The Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U is a cheap but useful Windows AMD laptop - but my tests prove you'll want to upgrade it for better performance

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: 30-second review

Back in February 2025, I said in my review of the Chuwi CoreBook X “If you have a modest budget and requirements, then the CoreBook X might work for you, but a low-cost AMD Ryzen laptop might deliver a better experience.”

And by a curious quirk of fate, just nine months later, Chuwi released the Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U, an AMD version of the same low-cost laptop. So, are my assertions substantiated, or do they come back to bite me?

What this machine offers is a basic laptop with a great 14-inch, 2K (2160×1440) IPS panel with a 3:2 ratio, and enough computing power to run Windows 11 Home reasonably smoothly, all for less than $400.

With a machine this inexpensive, there are compromises in build quality and options, so this laptop probably isn’t good for anyone who is clumsy or inherently destructive. However, for standard office tasks, it's hard to be critical of a machine that comes with 16GB of DDR4 memory and 512GB of storage as standard. And, incredibly, the memory can be easily upgraded without dismantling the case.

The drawbacks of this system are that it doesn’t offer biometric security of any kind, and the best USB ports it has are USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C, although that’s an improvement over the original Intel-based model, which only had Gen 1 USB ports.

There are some idiosyncrasies in this design that mean you might want to read the rest of this review before investing. But overall, for the low asking price, there is plenty to like with the Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U.

It might not have what it takes to be in our best cheap laptop collection, but it's an improvement over its Intel brother.

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $377/£324/€434
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from Chuwi

While most Chuwi models appear on all the regional Chuwi sites and on Amazon in most regions, the CoreBook X 7430U is only available on the global outlet.

For those curious, the original CoreBook X that uses an Intel Core i5-class processor is still available, and this model doesn’t replace that option.

What’s odd about the pricing is that the UK and USA are comparable, based on the exchange rate, but the EU price is inexplicably elevated. Not sure why that might be, but it certainly makes this laptop less of a bargain for Europeans.

Another factor, and in hindsight, this also impacted the Intel CoreBook X, is that the standard SKU only contains a single module of memory in a system designed for two.

As this review discusses later, that makes a massive difference to performance, and therefore, you need to add the cost of a second memory module to get the most from the Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U. That brings the total cost to around £450.

When the base SKU is compared with laptops that use the same platform, it's much cheaper than the Lenovo V14 G4 ($494/£410), which only comes with 8GB of RAM. You can get a slightly larger 15-inch display on the Lenovo V15 G4, but that is $499 in the USA. And, an even bigger 16-inch panel on the ASUS Vivobook 16, but that starts at $480 for one with the AMD Ryzen 7250 CPU.

Overall, the CoreBook X 7430U is the cheapest option, but they all need that second memory module to perform at their best.

• Value: 3.5 / 5

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: Specs

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: Design

• Nice build quality
• Gen 2 USB
• Upgradable
• Zero biometrics

It wasn’t long ago that a laptop for $400 was entirely plastic and had a low-resolution display, but the Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U contradicts those assertions by using some metal and featuring a high-resolution panel.

From an ergonomics perspective, I like that Chuwi avoided having tramways or speaker vents on either side of the chiclet keyboard, allowing the full width of the machine to be used for input.

Looking back at my review of the identically sized original Chuwi CoreBook X, I recall that it had a single USB-C port and dual USB-A ports, whereas this machine has the more practical dual USB-C and single USB-A. As USB-C is used for charging, having more than one port is critical, and allows this laptop to be combined with a USB docking station.

The two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports are on the left side, along with the HDMI out, and the USB-A is on the right with the MicroSD card slot, audio jack and security slot.

But where this machine truly surprised me was that Chuwi engineers had considered the possibility of user-upgrades, though not in a way everyone will appreciate.

On the underside, a small metal panel, held in place by the tiniest of screws, provides easy access to a single SODIMM DDR4 slot, which, in the review machine, was unoccupied. That allows the owner to double the amount of RAM installed, in this context, going from 16GB to 32GB.

