CHUWI Herobox Mini PC, 8GB LPDDR4/256GB ROM Intel Celeron J4125 Windows 10 Mini Desktop PC, Support 2.4G/5G Dual WiFi, Typ-C, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet, BT 4.2, 4K HD, VESA Mount Mini Business PC
| Weight: | 1.3 kg |
| Dimensions: | 25 x 22.5 x 6 cm; 1.3 Kilograms |
| Brand: | CHUWI |
| Model: | Intel |
| Colour: | Black |
| Manufacture: | CHUWI |
| Colour: | Black |
| Dimensions: | 25 x 22.5 x 6 cm; 1.3 Kilograms |
Easy to set up, installed a 1TB ssd without problems. On second day updates list included Windows 11, so installed that, took about 2hrs.
Tried streaming a film from Britbox, good but stutterd a little using the default screen resolution. Changed the screen to 1920×1080 and tried the same film again, played smoothly. So far I am impressed with this little PC, time will tell.
Runs quite hot so needs to be placed for good air flow
Have it linked to a 49″ tv, use a bluetooth keyboard & mouse so can be opperated from a comfortable armchair anywhere in the room. Handy as I bought it for my 84 year old father. It’s a basic model but has all the requirements he wants. As with most oldies, technology is not his strong point so the manual is straight forward and was easy to set up.
I’ve added a few in use screenshots and even a mini teardown in this review as I like to know what i’m working with!
You can see in the first image this unit on top of an A4 piece of paper – to give you a real world idea of it’s size. Take this into account when you hear what it can do.
I use this PC on my 50″ 4K Samsung TV for the following:
* Internet browsing
* Picture storage and viewing
* Streaming (YES, including 4k@60hz!)
* Retro/emulated gaming
* Streaming/cloud gaming – i.e Stadia/Geforce NOW/
* E-mailing
* Word processing
* Accessing cloud stored photos
For the above purposes, this PC keeps up with PCs that are 3 times it’s price in terms of speed and ease of use as I was pleased to see they have an M.2 drive (fastest of the fastest) installed on the motherboard of this device. This device also has a massive heatsync over the processor and i’ve not had any thermal throttling issues even after 4+ hours of continuous use.
The set up is super simple – power in, HDMI or VGA, USB peripherals and you’re good to go! You even have the benefit of bluetooth for your game pads and other peripherals.
Opening the PC, under 6 small screws, is an access panel for super easy installation of an SSD drive. Literally my 6 year old daughter could install an SSD into this thing and i’d not be worried about her breaking anything as all the important components are under a further 6 screws!
There is a mounting slot on the back of the PC and the bracket gives a nice positive click when fully engaged. The bracket is also very good quality.
Looking at my screenshots you can see I was streaming a 4K video on Youtube @ 60hz(fps) and this was running nice and smooth in window and via full screen, in addition I’ve shown the Task Manager to show to system utilisation while watching 4k.
As the Celeron J4125 processor has VP9 encoding built in, this will happily run Stadia and other streaming platforms in their preferred codecs.
In addition, this PC is ready for and comes with a free upgrade to Windows 11!
Tips and Expectations
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To get the most out of this machine, run the native/desktop resolution at 1920 x 1080 and then the system can prioritize the resources to incidental 4k content, doing it this way makes everything buttery smooth and nice.
Let’s be realistic too, this is a Celeron J4125 processor, which is an APU (graphics and processing on board) this is not going to run any heavy 3D dependent processing like new games or CAD! Have a sensible and realistic expectation of this machine and you will be delighted and have a lot of fun.
Bought to replace my old computer that died. It’s a great replacement taking up less than 10% of the space the old one did and fits neatly on the back of my monitor. Upgraded to Windows 11 and it now runs a lot faster. I like the usb-c data port even though it doesn’t charge. I don’t do gaming so I’m very happy with it.
Have this set-up as a spare machine, and it’s surprisingly usable. My partner has to take exams online, and the company chose to use very intrusive software (Proctor U) so we wanted a spare machine for that purpose, but also as a back-up in-case the main computers we use to work from home ever have issues (my power supply had recently failed, and I was without the machine for a few days, for example).
The performance isn’t mind blowing, however if you’ve no other machine to compare it to, for the price (160, with voucher, at the time of writing) I’m not sure you can get much better value, outside of a chromebook, perhaps.
