Teclast Tbook F7 Notebook – 14 inch Display & aluminium casing for $255.99

With the Teclast F7, the Chinese manufacturer is positioning a product at eye level with CHUWI or JUMPER products, but is it a good alternative? We put the good piece through its paces.

• Teclast F7 Notebook (64 GB eMMC)
  • at Geekbuying for $255.99 |GearBest for $327.62
• Teclast F7 Notebook (128GB SSD)
  • at GearBest for $299.99 | Geekbuying for $299.99

Technical Specifications

Packaging & Scope of Delivery

We have received the Teclast Tbook F7 Notebook in a white/orange packaging, which is a typical colour selection for the Chinese manufacturer. The Teclast T8 tablet was also shipped in such a box.

The scope of delivery includes, besides the notebook itself, an operating manual in Chinese and a power supply with EU plug and CE marking. A micro HDMI to HDMI adapter would have been desirable.

Design and workmanship

The Teclast Tbook F7 Notebook is another budget laptop from China. However, despite its relatively low price, it is equipped with an aluminium housing, similar to the CHUWI LapBook Air or the Jumper EZbook 3 (Pro). In contrast to these manufacturers, who have placed their logo quite large on the back, the design of the Teclast Tbook F7 is more oriented towards the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air. The housing has a “clean” design, without logo or other. Personally, I like this simple and unobtrusive look.

With a weight of 1.23kg it is the lightest budget notebook from China with aluminium case, which we have tested so far. And not only that, with the dimensions 31.50 x 20.85 x 1.35 cm is also the thinnest budget notebook, only the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 12.5″ is with 1.29cm even thinner.

Four large rubber studs are attached to the underside, making the laptop non-slip on practically any surface.

All in all, the Teclast Tbook F7 is solidly crafted and has no processing or material defects. The aluminium housing is well screwed together and fits perfectly – there is nothing to complain about here. It’s still not comparable to a Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, the screen hinges bob and the keyboard feels like cheaper plastic. Weak points, which, however, only become apparent when you spend more time with the device.

Built-in hardware

There is nothing surprising about the hardware of the laptop, it is equipped with similar components as all laptops in the price segment. At the heart of the Teclast F7 beats the Intel Celeron N3450 @ 1.1 GHz, which is also used in the CHUWI LapBook 12.3, LapBook 14.1, LapBook Air, CHUWI Hi13, CHUWI SurBook and SurBook Mini. Introduced in 2016, the quad-core is still used in many budget notebooks today. This is partly due to the solid performance in relation to the purchase price and partly to the good energy balance. In addition, there is a generous 6 GB of RAM; unfortunately, these are ordinary DDR3 RAM and not more energy-saving DDR3L RAM.

The Intel HD 500 on-board graphics chip is sufficient to play older, smaller games with the Teclast Tbook F7. Streaming movies or videos in Full HD also went smoothly in the test. You can’t expect miracles from the internal graphics chip, however, the budget laptop is mainly designed for surfing and working.

The small 64 GB eMMC memory is already almost completely exhausted by the Windows partition, almost 7 GB free memory are still available. Fortunately, there is the possibility to expand the storage via Micro-SD card or M.2 SATA SSD at will.

Benchmark

As expected, the benchmark tests did not turn out particularly well and it would be ridiculous to compare them with the results of a Xiaomi notebook. In the Geekbench 4 CPU test 1427 points were achieved in the single-core and 4284 points in the multi-core.

The Geekbench 4 GPU test, with the Intel HD 500 on-board graphics chip, resulted in a score of 8637 points.

In the 3DMark benchmark test, a score of only 125 points was achieved. Thus, the benchmark tests also reflect: The laptop is mainly suitable for office applications, surfing, streaming or small or rather old games. But really gaming is not possible.

Keyboard & Touchpad

Unlike the CHUWI LapBook Air, the Teclast Tbook F7 keyboard is equipped with black keys and not in the colour of the case.

The keys are not illuminated, but the black keys with white writing have a solid contrast.

The touchpad of the Teclast Tbook F7 measures 10.5 x 7.7 cm and is capable of multi-touch gestures, which can be defined in the Windows settings themselves. Overall, I like the touchpad, it responds reliably to multitouch gestures and gives solid feedback when the keys are clicked.

Display & Battery

The 14.1-inch IPS display has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels in FULL HD. This has become the absolute standard, but there are also big differences among the FULL HD displays. Good black levels with low backlight bleeding would be desirable, but are the exception in this price range.

The screen of the Teclast Tbook F7 notebook is supplied with a protective film. Similar to many Chinese smartphones, the protective film is already glued on, but a second, thin plastic film must be removed from the front of the protective film. Such a film is rather unusual on laptop displays, but here the absolute low-budget alternative to a thin glass pane, which protects the display from scratches.

The advantage of the protective film, however, is that it reflects less than the laminated screen of the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, for example. At full brightness, mirror effects are only visible with very dark screen colors – I like it! Backlight-bleeding effects are noticeable on our test notebook in two places (bottom right and top left). These are only noticeable in complete darkness with a black screen, in normal operation of the Tbook they will not disturb.

According to the manufacturer, the 4900 mAh battery should last about 5-6 hours, in practice this value could be confirmed. However, only with low system requirements, such as simple Internet surfing with low screen brightness and energy-saving performance settings. However, if you watch a film in Full HD at maximum brightness, the battery is exhausted after 3-4 hours.

Connectivity

Two USB 3.0, a micro HDMI, an SD card slot and a 3.5 mm jack connector were installed in the housing. I personally am not a fan of the Micro-HDMI connector. In my experience, it is quite unstable and when treated carelessly it tends to wear out, an adapter is also necessary.

What I like, however, is that just like the CHUWI LapBook Air, a free SSD slot is available for expanding the internal memory. For the extension the whole housing does not have to be screwed on, by an extra flap on the back it is enough to remove a screw.

When it comes to wireless connectivity, there is also a WiFi module that supports all common standards (802.11b / g / n / ac). A Bluetooth chipset has also been implemented, but only in the older version 4.0.

Sound

The speakers are not implemented on the bottom of the Teclast Tbook F7 notebook, but between the screen and keyboard. There are small openings from which the sound escapes.

Although they are theoretically stereo speakers, they sound more like mono speakers. On the picture the Teclast logo marks the middle of the laptop, so it is good to see that the speakers are on the one hand close together and on the other hand shifted to the right. This is also audible during use, but the speakers aren’t very good anyway and you shouldn’t watch more than a short YouTube video. Unfortunately, they are far too bad to listen to music on a laptop.

Conclusion

With the F7 notebook Teclast joins the sector of the popular budget notebooks from China. What I particularly like about this laptop is that the internal memory can be expanded via SSD without much effort. Added to this is the simple and functional design of the high-quality aluminium housing, which does not require major Teclast branding.

The built-in hardware is sufficient for old or smaller games. Office programs, surfing, streaming in HD are also no problem if you use an external speaker in the long run. If you have more in mind with your notebook, you might want to take a look at the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro, Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 2018 or the Teclast F6 Pro.

Whether it is a good alternative to a CHUWI LapBook or JUMPER EzBook? We can answer this with “Yes”, but you should always keep an eye on the prices to get a good price – we will of course inform you when which budget laptop is on offer.