroBook is no longer competing against $200 notebooks. The inclusion of an IPS display at the $500 range that this notebook hits is an expectation, so just offering one isn’t enough to make your product stand out. Unfortunately, Chuwi hasn’t put any effort into the display at all, other than ensuring the backlight can hit the entire sRGB gamut.