Review: Chuwi Corebook Air (2026), the 1kg laptop for USD 529

Review unit provided by Chuwi

Chuwi announced two lightweight laptops in December 2025 and they are the 14-inch Chuwi Corebook Air and 16-inch Corebook Air Plus. Shipping is expected to start in January 2026. These are compact budget laptops that weight 1kg and 1.35kg.

Prices are USD 529 and USD 599 respectively for the 14 and 16-inch models. At the time of review, there is a USD 50 early bird promo. Or use coupon code TEOHCBAIR for $70 off.

Just for comparison purposes, this laptop is even lighter than the 1.24kg 13-inch Macbook Air that cost USD 999. One thing that the Macbook Air has is way longer battery life but that's also USD 400++ more expensive.

Things included

• Laptop
• Power cable
• 65W power adapter with USB-C port

Specifications

Corebook Air vs Corebook X 7430U

There are several differences between the Corebook Air and the Corebook X 7430U that I reviewed in September 2025.

If budget is limited, the Corebook X 7430U is the clear winner since it's just USD 399 vs USD 529. Performance of the Corebook Air is better with the AMD Ryzen 5 6600H vs Ryzen 5 7430U. Both have 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.

Corebook Air is much lighter. It's 1kg vs 1.4kg.

Corebook X 7430 has the better display with 99% sRGB coverage, and Corebook Air only has 66% sRGB.

Corebook Air has around 6-7 hours of battery life and Corebook X has 5-6 hours.

Port selection is better with Corebook Air.

Corebook Air is better in many ways compared to the Corebook X 7430U except the display. Price difference of more than USD 100 is significant. If you're using the laptop for office type work or for school, and don't do graphic design, Corebook Air probably provides more value for money.

Design

The Chuwi Corebook Air is a good looking laptop. The design is clean and simple, not flashy.

The colour of the laptop is marketed as Indigo Blue. It looks like dark gray with a hint of blue. The Chuwi logo is a shade darker and doesn't attract attention.

Material used for the top and bottom is aluminium alloy. Build quality feels solid to me even though the laptop is just 1kg. I like the smooth matte surface.

The rubber feet on the back is quite thick and lifts the laptop off the table noticeably.

Audio quality from the two downward facing speakers is alright. Audio is slightly hollow but not too bad. Volume is loud but doesn't get much louder beyond 50%.

I did not open the back up so I can't tell you whether the RAM or SSD can be upgraded. But I'm fine with 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. I use Microsoft OneDrive which gives me 1TB online storage and that can also be used to backup the whole laptop.

Even though this laptop is actually not much thicker than the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U which is also a 14-inch laptop, this is much ligher at 1kg vs 1.4kg. The lighter weight makes this much more portable and less tiring to bring around.

The 16-inch Corebook Air Plus weighs 1.35kg, which for a 16-inch laptop is considered lightweight. The much more expensive LG Gram 16 is around 1.2kg.

Ports on the left are full-size HDMI 2.1 and two USB-C that support charging, video out and USB 3.2 gen 2 (10Gbps).

Ports on the left are USB-A 3.2 gen 1, 3.5mm audio jack and a USB 2 type-C port. It is unfortunately the USB-C port on the left side is not a full-featured USB-C port.

The 16-inch laptop has the same ports.

There's a cutout in front to let you open the display easily. The display can open until it's flat on the table.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is full-size and comfortable to work with. The layout of the keys is better compared to the Corebook X 7430U because there's no extra column of keys (Home, End, Page Up/Down) by the right that pushes all the other keys to the left which will make you re-train your muscle memory.

The function keys default to F1 to F12. To switch the function keys to shortcuts, just press F2 upon startup to change the settings in Bios.

One downside of the keyboard is there's no Home, End, Page Up and Page Down keys. And you can't use the Fn with arrow keys for those shortcuts.

