Crelander P8 Mini Laptop – The Tiny Laptop with Big Compromises (aka Topton P8)

The Crelander P8 is an Intel N100 based mini laptop that is sold on AliExpress. This is one of the most affordable and budget conscious mini laptops, but due to the cheaper specifications it has a bunch of small compromises that can make for a frustrating user experience depending on expected use case. If these compromises are something you can live with then the P8 is a decent little device and quite well built for the price, but I would not recommend it to those who want to play newer games or do anything that requires computing power. The battery life is also bad enough that it won’t last through your D&D session at full screen brightness.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This mini laptop P8 model is sold under several brands on various e-commerce sites: Kingnovy, Topton P8, Crelander P8, Firebat P8, SZYIYUN P8. All of these mini laptops are the same product, although I believe the seller is the one to install the Ram/SSD configuration, so slight difference in prices may be accounted for by different storage choices, and the choice of storage may change depending on the market at the time you buy it.

By the way: I highly recommend immediately reinstalling Windows on any of these generic devices. Many include malware in their default state. I don’t think it’s intentional by the seller, but do reinstall Windows just to be sure.

DAILY USABILITY

For the most part this laptop is quite usable in day to day tasks, but the N100 is a bit sluggish when presented with multi-tasking. In order to properly review this laptop, I took it on a 2 week holiday as my only computer, and I was able to do e-commerce based tasks on Shopify, respond to customer e-mails, write newsletters and edit some photos. However, I noticed once several tabs were opened or if I was running a youtube video at the same time as doing work, the computer tended to slow down substantially and chug. This slowness can be seen in loading the Youtube comments while a video is playing. There is little lag if the video is paused, but the comments take some time to load in when the video is playing. I found forcing Youtube to a lower quality like 720p helped substantially especially if you’re using it in the background and not actually watching the video.

Office programs run with ease, and many light tasks like viewing smartphone photos and videos work fine.

This overall slowness translates into gaming, where this computer can play some older games, but anything heavier from the 2010s onwards requires some tweaking if it will run at all. Where the computer does shine is for steam streaming. If you’ve got a bigger gaming PC that can handle the processing, this little laptop can act as a remote monitor through steam and your home network, and will run games fluidly with very little input lag. It’s also quite competent at emulating PS1 and older hardware.

In summary, the N100 holds back this mini PC a lot, and I would highly recommend looking for a mini laptop with more power if you expect to multi task. It’s fine for basics, but anything that stretches the performance at all can be hit or miss.

TYPING EXPERIENCE

With any mini PC, the keyboard can be pretty cramped, and this is no exception. Switching from a full size keyboard to this mini laptop introduces a couple typing challenges. For me, the hardest change to adapt to is the shifted top row. This introduced several typing errors. The placement of the backspace and delete key were awkward too and I found myself naturally hitting “delete” instead of “backspace” until I got used to the change, which resulted in several frustrated monkeybrain moments of “why is this typo not going away?!” It is totally possible to get used to the typing experience, but overall the remainder is very much so “cheap keyboard” feeling, with key stability being pretty mid and the split space key not registering unless it is pressed right in the middle and with some firm force.

MEDIA CONSUMPTION

The display is a 1200p IPS panel and it looks alright, but the colour reproduction is kind of wonky. In an age when even the cheapest devices have nearly 100% SRGB coverage, it is frustrating to see a panel. The contrast is often too high and content that should have details in dark spaces were often blown into pitch black.

Also the panel does suffer from PWM, if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing.

The speakers are just bad. They get loud, but there is little to no bass, and things have a “crunchy” sound to it. Bring a headset or a bluetooth speaker. Thankfully there is a headphone jack.

BATTERY LIFE

The battery lasts typically 3 hours with general use, which is quite low for a little device. Thankfully it can be charged off of a PD supported battery bank. The tiny laptop consumes such a small amount of power, but the battery is also small, so that results in low battery life. I would find this device more useful if it lasted 6+ hours. I was using the laptop for D&D to take notes and view my character sheet and it would barely last through a session with the screen brightness on lowest and doing very little actual work.

OTHER NOTES

The touch input and pen input is surprisingly good though. I found myself using the touch input more than the little tiny mouse pointer nub thing.

CONCLUSION

There is many compromises for such a small device. Some I could live with, but others I could not. I ended up selling the P8 instead of keeping it. If this device was available with a more powerful processor and better battery life I would jump on it right away.

If you want a better typing experience and can put up with the N100’s overall lethargy, buy the Chuwi Minibook X N100 instead. It’s a bit bigger device but that means better keyboard layout. It also has pen input, a more robust hinge and a gorgeous screen. Chuwi is unfortunately not known for their battery longevity – both in terms of the actual battery life and battery quality. There are several reports of year old laptops with swollen batteries on Reddit. Do keep that in mind if you decide to try the Minibook X.