I thought that this would better suit my computing needs rather than the traditional tower systems I’ve been using for the past 30 years. I was right. I no longer play “games” or have the need for sheer power in data bases and video editing so in fact this Chuwi Herobox is turning out to be the perfect fit.
It came with Windows pre installed which was useful but not essential for me. I use some Windows utilities and my sat nav needs a windows environment for updates. So, once Windows was established and updated I shrunk the partition it was on down to about 80GB (of the 256GB available ) and installed Linux Mint 20.3 in the free space. There were no issues with hardware or drivers. Dual booting was easily sorted in the BIOS. I then installed a 500GB SSD as additional storage in the mounting space in the bottom of the unit.
It is surprisingly quick. My last machine ran an FX6300 6 core processor and 16GB Ram. For everyday tasks the Chuwi with its Celeron and 8GB Ram is faster and it still happily runs two screens.. Most importantly though, it is silent as it is passively cooled.
Ok, Great specs for the price if you get it with a good discount.
Everything but the wifi was Intel, The wifi is Atheros brand with Bluetooth 5.0 on my machine.
Uses an M.2 SATA SSD (not NVME tried one not detected), It is under the motherboard so you have to lift the edge or disconnect the wifi/bluetooth to remove it.
The plastic screw mount break easy and fall apart after i opened it up only three time to swap out the M.2 SATA SSD.
It CPU idles at around 40c but can jump to 70c with just windows updates, I have seen 85c when running a boot time memory test, My Samsung 2.5″ 500GB SSD can reach 50c easily.
The bios drive selection offers an NVME option, strange when the motherboard does not support it.
The case is all plastic, There is a huge heat-sink mounted to to motherboard, there are small vent holes all around the top and bottom of the case.
Good buy, My only major issue is the screw mounts fall apart very very easy, So once set with the SSD you want just leave it be.
The only PC format that is truly ready to use out of the box. No time consuming registrations, logins, setups or updates… Just ready to go. Beautifully compact and portable. I will be buying more 🙂
Using as tv backup, but seemingly excellent quiet and economical home pc
Let’s be honest, it’s rather slow. But fast enough for streaming, skype and web and other light tasks. Considering it’s using a 10W CPU with fanless cooling, this is perfect to bump up your old non-smart TV.
Don’t try office apps or anything heavier, as it’s not fit for that purpose. It does come with Windows 10 Home, though, so it’s ready to use out of the box.
Be warned, although it has an internal M.2 slot, you won’t be able to use nVME SSDs, you’re restricted to SATA ones. Albeit, you do have an additional slot for a regular 2.5″ SSD/HDD which provides plenty of options. Also, RAM is soldered onto the board, so no upgrades possible there.
All in all, a good price for a fully functioning mini PC that comes with the bonus of being dead quiet and has just about enough performance.
Quick to start and shutdown. Good rendering of movies, although not tested on 4K.
I think it’s a great product. I found it easy to set up and works just great with light to medium use . I would not buy if your into heavy gaming but then again I’ve not tried it out playing them .
I have always spent a fortune on high spec pc’s in the past but as i dont play high end games anymore i thought i would try something smaller,I am blown away by this little baby it has exceeded my expectations extremely good value for the money.
So first off, the looks. It is a fairly ugly box but I didn’t have high expectations there. A nice small footprint, hasn’t got hot as of yet so the passive cooling is working and it’s dead silent.
It doesn’t come with any peripherals, so you’ll need your own keyboard, monitor etc. if needed. The network interface runs at 100MB which is just enough for me, and it indeed has a full HDMI port and VGA port. What’s not clearly marked is a small bay underneath the box that can be opened by taking off the screws that is just big enough to fit another SSD in it. In my case I didn’t need to just yet.
I bought this as for the price I realized it would make be a decently powerful cheap webserver for some personal projects, and I am happy that I wasn’t wrong. I booted into the Windows 10 install just long enough to have a quick peek at what it came loaded with, no excessive bloatware or anything so that gets a thumbs up from me. However I don’t believe for a second it will be very good for 4K streaming or gaming, it simply doesn’t have those kind of specs.
