Is this $450 laptop from an unknown brand too good to be true?

这款来自不知名品牌的 450 美元笔记本电脑，真的物超所值吗？

The Chuwi Unibook is meant to undercut the MacBook Neo, but you get what you pay for. Chuwi（驰为）Unibook 旨在以低价挑战 MacBook Neo，但俗话说得好，一分钱一分货。

Finding a good laptop under $500 was hard enough before RAMageddon. They nearly always had cheap hardware and underpowered, often outdated chips. That’s what made the MacBook Neo so disruptive: It offered great build quality and good-enough performance starting at $599. Windows laptops couldn’t touch it. Even though it’s gone up to $699, it’s still the laptop to beat. 在“内存危机”（RAMageddon）之前，寻找一台 500 美元以下的优质笔记本电脑就已经很难了。它们几乎总是配备廉价的硬件和性能不足、甚至过时的芯片。这正是 MacBook Neo 具有颠覆性的原因：它以 599 美元的起售价提供了出色的制造质量和足够好的性能。Windows 笔记本电脑根本无法与之抗衡。尽管它现在的价格涨到了 699 美元，但它依然是目前最值得购买的笔记本电脑。

So when little-known Chinese brand Chuwi announced a $450 Windows laptop with an aluminum build and a brand-new Intel Wildcat Lake processor, it sounded too good to be true. It is. 因此，当鲜为人知的中国品牌驰为（Chuwi）宣布推出一款售价 450 美元、采用铝合金机身和全新英特尔 Wildcat Lake 处理器的 Windows 笔记本电脑时，听起来简直好得令人难以置信。事实也确实如此。

The UniBook comes in one configuration: a 14-inch with an Intel Core 3 304 processor, 8GB of soldered RAM, and a user-swappable 256GB SSD. That’s the lowest-end of Intel’s new Wildcat Lake chips, with just five CPU cores: one performance core, and four low-power efficiency cores. And the integrated graphics? A single GPU core. The MacBook Neo’s A18 Pro is a six-core CPU / five-core GPU ensemble, and it’s a hot rod by comparison. UniBook 只有一种配置：14 英寸屏幕，搭载英特尔 Core 3 304 处理器，8GB 板载内存，以及用户可自行更换的 256GB SSD。这是英特尔新款 Wildcat Lake 芯片中最低端的型号，仅有五个 CPU 核心：一个性能核心和四个低功耗能效核心。至于集成显卡？只有一个 GPU 核心。相比之下，MacBook Neo 的 A18 Pro 拥有六核 CPU 和五核 GPU，简直是性能怪兽。

The UniBook feels sluggish in anything beyond basic web browsing, emails, and messaging. Its benchmark scores confirm how woefully underpowered that chip is. The MacBook Neo trounces it across the board: both single and multicore CPU performance, as well as graphics. Our Adobe Premiere 4K export test took over an hour on the UniBook. (Although at least it didn’t crash out.) I know it isn’t designed for video editing, but neither is the MacBook Neo, and the Neo exports the same video in under 10 minutes. The one edge the UniBook has is a slightly faster SSD. 除了基本的网页浏览、电子邮件和即时通讯外，UniBook 在处理任何其他任务时都显得迟钝。基准测试分数证实了该芯片的性能是多么令人沮丧。MacBook Neo 在单核和多核 CPU 性能以及图形处理方面全面碾压它。我们的 Adobe Premiere 4K 导出测试在 UniBook 上耗时超过一小时（尽管至少它没有崩溃）。我知道它不是为视频剪辑设计的，但 MacBook Neo 也不是，而 Neo 导出同样的视频只需不到 10 分钟。UniBook 唯一的优势是 SSD 速度稍快一些。