Another downside is the right-Ctrl is replaced by the Microsoft Copilot shortcut key. Microsoft Copilot is AI software and is quite useful and I use it often. But having a right-Ctrl key is even more useful. Without right-Ctrl, you cannot use one hand to use keyboard shortcuts on the right side of the keyboard. Chuwi should have made one of the function keys the Copilot key instead.

The keyboard has backlight with two levels of brightness.

Touchpad is big. It's not a haptic touchpad and there are left and right click areas. Clicks are firm. The top edge and centre column cannot be pressed down. To click and drag something, you have to use two fingers instead of using a single finger to click, press hold to drag.

The touchpad supports finger gestures for Windows shortcuts for switching apps, task manager, going to desktop.

The touchpad works fine but I would prefer to use a mouse instead.

The laptop uses 14-inch IPS LCD with 1920 x 1200 resolution (16:10) with 60Hz refresh rate.

The display is matte textured and anti-glare works well. Having a matte display is a huge selling point for me as I hate reflections. Having a display that does not show reflections is great when using the laptop outdoors with uncontrolled lighting.

1920 x 1200 resolution is still considered sharp for a 14-inch display. There is slight pixelation if you look close but overall I will still consider the display sharp enough.

The 16-inch laptop has the same resolution so pixelation will be more noticeable. I can't wait for Chuwi to release new lightweight 16-inch laptops with 1440P resolution.

I measured colour support for 66% sRGB, 47% NTSC, 50% AdobeRGB and 49% P3 and a maximum brightness of 355 nits.

Colour accuracy is one downside of this laptop. 66% sRGB is just alright, I mean at least the colours do not look unnatural. Corebook X 7430U by comparison has 99% sRGB coverage (measured). Chuwi claims the colours are vibrant and did not even advertise the specs for colour accuracy on their product page.

If you need colour accuracy, then this display is not gonna be good enough. But office type work and general usage, the display does look good enough.

Another downside is I see slight shadowing effect at the edges of the display. It's nothing too significant. And there's some LCD glow, which is normal.

At least the viewing angles are good. There's slight drop in brightness but no colour shift when viewing the display from extreme angles.

Performance

It took 1min 21s to export one hundred 16MP photos with Adobe Lightroom, and the fan noise is quite loud but would subside quickly after the export. It took the Corebook X 7430U over three minutes to export the same photos.

This laptop uses the same wifi adapter has the Corebook X 7430U, the Realtek 8852BE Wireless LAN WiFi 6 PCI-E NIC. Download speed depends on where the laptop is. Download speed is around 50 - 70 Mbps which is low compared to my Mac Mini in the same room which records 270Mbps. When laptop is nearer to wifi source, download speed can be up to 500 Mbps.

The laptop can be used for light gaming but expect to drop the resolution to 720P and to the lowest graphics settings to get playable frame rates. This laptop is not made for gaming.

This laptop comes with a gen 3 NVMe SSD and the read and write speeds are decent.

Battery life

Battery life is around 6-7 hours with 50% display brightness.

Conclusion

The Chuwi Corebook Air is an ultra lightweight portable 14-inch laptop with good performance for general computing. This is a good looking laptop with good build quality. Port selection is good. Battery life of 6-7 hours is alright for a Windows laptop as I was expecting even shorter hours

I like the matte display but unfortunately colour support is just 66% from what I've measured. While the display isn't good enough for colour critical work such as graphic design or photography, it's still a decent display for general computing.

Typing experience is good. Touchpad is alright. Audio is alright.

For USD 529, it does provide good value for money because it's difficult to find 14-inch budget laptops at this price point.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Good build quality
+ 355 nits display brightness
+ Good anti-glare with the matte display
+ Good typing experience
+ Good port selection
+ Fast responsive performance
+ Good value considering the price point
+ Decent battery life of 6-7 hours
- Fans not audible with general usage
- 66% sRGB colour coverage
- Slight shadowing effect at the edges
- Perhaps a larger battery capacity could be added
- Not for gaming
- Audio is slightly hollow

Availability

The Chuwi Corebook Air can be purchased from Chuwi US Store and Global Store

Use coupon code TEOHCBAIR for $70 off.