I did however then remove Windows 10 and put a headless install of CentOS 7 on it, and after a few issues (the BIOS is UEFI so bare that in mind if you’re following my example) got it up and running. It is perfectly acceptable, powerful enough to perform well at its new job. A cheap, silent and physically tiny server I can throw somewhere and forget about.
I will additionally mention the power adapter, which does not look entirely safe. It’s a US-style plug with a plastic adapter on the front. No proper external adapter unit besides a questionable small box on the plug itself. I will be replacing that with a DC-12V laptop charger cable tomorrow that has a more reliable power adapter as I don’t fancy burning my house down.
Overall, as a webserver or similar function: highly recommended.
As a streaming/ gaming device as advertised: dubious.
4/5.
Good all-round PC. TIP: Change the display resolution in the settings menu to 1080 from the default 2160. Gets rid of buffering and frame skipping when watching YouTube videos and corrects other problems with windows.
Mounts easily using a TV Vesa adapter to the Chuwi bracket. Primary use will be using Skype with the USB web cam. Have some old games , Guild Wars 2 works well enough. Installed IOBit malware, system care and device driver update software. Did the usual Win10 chores of tailoring. Ethernet OK, now on 5Ghz Wi-fi. 1st mini computer well impressed. Want a bit more, will have to pay a lot. May try SSD Install or not, reading issues all about getting box open.
Very fast in comparison to my old Acer. Great at multi-tasking and runs amazingly ‘cool’. Use the computer for normal computer activities, web browsing, Windows Office functions, video production and viewing, etc. Don’t do gaming, so not sure as to how good it would be handling this?
I have to admit, i did not expect it to be this good,
I am a EEE Student so i have to use matlab and other softwares which can be quite slow if your pc isnt strong enough. However it runs them with no problem at all.
Update: i am still very pleased by this product. I am even using it for verilog FPGA programming on Quartus Prime and keeps up perfectly. I added an extra sd micro card with 256 GB for extra memory as it has a very convenient port.
I use this for media playback, basic browsing and video calls in the kitchen. Absolutely silent, and perfectly capable. The CPU isn’t the fastest, so you don’t want 10 Chrome tabs open, but it has an actual SSD, not a slow MMC drive, plus space for a 2.5″ SATA drive underneath
It might not be up to 4k (I don’t have a 4k TV to test it with) but as a basic box that can sit silently behind a TV, it’s pretty hard to beat for the price!
Cheap as chips machine, Awesome. Ive learnt. No more spending daft money on expensive computers. This end of the market place works for me.
Purchased as a quiet (Fan less) Windows 10 PC with an internal 180G SSD. Reasonably fast Celeron processor and 8G of memory gives a pretty good performance. I fitted an additional internal SATA SSD drive with Ubuntu installed to allow dual boot.
My only (minor) complaint is that the two rear USB2 ports are very close together. Fine for cables, but plugging in a dongle or memory stick will block the second port.
Excellent little PC. Dual monitor output and compact size. Very impressed.
Great pc, very responsive, only downside was choppy 4k playback.
Work’s well on less demanding tasks, very quick to startup and runs completely silent.
Great little pc. I use if as my media server running plex. Plenty of USB ports and being able to open the bottom and add a big SSD is a bonus too.
Great, silent little pc. Works perfectly as a Plex server with a cheap external hdd.
Needed a fan-less mini computer to use as a home NAS. High quality unit and easy to expand (I added a 240 GB SSD) just by removing 6 screws. The Celeron processor provides quite a bit of power helped by the decent 8 GB memory. Very pleased with it and highly recommend.
This was a great machine for day to day use but if you’re planning on running anything intensive you’ll very quickly need to upgrade.
Excellent mini pc,
Fanless so completely silent.
Powerful enough for netflix, Disney plus, amazon prime, web browsing etc.
I’m running a tv at 1080p
Highly recommend
The sheerness of its design has no great thickness… Very compact, very fast and easy to setup and use. Warmth of the machine is very low & SSD HDD help concentrate energy to power not wasting into hea
Size is brilliant, doesn’t get hot after extended use, great for the light duty use I need it for. Youtube reviews show it is capable of doing much more too
Great little box. Processor is not too slow and paired with the SSD it ticks along well. Perfect for browsing, email and social media.
Supplied mounting bracket keeps things nice and tidy when mounted on the back of the monitor. Silent operation.
