AMD CHUWI CoreBook Plus Gaming Laptop 16'', AMD Ryzen Review

Alright, let's get this out of the way first: this CHUWI CoreBook Plus is a weird little machine. It's got a powerful AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme GPU stuffed into a body that weighs less than a pound and a half, which is honestly kind of wild. The one thing you need to know is that this is a Frankenstein's monster of a laptop—it pairs high-end gaming graphics with a surprisingly basic Intel CPU and a screen that's just okay. It's built for one very specific person who wants portable power above all else, and it makes some serious compromises to get there.

The performance story here is all about that GPU. The AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme is no joke, landing in the 64th percentile for graphics power. That means you can absolutely game on this thing, which is impressive for its size. But the surprise is how that power is held back. The Intel 1355U CPU is in the bottom third of all laptops, and it shows. You'll get great frame rates until the processor becomes a bottleneck, which it will in more demanding titles. It's a classic case of unbalanced specs.

At $470, this is a complicated value proposition. You're getting a discrete gaming GPU at a budget price, which is unheard of. But you're also getting a laptop with major weak points in the CPU, screen, and reported reliability. It's worth it only if your sole priority is cheap, portable gaming horsepower and you're willing to accept the trade-offs.

This laptop doesn't have direct competitors because of its bizarre spec mix. The closest thing might be a budget ASUS Zenbook for portability, but you'd sacrifice all the gaming power. If you want a balanced gaming laptop, you'd look at something like the MSI Vector 16 HX, which has a proper CPU/GPU pairing but costs much more and weighs twice as much. The CHUWI exists in its own niche: it's for someone who looked at a Steam Deck and said, 'I want that, but as a full Windows laptop,' and didn't care about anything else.

Here's the deal. I can only recommend the CHUWI CoreBook Plus to a very specific buyer: someone on an extreme budget who needs the absolute most portable form factor possible and will use it almost exclusively for gaming. For everyone else—students, general users, people who need reliability—the CPU and durability concerns are too big to ignore. It's a fascinating tech experiment, but not a well-rounded daily driver.