Chuwi Au Box X 256V mini PC review | Tech Radar

Overview

News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets

Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more

Details

Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards.

Chuwi Au Box X 256V mini PC review: A microcosm of where small PC designs are heading under the current price pressures

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Had this machine not been supplied with a single 16GB memory module, it would get a much stronger recommendation from me. Despite that mistake, this classy platform delivers a great user experience when combined with the right amount of memory.

Best business computers 2026: Expert PC picks for business professionals

We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you're buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Chuwi has crammed Intel's Lunar Lake platform into one of the smallest and most affordable packages, close in size to the original Intel NUC. The Intel 200 series processor is a serious proposition for anyone chasing efficient local AI compute, a punchy compact desktop replacement, or a whisper-quiet home server.

The 115 TOPS headline figure is not marketing fluff either. With the NPU, GPU, and CPU all pulling together, this machine genuinely handles Copilot+ workloads and lighter local LLM inference without breaking a sweat.

The price is the real story, though. At around $829 direct for the model with the Core Ultra 7 256V silicon, this is slightly more costly than a similar 1TB configuration from GMKtec while maintaining a similar physical footprint. Build quality is impressively high, and it comes with USB 4.0 ports, dual 2.5 Gb E LAN and dual monitor outputs.

The downsides of this design are that the 16GB of memory is not upgradable, the small size of the system doesn’t allow for a silent cooling system, and using the second USB4 port requires a docking station.

However, most high-end mini systems are transitioning to surface-mounted memory, and there aren’t many other options powerful enough for local LLMs.

Overall, if this system had been launched only a few months ago, it would have been cheaper and probably offered a 32GB option. But its price and specifications increasingly look like the new norm, and by definition, that’s a retrograde step from the systems that came out a year ago.

At a lower price, this might have been featured in our best mini PC guide, but that argument gets less compelling above $800.

Where can you get it? Currently, this machine can be obtained directly from Chuwi

Considering the specification, the price of the Au Box X 256V seems reasonable, but hardly a bargain - it's available direct from Chuwi here.

We’ve seen Intel 200 Series systems costing over

1000 on several occasions, so finding this one with the Core Ultra 7 256V chip directly from the makers for

829 is a small revelation.

The UK price is £612.87, and based on the current exchange rate, it is a little more expensive than in the USA. Euro pricing is €707.58, which is probably the most costly option.

At the time of writing, Chuwi has yet to release this hardware via online resellers, but they sell many products via Amazon, so its appearance on that channel is only a matter of time, I suspect.

For those wanting the same system style but at a lower price, Chuwi has a Core Ultra 5 225V model, just called the Chuwi Au Box X, that sells for $699/£516.76/€596.62. That design comes with the same 16GB of memory, but only 512GB of storage.

These are the only SKUs, and the maximum memory is only 16GB in either case.

The only competitor using the same processor series in a mini PC form factor is GMKtec Nuc Box K13, which is priced at

719.99 for a machine with the Core Ultra 7 256V and 1TB of storage. If you are willing to work with a 512GB drive, that price can be

669.99.

That makes the Chuwi Au Box X 256V seem overpriced, but there are subtle differences between these designs that might make the Chuwi system worth the extra money.

I suspect the price difference we are seeing is largely due to the dramatic increases in memory and storage costs that are affecting products currently in production. It may be that GMKtec finished making the K13 before these price hikes occurred, allowing them to undercut Chuwi in this instance.

What I don’t have a reason for is why only these two makers have built systems around this mobile silicon, because it seems well-suited to mini PC use.

Intel Core Ultra 7 256V, 8C/8T, P-core up to 4.8GHz, E-core up to 3.7GHz, 12MB cache

Intel Arc 140V, 8 Xe 2 cores, up to 1.95GHz, Xe SS / Xe SS3 support

Intel AI Boost NPU4, 47 TOPS, Open VINO / Direct ML / ONNX / Web NN

HDMI 2.1 FRL (8K@60 Hz / 4K@120 Hz), HDMI 2.1 TMDS (4K@60 Hz), DP 1.4 via USB-C (4K@120 Hz), USB4 (4K@144 Hz)

1x USB4 40 Gbps (PD + DP), 4x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB 2.0

2.5 Gb E RJ45 (Intel), Wi-Fi 6E (up to 2.4 Gbps), Bluetooth 5.3

Mini PCs are not exactly celebrated for bold industrial design, and the Au Box X is no exception. Chuwi has kept things understated. The chassis is a compact black square measuring 128.4 x 128.4 x 40.5mm. That is smaller than the GMKtec Nuc Box K13, which runs to 186mm in length. The Au Box X is genuinely pocket-sized in the way that very few desktop-class machines manage.

At 580g, it is light enough to mount behind a monitor with the supplied VESA bracket, or it can happily live on the desktop, being so small.

Build quality is the area where Chuwi's budget DNA tends to show itself. The brand has a long history in the affordable tablet and laptop space, and its finish tolerances are better than some might expect.

