Chuwi Hi10 Max on Fedora 41: Is Linux Ready for Convertibles?#
Due to always having a company laptop nearby, I have been using a desktop for personal computing, for about five years now. It is a very workable all-AMD Arch Linux setup, where everything is working pretty great. I chose Arch because I wanted to play games and I wanted to have an up-to-date graphics stack, and recent kernel. It is still a pretty good machine for most of what I throw at it.
Unfortunately, one thing started bugging me. I missed having a personal device to carry around, especially on trips. Not only that, but having to do all my computing at the same desk was getting old. So I thought I could use another machine. Something portable and easy to carry around, with a good screen.
More or less at the same time, there was the need for some sort of drawing tablet, to produce game assets. Putting two and two together, the 2-in-1 tablet form factor was an interesting proposition. Combined with the availability of great tablet drawing software for Linux (thinking of Krita and MyPaint), I was interested. The thought of having an experience with a different form factor, and more forms of input, was also nice. So I started to look for a machine like that.
Here are my constraints:
No budget for high-end machines; It has to be reasonably priced.
It had to run Linux well.
It has to have a good screen. The main usecase is reading and writing, be it copy or code.
The runner-ups#
Let’s look at the options that were not chosen, and why.
One option was to pursue an older model of Surface tablet, and set it up. My best bet seemed to be looking at the Linux Surface project, and see which models were better supported. Seemed like every model had some sort of caveat, and I’d have to run a kernel with lots of out-of-tree patches. And looking at the models with good screens, I couldn’t find a model that was well-supported, had a good screen, and was within budget. No go.
Another contender was the PineTab2 tabled by pine64. They are a well-known provider of open hardware in a variety of form factors. Mosy of all, the PinePhone, a standard target for mobile Linux development. Unfortulately, the hardware was not usable for me. No Wifi and Bluetooth yet, low resolution screen, and a tad bit expensive for what it is. Pass.
Then I found a device that seemed to tick all the boxes, and more. The MINISFORUM V3 is a 2-1 convertible with a powerful AMD SOC, great amount of ram, and nice screen. It is supposed to be a great Linux experience all-round. But, unfortunately, it was too expensive for me. So I had to find something else.
The Chuwi Hi10 Max#
Fast-forward a few months later, I ran into this machine. It seemed to have a really nice 13-inch 3K screen, a workable (and weird) 12GB of RAM, and a slow but adequate N100 processor. At first it seemed to be an unbalanced pairing, pushing the little SOC to deliver a desktop in 3K. And having enough RAM for very basic development tasks but nothing else.
Build quality#
Yadda yadda
Screen#
The screen is pretty good. There is nothing fancy like amazing color reproduction, or a super bright backlight. But colors are good, constrast is adequate, and the resolution is pretty great. Another advantage is that 200% scaling is the sweet spot for me, so I get to avoid potential issues with fractional scaling.
The only aspect that is iredeemably bad, is the minimum backlight brightness. The minimum brightness is way too high, making for an uncomfortable experience at night. Some ambient lighting helps with that. But this is definitely not a good device to use in bed.
There is also a bit of light bleed in the corners, only noticeable during boot, and considerable flex. The screen coud use a bit more support material underneath, especially in the middle. All in all, I’m quite happy with the screen.
Keyboard Cover#
The keyboard cover is serviceable. It can be used flat on the desk, but also raised, magnetically attached to bottom edge of the tablet. I prefer to use the keyboard raised, feels nicer to me. The keys themselves don’t rattle nor wobble too much, and have a nice soft click to them, giving the feeling of a mid-range laptop. Not bad.
One thing I don’t like is the thickness. It is forgiven on this department for the sturdyness, and it seems to be a worthwhile tradeoff, but it is like two thirds of the thickness of the machine. It could be thinner. But since it helps maintain the stiffness at the price point, it’s ok.
Holding Fn+Up/Down cycles between seven RGB color options. There is no PWM control for the colors, only three brightness levels, and the backlight is global. The backlight could be just white for all I care.
