I’ve already checked out the hardware of the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop in the first part of the review, so today, I’ll report my experience using the AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop with the pre-installed Windows 11 Pro operating system.
We’ll start with a software overview and a test of key features, followed by benchmarking, evaluation of WiFi 6 performance, and measurement of fan noise, power consumption, and battery life.
Software Overview and Features Testing
The CoreBook Air Plus 16 ships with Windows 11 Pro 64-bit 24H2 operating system, upgraded to the 25H2 version after running Windows updates. The System->About window confirms we have a CoreBook Air Plus laptop powered by a 3.3 GHz (base frequency) AMD Ryzen 5 6600H processor with Radeon graphics paired with 16GB of RAM and 447GB of storage.
None of the mini PCs and laptops we’ve reviewed in the past come with Microsoft Office preinstalled, but the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 does. Most exactly, Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2024 is activated on the machine.
TechPowerUp GPU-Z offers more details about the AMD Radeon Graphics used in the Ryzen SoC.
Power Limits are set to 35W (PL1/PBP) and 45W (PL2/MTP) as reported by HWiNFO 64, and the latter matches the default TDP of 45W listed on the AMD website.
As we’ve seen in the teardown, the laptop comes with four 4GB LPDDR5 chips for a total of 16GB of RAM. HWiNFO 64 also shows they are clocked at 3200 MHz.
The configuration (4x “slots”) and speed (6400 MT/S) are confirmed in the Windows Task Manager, which also reports 14.7 GB total memory, as 1024 MB is reserved for the Radeon GPU, and around 300 MB for other hardware resources.
WiFi 6 and Bluetooth network adapters can be found in the Device Manager, with a “Realtek 8852BE Wireless LAN PCI-E NIC” handling wireless connectivity.
HWiNFO 64 has more details about the RTL8852BE WiFi 6 PCIe adapter, and we are currently connected with a link speed of 1201 Mbps, typical for this type of hardware.
Let’s go back to the Device Manager, in the Advanced tab of the Realtek Bluetooth Adapter properties window, to check the Bluetooth version.
LMP 13.xxxx looks up to Bluetooth 5.4, a bit higher than the Bluetooth 5.2 advertised in the specifications.
Let’s now test all USB ports to confirm their capabilities. We’ll use an ORICO M234C3-U4 M.2 NVMe SSD enclosure for testing the USB 3.2 ports, along with HWiNFO 64 to check the USB version and speed, and CrystalDiskMark to confirm the speed. A USB 3.0 hard drive backward compatible with USB 2.0 will be used to test the single USB 2.0 port on the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop.
Results for the USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port closer to the user on the left side:
For the USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port on the right side:
… and the USB 2.0 port on the right side:
Here’s a summary of the results for the USB ports:
- Left side
- USB-C #1 – USB 3.2 – USB 3.2 Gen 2 (SuperSpeedPlus 10 Gbps) – Read speed: 1016.12 MB/s; write speed: 998.28 MB/s; Charging OK; DisplayPort OK
- USB-C #2 – USB 3.2 – USB 3.2 Gen 2 (SuperSpeedPlus 10 Gbps) – Read speed: 1016.59 MB/s; write speed: 997.78 MB/s; Charging OK; DisplayPort OK
- Right side
- USB-C #1 – USB 3.0 – USB 2.0 – Read speed: 43.17 MB/s; write speed: 36.17 MB/s; data only port, no charging
- USB-A #1 – USB 3.2 – USB 3.2 Gen 1 (SuperSpeed) – Read speed: 374.45 MB/s; write speed: 386.90 MB/s
Everything is as advertised, although the 5 Gbps USB Type-A port performance is on the low side, and ideally should be closer to 450 MB/s. Those are the results I got with the entry-level Blackview MP80 mini PC.
The CoreBook Air Plus 16 features two full-feature USB-C ports with DisplayPort Alt mode as well as an HDMI port, so we should be able to setup a four-display setup.
I connected the HDMI port to an Eazeye Radiant 15.6-inch TLCD monitor (right below), while the USB-C port in the middle was connected to an Elecrow CrowView 14-inch laptop monitor, and the remaining USB-C port to a KTC A32Q8 32-inch Google TV monitor, providing power to the laptop through USB PD.
It works great. Note that I didn’t use the USB-C adapter provided with the laptop, and if you want four displays, one of the monitors requires built-in USB PD power output.