However, this processor can address up to 64GB, if you are prepared to remove the existing memory that can’t be reached through the removable panel.

And this is where my review went slightly off the rails, because Chuwi obviously didn’t want me going in there, based on their choice to cover one of the screws with a Q&A label.

Label removed, I pressed on and removed a total of x screws around the underside, which partially freed it. But it didn’t release it. I made a lucky guess that more screws were hidden under the rear rubber feet, and after dispatching two of them, the underside came away to reveal both memory slots and the M.2 slot for the 512GB SSD.

Why Chuwi decided to make getting inside so complicated, I’ve no idea, but if anyone does this, you need to note where the screws came from, and have some double-sided tape handy to make sure the rear rubber feet don’t fall off.

The good news is that the SSD is a full 2280 size, making for some great storage upgrade options, and if you are prepared to ditch the 16GB RAM SODIMM that came with the machine, you could put dual 32GB modules inside and have 64GB of RAM.

But, critically, having dual memory modules has huge implications I’ll talk about in the performance section, so even just removing the SODIMM cover and putting a 16GB module in is a worthwhile exercise.

Where this hardware might find it more challenging to gain acceptance from some corporate customers is that it doesn’t have any biometric security. Clearly, Windows Hello cameras and fingerprint readers bump the cost, and neither is included on this machine.

With the exception of the annoying hidden screws and the lack of biometrics, this laptop is a decent design and offers excellent upgrade potential.

• Design: 3.5 / 5

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: Hardware

• AMD Ryzen 5 7430U
• DDR4 Memory
• AMD Radeon RX Vega 7
• 20/16 PCIe lanes

The AMD Ryzen 5 7430U is a processor designed for slim, lightweight laptops that utilises the Cezanne architecture. This chip is part of the second "Barceló" refresh (Barcelo-U) and was officially announced in the fourth quarter of 2023, making it only a little over two years old at the time of writing.

This silicon uses six of the eight cores based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture, and with multi-threading, it can handle 12 threads.

The base clock speed is 2.3GHz, and the turbo mode boosts it to 4.3GHz. But what genuinely caps performance in this context is heat generation on this 7nm chip and how effectively the cooling system maintains operating temperatures.

Other performance-related points are that this chip doesn’t support DDR5, only DDR4, and the maximum power consumption is limited to 15W.

The integrated graphics is the AMD Radeon RX Vega 7, a GPU that’s better than the Intel UHD, but has since been surpassed by later 680M, 780M, and 880M Radeon designs.

As is often the case with integrated GPUs that rely on shared memory, the performance of the AMD Radeon RX Vega 7 is partly determined by the available memory bandwidth. Therefore, and we’ll explore the impact later, if the GPU has a dual-channel configuration, it runs significantly faster than if it's limited to a single-channel memory arrangement.

Another factor in system performance is often PCIe lanes, and how they are allocated to the various subsystems that make up a modern PC. For a mobile CPU, the AMD Ryzen 5 7430U isn’t a bad option, since it has 20 native PCIe 3.0 lanes. However, only 16 of them are usable, with four being reserved for chipset communications.

The sixteen lanes are more than adequate, given that it only has one M.2 slot, and that’s limited to four lanes of PCIe Gen 3. Since this machine doesn’t have Thunderbolt, the overhead for USB is modest, and only two lanes are likely to be used for WiFi.

As a platform goes, the AMD Ryzen 5 7430U has some real advantages over the Intel Core i5-12450H that was in the original CoreBook X, and as I’ll now explore it can be made even better.

• Hardware: 3 / 5

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: Performance

The problem with using older silicon, especially with respect to Intel, is that the pace of development overtook some chips more rapidly than others.

During the release of the Intel mobile gen 10, 11, and 12 parts, Intel struggled with making fabrication below 10nm work for its chips, while AMD had no such issues.