Amazing value. I added a 1Tb SSD disk no problems.
I repalced my old tower, and this new equipment is impressive. Fast, realy fast, silent, and really small. It looks as big as a DVD case.
To be truthful I didn’t have high expectations for this device. At this price, you are getting a Windows license and a half decent spec machine. I was expecting there to be some shenanigans with the version of Windows not being licenses, or that the performance of the kit was handicapped in some way – this is not the case.
I am using this as a Media PC, its runs Kodi well enough that I can enjoy 1080p content from my network, Netflix and YouTube without the machine getting hot or spinning up fans.
Did just the job I wanted .
Easy to set up, great connectivity.
Small footpri
Wanted a SFF PC to use for internet browsing general home use and this fits the bill perfectly. Runs a little warm to touch but no issues. Paired with a 22″ monitor hanging the Herobox on the monitor with the provided bracket. Added a wireless keyboard and mouse to complete the setup. With SSD almost instant boot.
Absolutely blown away with these guys, delivery was super-fast and product looks great and does what it needs to, I will be back…
I’ll be honest. For the price I was expecting a very basic machine. Oh no, it’s better than that. Lovely little machine, and does everything I need and more. I only wanted a machine for streaming videos in my man cave, but it’s taken over most of my everyday (non-gaming needs.) I’m sure it wouldn’t handle any big processing, but it’s linked up to network drives, CCTV, and printer without an issue. It’s also connected up to my webcam and USB sound board and recorded a few lockdown music videos with no latency/lag.
It’s small, quiet, and comes with a little kit so you can hide it behind your monitor.
My VGA cable won’t screw in for some reason, but it’s an old cable which might be the problem and I’m going to replace it with HDMI anyway, so not really bothered.
Prompt delivery and packed well.
I was looking for a media pc to go with my hifi system.
This little device will not handle anything that requires demanding gaming graphics. It’s not built for that.
However, for an absolute silent machine that I use for media streaming (Internet Radio, Spotify, Youtube etc.), it excels and I am more that pleased with the results.
Very well equiped with ports and sockets, so most things are catered for. A decent amount of RAM and adequate capacity for data. An SSD can be added via the base of the machine. I did this with a 500Gb unit also bought through Amazon. Fitting is easy using a correct size jeweller’s screwdriver but, of course, the second drive must be initiated. Youtube has clips that can explain how to do this.
After running for a full day, the unit becomes slightly warm, as does the power supply, nothing to worry about.
It did take a while to complete Windows 10 updates, but that is not the fault of the machine.
Based on my experience so far, I can thoroughly recommend this little beauty.
Bought this to replace 12 yr old self build within an Antec matx case. To see my work space reduced to solely the footprint of my monitor and keyboard is a joy. Herobox is 1/8th the size, and sits on the back of my monitor via in package vesa, and silent. The case gets warm (fanless) but never hot. Added my Solus SSD very easily. The array of connections is great..Herobox gets used a minimum of 12 hours a day, and not a stutter or glich since arrival. Used for web browsing, streaming, photo editing, documents and presentations – no idea re gaming, but suspect gamers would not be its market anyway. Had my doubts re Celeron, but reviews of the cpu said it was equivalent if 1/2/3/4th generation I5. I have literally no complaints of Herobox. Highly recommended if you use a pc for the same purposes as I do. Oh, and the ethernet is1000gb
I bought a Riis keyboard https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07RNCJ39B/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Best remote keyboard Iv tested and I have tested a few.
All in all well worth buying
Was concerned about heat issues, but even on the hottest day for years, the PC managed itself and throttled back the processor to ensure it does not overheat.
This device truly plays 4K@60hz video & connected to a UHD monitor its quite impressive for a lower end n4100 fanless device.
The WiFi, BT and Video drivers need to be updated out of the box (Intel has an automated application on their website for keeping these updated)
Plus the 1Gb-e realtek drivers need installing too.
Upgraded to a 960G M.2 2280 SSD, which provides huge capacity and decent performance.
On paper the i3 is quicker, (which it is, by a considerable margin during start up), but once Windows has fully loaded and settled, and the Quad Core Celeron and dual channel Ram are fully managed, it becomes much less noticeable, in some applications it feels more responsive even, and the trade-off for absolute silence is well worth it in my mind.