Finally, I tested the built-in webcam and microphone with Microsoft Teams, and both worked just fine. As mentioned in the first part of the review, I just find the privacy switch that hides the camera to be really small and a little hard to slide.
CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 benchmarks on Windows 11
I’ll set the Power mode to “Best performance” in “Plugged in” mode before running the benchmarks, while keeping it to “Balanced” when “On Battery” for testing battery life a little later in this review. Note that all benchmarks were run in a room at about 28°C, and results may differ when compared to tests at lower ambient temperatures.
Let’s start the CoreBook Air Plus 16 benchmarks on Windows 11 with PCMark 10…
The AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop achieved a total score of 6,185 points with 9,197 points for Essentials, 11,140 points for Productivity, and 6,267 points for Digital Content Creation tests. PCMark 10 refused to generate online results for this test.
The score in 3DMark Fire Strike was 4,579 points.
PassMark PerformanceTest 11 confirms we have a mid-range laptop here with a PassMark Rating of 4,851.6 points, placing it in the 55th Percentile. The Disk Mark score is not amazing, but still decent. Let’s run CrystalDiskMark.
The 512GB SSD in the laptop achieved 3400.14 MB/s sequential read speed and 3170.72 MB/s sequential write speed, and acceptable random I/O performance. The results are somewhat similar to what we got with the GEEKOM A5 mid-range mini PC when it comes to storage performance.
Cinebench R23 is useful to test single-core and multi-core performance.
The CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 achieved 8,298 points in the multi-core benchmark and 1,406 points in the single-core benchmark, with an MP radio of 5.90x for a 6-core/12-thread processor.
We started GPU testing with Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 where the system scored 1,051 points, and averaged 41.7 FPS at the 1920×1200 resolution of the built-in display. Note the resolution is slightly higher than the 1920×1080 resolution we typically rely on for mini PC reviews.
Next, we’ll test 4K and 8K video playback in Firefox and Google Chrome. At least, that’s the plan.
I began by searching for 8K 60 FPS video in Firefox, but the maximum resolution I could select was 1080p60. The good news is that the video plays perfectly smoothly with no dropped frames.
Let’s switch to Google Chrome. The resolution for most “8K” videos was limited to 4Kp60. The one I tried was perfectly watchable, albeit with some frames dropped (94 out of 7599) when watching it for two minutes.
You’ll notice this is a VP9 video, so I browsed a little more until I found an AV1 video. The good news is that I could select 2160p60 (4K) or 4320p30 (8K) quality.
I started with 4K 60 FPS, and the result was similar to playing the VP9 video: 84 frames dropped out of 7665, but perfectly watchable.
Switching to 8K 60 FPS was a disaster with a choppy video and frequent appearance of the loading icon. I only tested it for about 45 seconds with 2258 frames dropped out of 2824. Not that it matters that much since the HDMI and USB-C ports on the laptop are limited to 4Kp60.
Comparison of CoreBook Air Plus 16 Windows 11 benchmark results against mid-range mini PCs
We haven’t reviewed any mid-range laptops recently, so instead, I’ll compare the Windows 11 benchmark results I got for the CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop with three mid-range mini PCs to look for any obvious discrepancies. Those are the Beelink EQi13 Pro (Intel Core i5-13500H), GEEKOM A5 (AMD Ryzen 7 5800H), and GEEKOM A6 (AMD Ryzen 7 6800H).
Here’s a quick comparison of the key specifications for the four devices.
| CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 | Beelink EQi13 Pro | GEEKOM A5 | GEEKOM A6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoC | AMD Ryzen 5 6600H | Intel Core i5-13500H | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | AMD Ryzen 7 6800H |
| CPU | 6 cores, 12 thread, up to 4.5GHz | 12 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.70 GHz | 8-core/16-thread @ up to 4.4 GHz (Turbo) | 8 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.7 GHz |
| GPU | AMD Radeon 660M Graphics | 80 EU Intel Iris Xe Graphics | AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics | AMD Radeon 680M Graphics |
| Memory | 16GB LPDDR5-6400 | 32GB DDR4-3200 | 32GB DDR4-3200 | 32GB DDR5-5600 |
| Storage | 512GB NVMe SSD | 1TB NVMe SSD | 512GB NVMe SSD | 1TB NVMe SSD |
| Default OS | Windows 11 Pro | Windows 11 Pro | Windows 11 Pro | Windows 11 Pro |
| Price (February 21, 2026 ) | $629 (CHUWI store) | $579 (Amazon) | $529 (Amazon) | $566.10 (Amazon) |
The CoreBook Air Plus 16 laptop is the only device equipped with a hexa-core processor, so it will impact multicore performance. All devices are roughly in the same price range (note those are prices before discounts/coupons), although the laptop is a bit pricier since it comes with a display, battery, and keyboard… As a side note, the mini PCs are now about $100 to $150 more expensive than when they first launched due to the current RAM prices/supply situation.