While it isn’t engineered like an Asus NUC, it’s not cheap and plastic either.

The issue with a NUC this small was always going to be thermal design, and it is a genuine talking point here. Chuwi promises whisper-quiet operation, and the Core Ultra 7 256V is well suited to that ambition. With a configurable TDP range of 8 to 37W, the chip can run extremely cool under light loads.

However, when the processing load kicks in, the fan volume becomes much more noticeable. I noticed this on my desk, but if the system were behind a monitor, I suspect it would be much less apparent.

The port layout is generous, given the limited space on the front and back. Up front, you get two USB-A ports for everyday peripherals, plus one USB4 and the audio jack. On the back is the other USB4 port, but it is used by the external PSU to power the device.

Because of that choice, you will need a docking station to use both USB4 ports.

This might be a worthwhile purchase because each of the USB4 ports is rated at 40 Gbps, enabling them to support external SSDs, Display Port video, power delivery, and e GPU enclosures.

One especially useful feature is that the two M.2 NVMe slots are both 2280-sized, enabling this machine to take the least expensive storage in the most common form factor. By default, one of these slots is already occupied with a 512GB module, and that is connected thermally to the metal case with a silicon thermal pad.

On the rear are four USB-A ports, with three being USB 3.2 Gen 2 and one being USB 2.0.

As it has a total of four Gen 2 ports, that means one on the front is, by definition, a Gen 1 port, although Chuwi failed to label any of the USB ports, and I deduced that by testing them all.

Curiously, all the other ports are labelled, including the dual HDMI and DP and 2.5 Gb E LAN port on the back. But as the makers used black lettering on a dark grey case, it's not like they are easily readable.

Networking is handled by a 2.5 Gb E Intel port alongside Wi-Fi 6E. At this price, 2.5 Gb E is expected, and I was a little surprised that we didn’t get two LAN ports. Users planning to use the Au Box X 256V as a home server or NAS companion will appreciate the faster wired throughput. You could easily add another 5 Gb E or even 10 Gb E LAN port using an adapter with a USB4 port.

Internal access is straightforward, requiring only four screws to get inside. Once open, you can access the two PCIe M.2 slots. According to the specification, one of these is Gen 4 and the other is Gen 5, but it isn’t clearly labelled whether the faster port is SSD1 or SSD2.

I suspect the Gen 5 one is SSD1, but I don’t have a Gen 5 drive to test that assertion. The default Gen 4 drive was inserted into SSD2 on the review hardware.

, The Intel Core Ultra 7 256V is a Lunar Lake chip. Lunar Lake is Intel's second-generation Core Ultra platform, built on TSMC's 3nm N3B process. It is a genuine So C design, meaning the CPU cores, i GPU, NPU, and memory all live on the same package. That architecture brings real efficiency gains, but it also brings a fixed memory ceiling. The 256V ships with 16GB LPDDR5X running at 8533 MT/s and there is no way to add more.

The chip packs 8 cores across two architectures. Four Lion Cove P-cores handle the heavy lifting, boosting to 4.8GHz. The remaining four Skymont E-cores top out at 3.7GHz and handle background tasks. In Pass Mark testing, the 256V scores around 19,500 in multi-core, which puts it ahead of the previous-generation Core Ultra 155U and competitive with AMD's Ryzen 7 8840HS despite drawing significantly less power.

Chuwi quotes the Pass Mark multi-core score as 19,547 on their product page. That puts it ahead of the Core Ultra 5 226V (Chuwi's own lower configuration) and the Ryzen 7 7840HS. It trails dedicated gaming and workstation chips, as you would expect from a 37W-maximum mobile platform.

The integrated Intel Arc 140V is the graphics story here. This is an Xe 2 architecture i GPU with 8 compute units running at up to 1.95GHz. Chuwi positions performance as close to an NVIDIA Ge Force RTX 3050, which is a stretch, but the Arc 140V is genuinely the best integrated graphics Intel has shipped.

It supports hardware ray tracing, Xe SS upscaling, and Xe SS3 Multi Frame Generation. For light gaming at 1080p on medium settings, it is a credible option. For serious gaming, the USB4 port opens the door to an external GPU, which transforms the proposition entirely.

The 16GB LPDDR5X is soldered onto the package. That is the nature of Lunar Lake. There is nothing Chuwi could have done differently. For most everyday tasks and Copilot+ AI workloads, 16GB is workable. For serious local LLM inference, particularly with larger quantised models above 7B parameters, the memory ceiling will bite.

A 7B model in Q4 quantisation sits around 4-5GB. A 13B model in the same format pushes past 8GB. Running either alongside Windows and supporting applications starts to feel cramped.

Storage is more flexible. The stock 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD gives ample room for the OS, applications, and a reasonable model library. The dual M.2 2280 slots are the important feature. One supports PCIe 5.0, which is genuinely forward-looking in a machine at this price. Users who want to load larger model libraries or run fast storage for video editing will appreciate the room to expand.

