Cube i7 Book is the successor for Cube i7 Stylus, a Cheap 2in1 tablet with Wacom Stylus and Core M3

Nice summery , thanks .

what do you think of the touch screen responsiveness ? is it like an iPad or much worse ?

I have the Chuwi Hi12 and it's not that responsive ,then I removed the screen protector and it got a lot better (but not as good as an ipad or surface )

 

Can someone who have it please test drawing/writing on the edges and how good is the pen accuracy? I am planning to buy it to replace my SP3 since I need the money.

 

Ugh, just lost my post twice because of the annoying trackpad clicking elsewhere while I was typing. Haven't been able to figure out who makes it to try better drivers yet though, there's no information whatsoever about the VID in device manager.

With regards to touch sensitivity, I'd say it's very good. No issues there whatsoever. I don't use screen protectors any more though.

Pen accuracy I'd say at least as good as my Pro 2, and possibly a slight bit better. Being Wacom EMR, it's almost always going to have corner inaccuracy, but it's only a few mm, and the area this occurs in is pretty small. I don't have extended experience with a Pro 3 to say how it does in comparison to the N-trig in that.

Battery life and performance, I'm still sort of seeing how it goes (and I personally chose to enable s0ix / Connected Standby as well... which might increase drain when in sleep, but should lower drain when reading a static webpage, for example).

I'm still not entirely sure, but the UEFI/BIOS really makes it seem like this thing supports Thunderbolt 3. When you enable it in the firmware, it shows Alpine Ridge there, which would make sense if that's the chip allowing for USB-C in the first place. But again, I don't have any Thunderbolt 3 devices to try it with.

Also interesting in the UEFI is that it appears that you can set the configurable TDP there. There's options for "Nominal", "Up", and "Down".

One last thing to keep in mind that if you plan to use USB-C for charging, you NEED an adapter capable of USB Power Delivery. The standard 5V/3A doesn't even trickle charge (the OS says "Plugged in, not charging" and the battery will only decrease this way). Slightly disappointing as I was hoping to at least be able to utilize that in an emergency, but oh well.

This also makes it a pain if you were planning on say using a Microsoft Display Dock (for the 950/950XL) as a dock for this device. Doesn't even detect that you're plugging into anything. There's an Aukey one for pretty cheap that supports USB-PD in, and after a firmware update (of course only flashable from a PC with USB-C so I couldn't try it previously), that dock now works with my Lumia 950XL as well.

Also, the dock for my Pro 2 worked far better over the years than I expected it to, but it's really nice to just have the single cable running to my monitor now instead of the slightly clunky "put it down and push the sides in" of the Pro 2 dock. Plus, the Pro 2 didn't support 4k/60Hz.

 

One thing that's a huge change is the 0.45lb difference from my Pro 2 (~2lbs) to this (~1.54lbs). It makes a huge difference in tablet usability. And the squared off edges of the Pro 2 might look nicer, but the rounded edges here feel far more comfortable in my hands.

... The problem in weight is the keyboard though, which is ~1.45lbs as opposed to the Type Cover 2 being a pound lighter than that. With no battery in the keyboard, I assume there's just a lot of metal in there to keep it balanced on the lap. If only Microsoft would take these specs (plus >128GB storage) and add a kickstand and a Type Cover like the imaginary 'Surface Air' some of us dream about.

Performance-wise, it seems snappy enough. I haven't done too much gaming on it (most of that is reserved for my living room PC, and I'm quite addicted to the lightweight 'Stardew Valley' currently anyway) but it seems to be slicing up 3D models for printing just a touch slower than my Pro 2. I would bet the Pro 2 beats it at most tasks in performance, but all I was ever looking for was somewhere in the same ballpark (as opposed to Atom).

Overall though, I have some nitpicks (keyboard/touchpad related mostly), but I'm very happy for $400. An ideal version of this for me would run Windows 8.1 (had to get that one in there ), ditch the microUSB and put in a second USB-C (and maybe ditch the 12V in and add a third USB-C), add in a facial recognition camera, have stereo speakers that weren't both on the same side of the device, etc. But unless something crazy happens, it seems like this will probably replace the Pro as my day-to-day device. It's pretty good as is. And seriously, the idea that a $400 device comes so close to or exceeds a Surface Pro in most specs (barring the storage capacity) is pretty crazy too.