Let’s look at the results.
| CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 | Beelink EQi13 Pro | GEEKOM A5 | GEEKOM A6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCMark 10 | 6185 | 5743 | 6485 | 6672 |
| - Essentials | 9197 | 10266 | 11007 | 10323 |
| - Productivity | 11140 | 7231 | 9850 | 9292 |
| - Digital content creation | 6267 | 6928 | 6829 | 8403 |
| 3DMark (Fire Strike) | 4579 | 4290 | 4157 | 6630 |
| PerformanceTest 11.0 | 4851.6 | 4734 | 4526.8 | 6066 |
| - CPU Mark | 18047.9 | 20755 | 21493.6 | 24747 |
| - 2D Graphics Mark | 823.1 | 605 | 751.7 | 601 |
| - 3D Graphics Mark | 4132.3 | 3056 | 3186.1 | 5160 |
| - Memory Mark | 2232.4 | 3319 | 2876.3 | 2870 |
| - Disk Mark | 22230.3 | 41118 | 21094.1 | 27191 |
| Cinebench R23 | ||||
| - Single Core | 1401 | 1692 | 1397 | 1511 |
| - Multi Core | 8298 | 10594 | 10146 | 11750 |
| Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 | 41.7 FPS | 45.2 FPS | 41.6 FPS | 70.2 FPS |
The AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop performs fairly well, and even tops the scores for PCMark 10 Productivity and PassMark PerformanceTest 3D Graphics Mark. The main weakness is the Memory Mark, despite having LPDDR5-6400 memory. Multi-core performance is also lower than others, but that’s expected with a 6-core/12-thread CPU matched against octa-core or greater processors.
WiFi 6 and Bluetooth testing
We tested 5GHz WiFi 6 using iperf3 running in server mode on the laptop (192.168.31.240), in client mode on an UP Xtreme i11 Edge mini PC (2.5GbE connection), and going through a Xiaomi Mi AX6000 router.
- Download:
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 |
devkit@UPX-i11:~$ iperf3 -t 60 -c 192.168.31.240 -i 10 Connecting to host 192.168.31.240, port 5201 [ 5] local 192.168.31.12 port 38808 connected to 192.168.31.240 port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd [ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 1009 MBytes 845 Mbits/sec 0 2.06 MBytes [ 5] 10.01-20.01 sec 1.06 GBytes 908 Mbits/sec 0 2.06 MBytes [ 5] 20.01-30.01 sec 1.04 GBytes 890 Mbits/sec 0 2.06 MBytes [ 5] 30.01-40.01 sec 1.03 GBytes 887 Mbits/sec 0 2.06 MBytes [ 5] 40.01-50.01 sec 1.01 GBytes 871 Mbits/sec 1 2.06 MBytes [ 5] 50.01-60.01 sec 1.06 GBytes 911 Mbits/sec 5 5.00 MBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-60.01 sec 6.19 GBytes 885 Mbits/sec 6 sender [ 5] 0.00-60.06 sec 6.19 GBytes 885 Mbits/sec receiver |
- Upload
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 |
devkit@UPX-i11:~$ iperf3 -t 60 -c 192.168.31.240 -i 10 -R Connecting to host 192.168.31.240, port 5201 Reverse mode, remote host 192.168.31.240 is sending [ 5] local 192.168.31.12 port 41094 connected to 192.168.31.240 port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 931 MBytes 780 Mbits/sec [ 5] 10.01-20.01 sec 1.00 GBytes 862 Mbits/sec [ 5] 20.01-30.01 sec 963 MBytes 808 Mbits/sec [ 5] 30.01-40.01 sec 1012 MBytes 849 Mbits/sec [ 5] 40.01-50.01 sec 1.00 GBytes 863 Mbits/sec [ 5] 50.01-60.01 sec 1006 MBytes 843 Mbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-60.02 sec 5.83 GBytes 835 Mbits/sec sender [ 5] 0.00-60.01 sec 5.83 GBytes 834 Mbits/sec receiver iperf Done. |
885 Mbps downloads and 835 Mbps uploads are fairly good results, although top devices can deliver well over 1 Gbps transfer rates in our testbed.
