Affordable Blackview AceBook 8 laptop comes with metal case, 16 GB of RAM

Blackview, a company that makes durable phones, affordable tablets and mini-PCs, recently launched the AceBook 8, a budget 15.6-inch laptop powered by an N-series Intel chip. The product's case is made out of 5052 aluminum alloy with a special fingerprint-resistant finish, according to Blackview, and is relatively lightweight at 3.52 lbs (1.6 kg). The metal case certainly is a standout feature in this price range; the AceBook can be had for around $320 to $350 and is available on Amazon.com.

To be able to give the consumer that metal case at a price point this low, Blackview had to make certain compromises. The product's 15.6-inch display is where it starts; while this thankfully is an IPS panel, its brightness is low at just 220 nits and its color gamut is limited to roughly two thirds of sRGB.

Battery life is another area where corners have been cut. At 38 Wh, the battery is unlikely to deliver more than 3 or 4 hours of real-world use. The full-size keyboard comes with no backlight. The micro-SD reader is very slow at less than 30 MB/s. WiFi 7 and Wi-Fi 6 are not supported, so one will have to be content with Wi-Fi 5. Furthermore, the official spec sheet mentions a "Face Unlock" technology that makes use of the 1 MP webcam; it appear this is just basic 2D face recognition with no 3D mapping of any kind involved.

Blackview does include a fingerprint reader to make up for all of the above, and the battery supposedly charges at up to 36 W which would be a rather useful feature if true.

Much like it is with Apple's MacBook Pro laptops, two colorways are available, Gunmetal Grey and Frost Silver. As for the ports, the AceBook features 2 USB-A 3.0 ports, a USB-A 2.0 port, a USB-C 3.1 port (DP, Power Delivery), an HDMI 2.0 output, a DC-in port, a 3.5 mm port and a micro-SD card slot.

The Intel N97 chip that's powering the laptop is a 4-core, 4-thread affair that is about as fast as a single core of any modern high-performance CPU such as the Ryzen 9 9950X. It'll handle many day-to-day tasks just fine as long as one does not expect any miracles. The integrated Intel GPU isn't fast enough to run most games released in the last 5 years.

Last but not the least, the Blackview has 16 GB of DDR4 RAM (this may or may not be the rather slow DDR4-1600 RAM that many inexpensive Chinese laptops come with) and 512 GB of SSD storage. Windows 11 Home serves as the pre-installed OS; it isn't clear if this is the full-blown Windows 11 Home or the cheaper Windows 11 Home Single Language that is on offer here.