But despite faster storage, the UniBook’s 8GB of RAM is still a hindrance on Windows 11. It didn’t randomly lag like the recent 13-inch Surface Laptop did, but it isn’t hard to overwhelm. As on the 8GB Surface, Windows 11 uses anywhere from 4.6 to over 5GB of memory on the UniBook after a fresh reboot with no additional apps running. Once you open a half dozen Chrome tabs, a couple messaging apps, and a music streaming app, memory usage easily climbs to 7GB. 尽管存储速度更快，但 UniBook 的 8GB 内存对于 Windows 11 来说仍然是一个瓶颈。它虽然不像最近的 13 英寸 Surface Laptop 那样出现随机卡顿，但很容易过载。和 8GB 内存的 Surface 一样，在刚重启且没有运行额外应用程序的情况下，Windows 11 在 UniBook 上就会占用 4.6GB 到 5GB 以上的内存。一旦你打开六个 Chrome 标签页、几个聊天软件和一个音乐流媒体应用，内存占用很容易就会攀升至 7GB。

It’s no surprise Chrome crashed on me a couple times when I pushed it further with over 20 tabs across multiple virtual desktops. This is no problem on Windows laptops with 16GB of RAM, and even the MacBook Neo could handle more before slowing down. And you can count on everything moving like molasses during big file transfers. It couldn’t even load the Start menu or open the calculator app while importing photos into Lightroom Classic until the RAM and SSD bottlenecks eased. 不出所料，当我通过多个虚拟桌面打开超过 20 个标签页时，Chrome 崩溃了几次。这在配备 16GB 内存的 Windows 笔记本电脑上完全不是问题，即使是 MacBook Neo 在变慢之前也能处理更多任务。而且在进行大文件传输时，你会发现一切都慢得像蜗牛爬。在将照片导入 Lightroom Classic 时，它甚至无法加载“开始”菜单或打开计算器应用，直到内存和 SSD 的瓶颈缓解为止。

Even if your computing needs are minimal, the Chuwi’s hardware makes every interaction unpleasant. The screen is washed out, covering just 64 percent of the sRGB color space, and at 300 nits it’s pretty dim. But the worst offender is the trackpad. It’s incredibly stiff to click. You have to press it so hard the whole chassis flexes a little under the pressure. You don’t have to click the trackpad; it can detect taps too, but I never like the loosey-goosey feel of tapping — especially when executing right-clicks or click-and-drags. Using this trackpad made me physically and mentally tired. And clicking around on a laptop? Pretty important! 即使你的计算需求很低，驰为的硬件也会让每一次交互都变得不愉快。屏幕色彩暗淡，仅覆盖了 64% 的 sRGB 色域，且 300 尼特的亮度显得非常昏暗。但最糟糕的是触控板。它的点击感极其生硬，你必须用力按压，以至于整个机身在压力下都会轻微弯曲。虽然你不必非要点击触控板（它也支持轻触），但我从不喜欢轻触那种松垮的感觉——尤其是在执行右键点击或拖拽操作时。使用这个触控板让我身心俱疲。而在笔记本电脑上进行点击操作？这可是非常重要的！

The speakers are an affront to any music you play, as well as anyone else within earshot. They’re a tinny mess. The phone in your pocket has fuller sound. The 720p webcam is only a smidge better, but it’s still offensive to your face (and possibly your self-confidence). It’s almost passable in the best lighting, but it’s low-res, with a green color cast. In dim or backlit lighting you become a dark blur. After a few days, colleagues started greeting me in meetings with, “Oh, you must be on the Chuwi.” It’s like being told “Wow, you look tired.” 扬声器的音质简直是对你播放的任何音乐以及周围听众的冒犯。它们发出的声音尖锐刺耳，甚至不如你口袋里的手机音质饱满。720p 的摄像头只比扬声器稍微好一点点，但依然让人无法直视（甚至可能打击你的自信心）。在光线极佳的情况下勉强能用，但分辨率很低，且带有明显的绿色色偏。在昏暗或背光环境下，你看起来就是一团模糊的黑影。几天后，同事们在开会时开始跟我打招呼说：“哦，你一定是在用那台驰为吧。”这感觉就像被别人说：“哇，你看上去真憔悴。”