I had mixed results with Bluetooth testing. I could pair my Android smartphone (OPPO A98 5G) with the laptop, but the connection didn’t seem to be stable, and I was unable to transfer files over Bluetooth. So I switched to RedMi Buds 6 Play earbuds. I had no problem pairing them and listening to music on the laptop.
Stress test and thermal performance
I tested the thermal design and cooling performance with HWiNFO 64 and Cinebench R23 benchmark to check whether the laptop would throttle under load. The CPU reached up to 95.1°C under load in a room with an ambient temperature of about 28°C, and no thermal throttling was detected by the HWiNFO 64 utility. However, the CPU PPT FAST/SLOW limits reaching 100% demonstrate that power limits were reached a few times.
Fan noise
The laptop’s fan is hardly noticeable when idle or performing light tasks, but it becomes fairly loud, albeit not in a massively annoying way, when running heavy loads such as CineBench R23. I measured the noise with a sound level meter placed close to the screen and on top of the keyboard, approximately 5 cm from the fan ventilation holes:
- Idle – 45.3 – 45.8 dBa
- CineBench R23 – 52.9 – 54.2 dBA (the fan can be heard a few meters from the laptop)
The sound level meter measures 37-38 dBA in the room when everything is quiet.
CoreBook Air Plus 16 battery life, charging, and power consumption
I tested battery life after charging the laptop fully to 99%, setting the brightness to maximum, and disabling the sleep mode. The workload was a mix of web browsing, YouTube video playback (2 hours), and idle time. When the battery reached 10%, a pop-up showed up recommending me to connect the power adapter. It took 3 hours and 28 minutes to discharge from 99% to 10%.
I then charged the laptop back. Power consumption started at 69.1 Watts on my power meter (the power adapter is rated 65W – 20V/3.42A), and slowly goes down as the charge level increases. A full charge to 100%takes around 3 hours, but it’s not linear, and the last few percent take about one hour.
Once the battery was fully charged, I measured the power consumption with a wall power meter as follows:
- Power off – 0.4 Watts
- Sleep – 0.5 Watts
- Idle
- Max brightness – 9.9 – 10.9 Watts
- Min brightness – 5.6 -6.6 Watts
- Video playback – 20.6 – 28.5 Watts (4Kp60 YouTube video in Chrome)
- Cinebench R23 multi-core
- First few seconds – 56.9 – 58.1 Watts
- Longer runs – 50.2 – 53.2 Watts
YouTube video playback and the Cinebench tests were done with the brightness set to maximum.
Conclusion
The CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 performs as expected for a mid-range laptop based on an AMD Ryzen 5 6600H hexa-core processor, and I haven’t noticed any deal-breakers. The screen looks great indoors and outdoors, and all features perform as expected, including the USB-C ports, HDMI output, the webcam, the microphone, and YouTube 4K video playback in Chrome. I especially like the good WiFi 6 performance and the ability to have a four-display setup with the built-in screen, the HDMI port, and the two USB-C ports with DisplayPort Alt mode. It’s also one of the rare machines I tested that ships with Microsoft Office (activated).
Some downsides include the relatively short battery life (3h30) under a typical workload, the relatively low performance of the 5 Gbps USB Type-A port (about 385 MB/s), and a privacy switch for the camera that feels cheap. I also had some issues with Bluetooth when trying to transfer files to/from an Android phone, but the laptop could connect to wireless earbuds just fine. Some may deplore that the memory is soldered on the board (16GB LPDDR5), so the user can’t increase the memory capacity later on. The only replaceable part is the SSD, since the WiFi module is also soldered to the mainboard.
The next step will be to go to Disk Management and create a new partition to install an early Ubuntu 26.04 image to test Linux on the laptop.
I’d like to thank CHUWI for sending the CoreBook Air 16 Plus laptop for review. It can be purchased for $547.23 on the Chuwi website after applying the coupon code CNXAirPlus for a 13% discount. CHUWI also manages Amazon and AliExpress stores, but the new CoreBook Air family is not listed there as of February 21, 2026.
Continue reading “CHUWI CoreBook Air Plus 16 review – Part 3: Ubuntu 25.10 on a mid-range AMD Ryzen 5 6600H laptop“.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress. We also use affiliate links in articles to earn commissions if you make a purchase after clicking on those links.