(Worth to note some tech reviews suggested the BIOS was unlocked and TDP setting exposed and set to 12W, however, this is not the case on the box I received, BIOS is locked down with TDP at 6W (albeit, I read there are other methods to adjust this parameter), but for me the default settings work perfectly.
This machine is far faster than I expected, it’s a cracking little box. I planned to stick a ‘real’ SSD straight in it, but there was really no need. Absolutely ideal for 99% of people I suspect!
But as a day to day machine, it’s fine, happily running both me monitors. A few glitches, but if you are a linux user you will know new installs seem to take a bit to bed in (even if you do nothing to fix the glitchs, they go way in a week or so).
So it’s been one of the easiest miniPC boxes I have used to switch to a simple linux box.
Works with my set up.
OS: debian
Window manager: kde
monitors: 24″ (in landscape) & 22″ (in portrait)
Network: Wifi AC (no idea if the wired port even works…which was unusual as wifi is always a pain).
HCI: wireless dongle based things
Update: One problem, ergonomically having all the USB3 ports on the front is a pain, but I like most people I suspect have the thing hiding some where, the looks are not the issue, just it make cabling a pain.
Should the maker ever read this, put the big USB3 ports on the back, USB2 on the front..as no one really uses big thumb drivers any more.
How ever, I was pleasantly surprised to find adding a new SSD was a simple task, not random glue or were plastic latches that don’t work right after you open it, just 6 ( admittedly tiny screws) that were metal and didn’t strip the minute you looked them….almost like someone had thought about adding one seriously.
Excellent value for money, easy to set up and faster than I was expecting, I dont do gaming so I can not comment, I use it as a media viewer and general Internet usage on my TV.
Great bit of kit , fast and great for multi tasking . Had Spotify running , 2 poker clients , Facebook and streaming live racing . No issues . Compact and great value for money
only 45 C when doing remote login in company PC. get up to 75C when heavy duty such as local upgrading. totally quiet! small to mount on the back of monitor. big memory (8GB) for almost everything except serious software development. very value for money. will buy agai
This is an absolute bargain. Everything you need for a simple business computer for less than 200, brilliant.
No noisy fan, fast fire up, runs office, I also run CAD with some music streaming in the background and it’s so compact you can screw it to the underside of the desk. Really chuffed.
It boots up quickly, is easy to set up, easy to use etc. is very quiet, doesn’t produce any noticeable heat. No complaints at all – highly recommend.
Works great fast start up.
Preloaded with windows just need to do the first setup and it’s up and running.
We use it in the garage to watch Netflix, Amazon and YouTube.
I haven’t yet used it for online gaming but I’m am confident it will be fine.
The one thing I disagree with is the plug fuse, the PC is rated at 2 amp but they used a 13 amp fuse in the plug.
I would recommend replacing it with a 3 amp fuse.
This is a great little machine and so far it’s delivered in everything I’ve asked of it. Very compact and as I bought on a flash sale the 50 saving means even better value for money. Will look to replace a few of the office computers with these.
Very well built machine fast boot up,ready to use out of box, runs everything I have tried so far without any issues,just add keyboard and mouse for the price doubt you can get bette
It comes with Windows 10 home, upgradable to Windows 11. Have had 11 for about a month without issue.
8GB or RAM is enough for every day tasks; not had any issues with it.
Simple enough to open the bottom and put an extra hard drive in it. The onboard SSD is as good (if not better) than an everyday SSD.
I have ordered the CHUWI HeroBox which has only just been launched this week (January 2020) and will leave an updated review for the actual product as soon as I have had a play.
All unpacked, there is an additional hard drive bay under the bottom cover held on by 6 x small Phillips screws, I had a spare 480GB SSD so installed that before starting it up.
More to follow.
I’ve been using this for over a year now and no problems at all, it’s powerful enough for any everyday tasks, emails, photo editing, website editing, internet browsing and downloading large software files for transferring to USB3.1 drives.
It handles basic games as expected including browser based online games, it’s fine for YouTube videos and will be perfectly adequate for school work or basic college student homework too.
I will be wiping it and using it as an office PC for invoicing and website updating now it’s been tested for reliability, time to retire the 10 year old office PC which is struggling with Windows 10.