The worst usability aspect of the keyboard cover is the lack of memory. There is an Fn lock, triggered by pressing just Fn, which is appreciated. But the keyboard won’t remember the last state when it loses power. This also includes when the machine goes to sleep. So you may close the cover with Fn lock enabled, and when you wake the machine again, it’s gone. Starngely enough, the current keyboard backlight color can survive a suspend. It’s bewildering why the Fn lock is not also preserved.
The touchpad is a lowlight. It is small and grippy. Performing Plasma’s four-finger gesture does not work well. It starts too late, and shoud be detected earlier. If you try to do it too fast it does not register at all. A bit of a letdown on this department. At least the pointer precision is decent and two-finger scrolling works great.
Performance#
This machine is powered by an Intel N100 SOC, that can turbo up to 3.4 GHz. It includes 4 Alder-Lake efficiency cores, and an integrated GPU based on the Xe architecture. This little SOC has been getting some attention in the home streaming server community, as a very cost-effective solution for transcoding video. It can also be found being used for personal NAS and homelab-like tasks in the form of small NUC-like machines. The TDP is 6W, although is hard to quantify how much more juice it requirs when being pushed. Some improvised tests sowed the machine pulling some 8 extra watts, when pushing all cores to full load.
The 12 GB of RAM has been quite workable so far, especially when KDE Plasma and essential services (Nextcloud sync, password manager) use about 2,5 GB. Adding a web browser and IDE brings memory usage to more or less 5 GB, leaving plenty enough free RAM for light development tasks.
Not that I would have use for a lot more RAM in this machine anyway. The N100 SOC is very basic. It has just enugh power not to make using the machine a chore. Applications open quickly thanks to the nice SSD, but that is about it for compliments. For being a 12th gen Intel part, I expected a bit more GPU performance. Desktop effects that require good fillrate (like overview) can be really choppy if there are many windows on the screen. Not a dealbreaker, though. This is definitely not a gaming machine.
Steam runs well. Lighter games (2D mostly) look great on the 3k screen. Intel’s Vulkan drivers still need to improve, as this is essential for Proton performance. Most of what I tried just worked, despite the slowness.
Battery life#
The product specs and marketing page promise 5 hours of battery life. Already not looking too great for a tablet in 2025, but then again, budget. Does it reach 5 hours? Eh, it’s more like 4. This was expected to be a weak spot for this machine, and it did not disappoint in disappointing.
Intel has been acquiring a (well-deserved) reputation for being inefficient. This little SOC is showing that it is not always the case. I would be happy to trade some efficiency for compatibility, if that makes for a more useful machine. And what this SOC manages to accomplish for a 6 W TDP is good enough for me.
Two things with the most impact on battery life are the bright HiDPI screen and the 38 Wh battery capacity. It could be better. Something to be on the lookout for in the future.
Warranty?#
EU store
Distro-Hopping#
Fedora Kinoite#
Did not install. Anaconda sucks.
Manjaro#
Huge disappointment.
Fedora 41#
Had issues
State of KDE Plasma Desktop for Touch Use#
Since the keyboard
Alder-Lake Camera Rabbit Hole#
Now I’m going to go on a long tangent about the camera situation.
Before even deciding for the machine I looked up information on the state of Linux on the device.
Final Thoughts#
Overall I’m quite happy with this machine. It has hard limitations on performance, which dictate what it can be used for. But for the usecase it was bought for, reading and writing stuff, and light coding, it is quite good.
KDE Plasma on a device like this has potential, but some unexpected flaws. Using it purely as a tablet is not very workable at the moment, given the issues with the virtual keyboard. You see accomodations for touch input here and there, but overall you really need the keyboard for the machine to be useful.
This situation is very likely to change with time, as mixed form-factor machines become more and more common. Dolphin, for example, is an excellent example of what can be accomplished when an application acknowledges touch as a first-class input method. This does not translate to may other applications that are standard on a Plasma enviroment.
The issues with the virtual keyboard are a huge disappointment. Right now, it is the main blocker preventing the machine to be useful in tablet form. Hopefully this will be addressed in due time.