Chuwi Hi12 specifications reveal a neat Surface alternative


chuwi hi12 launch

Happy New Year, and our first article of 2016 is tablet related with final full specifications of the Chuwi Hi12 Microsoft Surface alternative.

Chuwi’s Hi12 tablet is set to make an appearance on reseller sites sometime this month and as we already know the 12-inch tablet will feature dual boot OS support for running either Windows 10 or Android 5.1. Those are the details we already knew, now full hardware parameters have been revealed.

Chuwi Hi12 Windows dual boot tablet specifications

Chuwi Hi12

Out of the box the Chuwi Hi12 will run Windows 10 on its 12 -inch 2160 x 1440 3:2 ratio display with a peppy Intel X5 Cherry Trail Z8300 clocked at up to 1.84Ghz and 8th Generation Intel GPU.

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The Chuwi Hi12 will boast 4GB RAM and 64GB internal memory, while a micro SD card slot means support for up to 128GB SD cards for even more storage.

An all alloy body in either Champagne gold and Space grey hides a 11000mAh battery inside plus there’s a 2 mega-pixel camera up front and a 5 mega-pixel shooter on the rear!

Chuwi Hi12

Pricing details haven’t been revealed but expect the cost of this tablet to be competitive and much more affordable than a similar Surface device. Could 2016 be the year of the Chinese tablet?

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28 Comments

  1. January 1, 2016

    Looks very good but they should’ve used the X7 or at least X5 Z8500 instead of Z8300

    Who knows what the performance will look like. Reviews will tell I guess.

    Aha!!! I am the first commenter in 2016 …..

    • Rob
      January 1, 2016

      Congratulations! Lol this would’ve been perfect with the x7, the x3 doesn’t support 4gb ram I believe.

      • rimakus
        January 1, 2016

        It does apparently with some sorcery in a single channel mode

    • pa5t1s
      January 1, 2016

      Yep, true

    • Sophie Turner
      January 6, 2016

      The Z8300 is more steady than the Z8500 now!

  2. pa5t1s
    January 1, 2016

    Happy New Year to you Andi and GizChina followers 🙂
    I’m eagerly waiting for a similar device, but laptop-wise! 2016 will be the right year, no doubt about it!

  3. Cuberdon75
    January 1, 2016

    It needs an active digitizer/stylus to be a Surface alternative.

    • Stef
      January 1, 2016

      It’s not useful to many. Some people merely want a lightweight laptop that comes for cheap.

      I’d guess it would be a great product if it’s priced rightly because unlike Surface Pro it would lack an identity crisis , it would be what Surface Pro *could be* if it was not to try to be too many things at once: a cheap, lightweight laptop.

    • mr201
      January 1, 2016

      Yes, as an artist I have been longing for Surface pro alternative with active digitizer. But most convertible or tablet with active digitizer with Windows OS are priced way to expensive for me. For some, it may not be useful, but it means the world for me.

      • Akimitsui
        January 2, 2016

        You can find used Thinkpad X220 and X230 Tablets for pretty cheap these days that just got off business leases. If you can deal with the ugly bulky design and the 1366×768 resolution these are awesome XD

        The Thinkpad Helix is also a nice alternative.

        • Duarte Bruno
          January 8, 2016

          Thinkpad Helix is well over 1K $. It’s not an option.

  4. Muhammad Yasir
    January 1, 2016

    dual boot ?!

    • Creazydea
      January 4, 2016

      Windows 10 when release but dual boot later

  5. alan4195
    January 1, 2016

    I think that when tablets pass the 12″ mark they’re essentially laptop replacents, and therefore require at least low-end laptop processing power (think Intel Core I3).

    The X5 Z8300 doesn’t even come close to that type of performance, so why bother with the unwieldy size?

  6. Freeje
    January 2, 2016

    Hope the dual boot feature is better than the one by Teclast. Colleague has one but after a month it stopped working and then the USB port stopped working. Build quality of Chinese tablets is getting better but software is still crappy.

    • Duarte Bruno
      January 8, 2016

      Cheers Freeje.
      Which Teclast model was that? I was thinking of getting one.

  7. Akimitsui
    January 2, 2016

    As long as it has active digitizer/stylus support and a laptop-like keyboard dock then I will actually consider buying this.

  8. Natsumi
    January 3, 2016

    Always windows… sigh…

    • Xiaolu
      January 3, 2016

      Same fellin’ here, waiting for Ubuntu devices to launch in 2016. Hopefully Meizu and others would surprise us! 😉

    • kzm
      January 4, 2016

      better with windows

      • Natsumi
        January 4, 2016

        I disagree.

        • kzm
          January 4, 2016

          Well many apps in play store are not optimise for 7″ tablet let alone 12″ tablet. With Windows tablet I don’t need apps as most can be access through website.

  9. Duarte Bruno
    January 4, 2016

    Cherry Trail Z8300? Total fail.
    They could have sourced a Z8500 for an extra $5 a piece and ask 25$ extra on the final price for a setup that goes up to 2.24 GHz instead of 1.84 GHz, that can address 8GB of RAM and that does it at twice the bandwidth of the Z8300.

    • Sophie Turner
      January 6, 2016

      Cherry Trail Z8300 is more steady than the Z5800 ,especially the heat!

      • Duarte Bruno
        January 6, 2016

        Check the benchmarks. The Z8500 trounces the Z8300 and it’s not simply justified by the higher clock, having double the RAM bandwidth plays a major role in this.
        Sure, it will get hotter in the long run, but the capacity to scale the clock higher in short busts will make everything go faster (launching apps, applying a filter on an image for a few seconds) and, if not sustained, will not make it any hotter.
        The heat problem is almost exclusively game related, where you tax the GPU heavily for long periods of time. The CPU takes up a small die area when compared to the GPU.

    • Khalmetov Alisher
      February 5, 2016

      totally agree with you