 

Throttling problem anyone?
http://techtablets.com/2016/07/cube-i7-book-thermal-mod-time/

 

Honestly, the external temperature gets warm enough as-is that I'm not entirely sure I'd want to do anything to more efficiently transfer the heat to it.

 

After about a week now, I've got the BIOS options and drivers finally tweaked to have Connected Standby working completely right and I'm getting around 4-6 hours battery (drastically changes based on load)... but also, the main thing I want to emphasize is that this keyboard is complete and total garbage as far as I'm concerned. The touchpad is only seen as a generic mouse, and I've looked for every manufacturer I can find to try and get other drivers installed, but there aren't any. Which means it's near to type more than a sentence or two without it clicking all over the place and messing everything up. But worse, the keys are tiny (knew that off the bat), have a high activation force, and worst of all certain keys (most of all the 'O' key) don't register unless I slow down from my usual typing speed (admittedly I generally type ~90wpm so I might be an edge case) and bang on the key even harder than the already high activation force. I can't even tell you how many URLs I've typoed as .cm because the O didn't work right.

It's a shame that such a great tablet overall is severely handicapped by such a bad keyboard. It's better than nothing, but I've been throwing my Microsoft Folding Universal Keyboard in my bag and 9 times out of 10 using that one instead (generally right on top of the Book keyboard so that the device is held up at an angle).

Edit: And interestingly enough, GearBest accepted my positive review of the tablet itself (4 stars), but is apparently hiding the negative review of the keyboard from view. That's not sleazy at all or anything...

 

Interesting comments re the keyboard and I wonder if they have changed something because my keyboard has a light action and round the 'o' area no difference. Maybe they have changed the activators. I received my kb 3 days ago. I must admit I have not tried the Microsoft one so maybe that is even lighter.

As regards the trackpad I have not had not one single undesired click which suggests you are having to use more force than me. Anyway, one way round d would be to use a mouse and press the disable trackpad key. I use the new Microsoft bt mouse (3600) and it is superb with the book.

 

The touchpad clicks when you brush against it even slightly, it has no palm rejection at all. It also, unlike every touchpad that Windows sees as a touchpad, has no delay settings. Windows 8 and 10 have a function built in that they won't immediately use a touchpad for a little while after a keyboard press. However, this reports to Windows not as a touchpad, but as a USB mouse.

If you unnaturally curve your hands around the touchpad it can be okay. If you're trying to use good ergonomics, it means a lot of undesired clicks.

And yes, I find myself frequently having to use the 'disable touchpad' key. And to think, before I got the device I thought it was an odd key to exist.

As for my mention of the O key it wasn't to say that it would necessarily be the same for everyone, just that there is a lack of consistency in the activation force on different keys, which to me signifies bad quality testing. Probably should be expected on a cheap no-brand keyboard, but still.

Honestly, it's just an all-around terrible keyboard. One of the worse I've used in a long time. Keys are small*, they're mushy and require too much force, and I have to slow down my typing (admittedly, I type at around 100wpm) to get it to register. I am a little spoiled by a mechanical keyboard at my home desk, but I've used a Surface Type Cover for years, and 'normal' membrane based keyboards at different locations at work all the time. Literally the only worse keyboard that I've used in the past decade is one of those pure rubber waterproof rollup ones. Every other keyboard, including cheap fold-up Bluetooth ones, has felt better.

The tablet is excellent. The keyboard is trash, and that's a shame.

Also, I notice that another two weeks later, Gearbest still is hiding my keyboard review from public use, presumably because it's too negative. What a sleazy practice. Based on that alone I will never be using them again.

*For good measure, here's a comparison to the Surface Type Cover 2, which has the exact same length and width as this keyboard, and feels a million times better despite being 1/4 the weight and about half as thick:

 

Has anyone tried a clean install? Does it require special drivers? I couldn't find any driver/support downloads at their official website. Not sure if 3-rd party tools like NTlite can extract drivers from live system and integrate them to a customized WIM, such that you can deploy your own window 10 enterprise with necessary driver integrated.

The pen model is UP-714E, which is identical to the pen of my 4 years old Samsung series 7 slate.

By the way, now the price can drop down to ~US$294 after using the coupon at http://goo.gl/GtA0gf, which is somewhat ridiculous for Skylake core m + 4GB RAM + Wacom EMR, and it is even cheaper than my 2 years old ASUS vivotab note 7 with Atom 32-bit SOC + 2GB RAM.