Intel has since resolved some of those limitations and new Core Ultra parts are much more power-efficient as a result.

In these benchmark results, I’ve set out to present why the mobile Gen 12 parts weren’t that wonderful and why Intel is happy to sell them off cheaply to laptop makers.

The first hurdle the Intel Core i5-12450H hits in these tests is graphical problems since the UHD Graphics core doesn’t compare well with the current ARC graphics.

What’s genuinely confusing for reviewers is that Intel describes the GPU in this package as the Intel® UHD Graphics for 12th Gen Intel® Processors, when it’s not truly a UHD series GPU, but an Xe Architecture GPU with 80 Execution units. It’s not the 96 EU that the better Xe chips get, but at least it is not an actual Intel UHD GPU.

The Xe and then ARC first superseded UHD Graphics, so it’s emotionally connected to a time when Intel started to care about graphics performance, but it’s still something of a slug in this context. However, the numbers shown here aren’t all Intel’s fault, as the Chuwi engineers decided to make the CoreBook X as inexpensive as possible and went with DDR4 memory.

The Intel Core i5-12450H does support DDR5, but in this machine, it’s a single stick of DDR4 and all the limited memory bandwidth that implies.

In the review machine was a single 16GB stick of Samsung Rank 2 3200Hz DDR4, and you could add another one of these easily. However, there are no memory controls in the BIOS, so whether this would activate a dual-channel mode is unclear, and I didn’t have any DDR4 spare to test that theory.

My obvious starting point is to compare the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U with its original Intel-based counterpart. And, in general, the Intel Core i5-12450H in the first Corebook X was better at single-threaded operations and multitasking, typically by around 15-25%.

However, the UHD graphics on the Intel platform aren’t as performant as the Radeon RX Vega 7, and in most graphics tests, it gives the edge to the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U.

The trade-off for slightly less computing power is that, with a slightly bigger battery, the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U lasts nearly 2.5 hours longer, for 26% more running time.

However, one thing I never tried with the original Corebook X was adding a second memory module, and I don’t have that machine now, so I can’t try it. But I can add another 16GB module to the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U, and the results are dramatic.

I didn’t run all the tests because, being human, my life is finite, but I did enough to show that adding just 16GB of DDR4 is undoubtedly worth it.

While the extra memory doesn’t impact single-threaded tests that much, it elevates multi-threaded operations, and the extra bandwidth certainly helps the GPU dramatically.

It has zero impact on the CrystalDisk drive tests, which aren’t great numbers because the SSD isn’t a good performer.

But the graphics performance boost is dramatic, with some tests being 64% quicker with the extra memory than with a single module.

The recommendation is that with the exception of battery life, the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U isn’t a massive upgrade over the Chuwi Corebook X in terms of performance, with the addition of another stick of DDR4 it could be much better. That said, I’m sure with a second module, the Chuwi Corebook X could also be improved, although I can’t say if the impact would be equally dramatic.

If you upgrade the SSD to something better and buy another 16GB SODIM module, the Chuwi Corebook X 7430U can perform like a machine costing $600 or more.

• Performance: 3.5 / 5

Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U: Final verdict

The Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U improves on the original Chuwi CoreBook X by better utilising the PCIe lanes and featuring a superior integrated GPU. And, with a modest investment, it can be made even better.

The limitations of such an inexpensive laptop for business use are the lack of biometric security and the annoying hidden screws designed to make otherwise easy upgrades more difficult.

But for a student or someone who only occasionally needs a laptop, there are plenty of good things in this extremely cheap package. But budgeting for the extra RAM ($75) and a branded 1TB Gen 3 SSD ($100) does make it slightly less of a bargain.

The question any potential customer needs to ask is: How long do laptops typically last in your business, and will the Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U make the grade?

For those with employees who don’t throw hardware around like frisbees, this is a perfectly workable solution for those wanting to keep the budget low.

Should you buy a Chuwi CoreBook X 7430U?

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