The Cube i7 Book is the late 2016 successor to the Cube i7 Stylus, a previously well built tablet from Cube with single position keyboard dock. The new Cube i7 Book now has a full hinged removable keyboard that goes from closed to full yoga style tent mode, and supports flipping 180 degrees as well to keep the keyboard with you in tablet mode. The i7 Book comes with the 6th Gen Skylake Core M3-6Y30 processor and the standard for late 4GB of RAM and 64GB of M2 SSD storage. To help compensate the power needed by the Core M3 processor the battery is a 9000 mAh capacity, which should grant 5-6 hours of average usage. Finally, while the tablet ships with a rather flimsy DC wall charger, it does include a USB-C port for both video, data and charging capacity. The only caveat to the charging via USB-C being finding the “right” wall plug (a quick google search) as loads of plugs only offer 2-2.4v, and it appears the minimum is a 3.0v adapter.
Specs in Review:
Processor: Core M3-6Y30 – 0.9 GHz Dual Core
Ram: 4GB
Storage: 64GB
External Memory: Up to 128 GB Micro-SD
Network: WiFi a/b/g/n
Bluetooth: 4.0
Screen: 10.6′′ – 1920 x 1080p – 10 Point IPS
Keyboard: Magnetic Dock Connector, Full 360 Degree options
Battery Capacity: 9000 mAh (via two 4500 mAh cells)
Weight: 0.72 kg
First Impressions:
Following unboxing the tablet and producing the associated video, here is what I think so far...
Core M3 processor is snappy, especially given the majority of sub-$600 tablets are running lower Atom processors, although I’ll need to compare this against the Chuwi Hi13 that I’m expecting to ship soon with the newer N3450 processor.
The 1080p screen is crisp and bright with excellent brightness, most of my usage so far is at 25%, which should be great for battery life.
Overall build quality is excellent, the tablet and keyboard are both very solid feeling with no flex or bounce and good keyboard key travel.
Very strong hinge for the keyboard dock, can’t open with one hand, but also holds any position needed.
The extra regular USB 3.0 ports on the keyboard dock add a lot of flexibility.
Good thermals in daily usage, but in the heavy usage Minecraft test in my video the top-left back of the tablet was very
hot.
A quick google search shows a few different mild to aggressive thermal mods for the heat issue, if your comfortable cracking open this tablet.
So far, I’m more impressed with this tablet than I expected, as it’s one of my first forays into the Chinese and lower priced
tablet market. It’s solid, runs well, and feels easy to carry around. Given it has the full keyboard dock, it’s heavier than your average iPad or Android Tablet, but it’s a full Windows 10 system with loads of flexible use options. I’ll run around with this tablet for a week or so before composing a full review!
Update from March 2023
– This cheap laptop has turned out to be amazingly well built. After I shifted to Linux, away from Windows, this system continued to be a test bed and daily driver for various Linux distro’s, travelled with me to the arctic and everywhere else. While my main system now is my iPad Pro, I still have this machine around with Fedora Linux on it for when I need, and it still performs amazing thanks to it having that M3 processor vs. The N3000 and N4000 celerons that were popular at this time for small cheap systems.
These last few months it’s been fun to watch Microsoft come back around to oddly “feel” like an underdog in the industry. I realize they are not an underdog… they have the market share because Windows has just been “needed” for so long. That was even addressed in this quote from Satya Nadella earlier this year:
“We want to move from people needing Windows, to choosing Windows, to loving Windows,” he said. “That is our goal.”
As Microsoft approaches the July 29th official launch of Windows 10 a lot rests on it’s success, and with my own experience this year with the Insiders program and builds I believe they have a solid winner. But more than just being a new version of the same old Microsoft, I’ve enjoyed that under Satya the general image has shifted to be a little more ‘fun’, with the company supporting and taking advantage of what started as mostly an inside meme among core engineers. For a product as previously “stale” feeling as Windows to back and promote a ninja cat riding a fire breathing unicorn as a symbol for
there return to “being cool”…is…well…awesome! Today they posted to the windows insider blog a whole host of artwork for this meme to promote Windows 10:
Take a look again, it really is just awesome
and confusing all at once…but it certainly fits my personality and the quirks I intend to bring with Techzerker. To top it all off, this isn’t just a matter of sharing some artwork to a limited group of testers or even public “Windows Insiders”…it’s been added to Skype as an animated GIF!
Thanks Microsoft!
I never thought a few years back I would ever consider you ‘cool’ or on to something big. I really have become a big fan of my Nokia 1020 with Windows Phone 8.1 and of where Windows 10 has been developing with the insider program. I’m not a fanboy, I see where the shortfalls exist and the struggle Microsoft has ahead of it…but don’t discount the ‘new’ Windows without giving it an honest trial!
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Note in 2024: As I moved from Wordpress, to WriteFreely, to Hugo and here to Write.as, I often only moved some posts, as others were dated or now in-accurate, but I’ve still pulled some along to provide history or evolution of my thoughts.
Keeping this short and sweet, as I’ve starting planning and converting a few disparate sites and page into an actual brand under Techzerker, I knew my own artistic abilities would not suffice! That being said, big or small I would like to build Techzerker correctly and legally, which means I couldn’t just roam google images for cool artwork to make banners,
backgrounds, etc.
After a little research and checking a few competitors, I found the two pictures below on ShutterStock.com and paid their basic rate for the pair of images in incredibly high resolution. From that point I made my light modifications with text using GIMP open source image editor and it was ready to launch! I love that services like this exist to make it easy to find
good quality images without any legal concerns.
Obviously I’ve uploaded my edited images in a “regular” resolution, as the last thing I want to do with this post is provide someone less honest the high resolution originals to steal! So here they are:
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Note in 2024: As I moved from Wordpress, to WriteFreely, to Hugo and here to Write.as, I often only moved some posts, as others were dated or now in-accurate, but I’ve still pulled some along to provide history or evolution of my thoughts.
