This year’s Christmas surprise toy was the CHUWI Hi8. And my, what a great surprise.

Every year, I ask my family for a surprise toy which they think might engage my inner technical child. This year, my son Scott surprised me with the CHUWI Hi8 tablet.

This 8 inch tablet is similar in size to an Apple iPad Mini, but contains two tablets in one: Android and Windows 10. And it costs around $US 90, more in Canada. You can read the specs in detail if you like, but suffice it to say that it is well equipped, including:

• Retina-like display screen (1900 by 1200)
• Relatively fast Intel Atom quad-core processor (system on chip)
• 2 GB RAM and 32 GB Storage
• Cameras, WIFI, Bluetooth, headphone, speakers
• Micro USB and Micro SD expansion slots (but no HDMI output)

So far, I have been using the CHUWI Hi8 in Windows 10 mode. The Arduino 4.4 KitKat mode works fine, but it is loaded with Chinese language apps that I can’t use. Under Windows 10, this tablet is very responsive. I am browsing with Google Chrome, using it as an e-reader, and have even done a Skype video call.

CHUWI Hi8 First Week Learnings

Battery life is on the short side, more in the range of 4 hours depending on use. Also, it charges much faster when turned off rather than in sleep mode.

32 GB of storage is marginal for a dual-boot tablet. The Android partition takes up 9 GB and when all is said and done, the Windows partition is down to under 20 GB. When I tried to upgrade to the latest Windows 10 Home, the process failed due to lack of storage – there was just a few GB free. So I added another 32 GB on a micro SD card and everything has been fine since then.

It is possible to remove the Arduino partition and reallocate 9 GB to Windows, but I did not want to do that yet. Maybe later.

So, here are my early discoveries:

• With the shorter side battery life, you never want to be far from a USB connector.
• Adding extra storage is a must. Use micro SDHC UHS-1 for the most speed, which will still be slower than the internal eMMC storage (which is in turn slower than SSD) but probably fast enough for most uses.
• Use Windows 10 to relocate all of your personal folders (Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc.) to the micro SD storage on the D: drive. This will save you lots of limited internal storage on C: Hopefully I can also relocate Dropbox.
• Find alternatives to bloat-ware. For example, I installed Adobe Reader and was amazed to see that it consumed well over 400MB of internal storage! Come on, nearly a half GB to read a PDF? I am in the process of replacing Adobe Reader with Sumatra which only requires 8MB. As an added bonus, Sumatra also reads several e-book formats.
• The touch screen works fine. But when you try to select items by touch in normal Windows 10, the small screen makes finger placement very touchy. Switching into tablet mode might help.
• The CHUWI Hi8 appears to be well constructed. But, as with all tablets, the extra protection of a case is a good idea.

The next thing I will check out is whether or not I can run applications from the D: external storage. As things stand, you are lucky to achieve > 5GB free space on the internal 32GB storage with minimal applications loaded.

All in all, though, hats off to CHUW Hi8 – an amazing piece of gear at a low price. We will see how it holds up.

P.S. If you get one, the best source for online community support appears to be on Tech Tablets. CHUWI Hi8 does have a support site but it is in Chinese, and even Google Translate get stumped!