The headline AI figure is 115 TOPS combined. That breaks down to 47 TOPS from the dedicated NPU4, 64 TOPS from the Arc 140V GPU, and a small contribution from the CPU. The NPU4 supports Open VINO, Direct ML, ONNX Runtime, and Web NN. That breadth of framework support matters when you want to run models built for different ecosystems without converting them first.

The 47 TOPS NPU comfortably clears Microsoft's 40 TOPS threshold for Copilot+ certification. That means Recall, Cocreator, Click to Do, and real-time Live Captions all run natively on local hardware rather than bouncing to the cloud. For privacy-conscious users, that is a meaningful difference.

Chuwi specifically calls out Open Claw support on the product page, which is a local AI agent framework for automation and scripting. It does not come pre-installed, but the hardware is fully capable of running it.

But, a short warning before doing that. Open Claw isn’t classic AI; it’s an Agent, and therefore, to do clever things, it needs to use an AI to help it decide what to do with its problems. Using it with free AI services is extremely challenging, and even with paid-for AI services, it is possible to incur significant cost overruns given how many tokens Open Claw can chew through.

The only system I could reasonably compare this to is the GMKtec K13, since they use the same underlying platform.

And, it was soon apparent that the one in the Chuwi Au Box X 256V has been tweaked to deliver more than its brother in the GMKtec K13. I should state that I no longer have the K13, and it may be that GMKtec released later firmware that would level this playing field.

On paper, the Core Ultra 7 256V is an impressive mobile chip that comfortably handles everyday productivity workloads. Office applications, browser-based tools, video calling, and light code compilation all run without hesitation. The P-cores deliver strong single-threaded performance for tasks that do not parallelise well.

Where the chip feels its mobile origins is under extended operations with sustained load. The 37W power cap means the machine eventually throttles when pushed hard for long periods. This is not unusual for Lunar Lake in any chassis, but it is worth testing thoroughly with the loan unit, particularly given Chuwi's compact cooling solution.

This is where the Chuwi Au Box X 256V earns a separate conversation. The mini PC market has split into two camps. There are machines built around AMD Strix Halo APUs with up to 128GB of unified memory, purpose-built for serious local LLM inference.

Then there is everything else. The Au Box X 256V sits in the second camp, which is marginally less impressive, but it sits there with more credibility than most.

The 16GB memory ceiling is the critical limitation. Running a 7B model in Q4_K_M quantisation via Ollama or LM Studio is perfectly manageable and produces usable inference speeds. The GPU can handle the computation while the NPU assists with preprocessing and tokenisation, conveniently.

I’ve not started including AI benchmarks yet, but it is clearly something we will be looking to add, since people are making purchasing decisions based on AI performance.

The picture changes if you factor in the USB4 port. Connecting an e GPU enclosure with 16GB or more of discrete VRAM immediately removes the memory constraint for GPU-side inference. An RTX 4060 Ti 16GB in an external enclosure, for example, turns the Au Box X 256V into a genuinely capable local AI server at a fraction of the cost of a dedicated workstation. That is not a common use case, but it is possible, and this hardware supports it natively.

For Copilot+ workloads, the story is straightforward. Windows Recall, Cocreator, and Live Captions all run on the NPU and i GPU without touching the cloud. The 47 TOPS NPU handles the classification and inference tasks that these features rely on. In practice, that means image recognition, real-time transcription, and on-screen summarisation all work locally, with the privacy benefits that implies.

Speech recognition and lightweight embedding models are well within reach. If you are running a local assistant, a RAG pipeline over a personal document library, or a code completion backend via Continue or Tabby, the Au Box X 256V has enough horsepower to make it feel responsive. It will not replace a machine with an RTX 4090 or 5090 for anything serious, but for a small home server running background AI tasks, it punches well above its price point.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a computer that was so well designed, was built around an excellent platform and had the potential to deliver such a good user experience.

It is a shame, therefore, that Chuwi then took such a solid foundation and let one extremely poor choice take away some of its shine.

Clearly, the person who said that 16GB of memory was plenty had no idea of the implications of that choice, or it was an entirely price-driven decision, where the cost of a 32GB or larger model was considered unworkable.

There is a potential workaround to the memory limits for AI users that involves adding an external GPU using USB4. But that’s an even greater expense to justify, and there are other Intel systems, like the Beelink GTi Ultra Series, that support an external GPU via an exposed PCIe slot.

These do cost a little more, starting at around

869 and requiring a PCIe dock that adds

179, but connecting a graphics card directly rather than via USB4 offers significant benefits. And, those systems come with 32GB of RAM onboard.

In its efforts to capture those with AI interests at the asking price, the Chuwi Au Box X 256V has a relatively narrow use case in that one area. But for more general use, it’s a punchy system that delivers enough performance to compete with traditional desktop systems.

Powerful 200 series CPU, Arc GPU and Intel NPU, but only 16GB of RAM

A neat system that should have cost less or had more RAM options

You want power in a small package This is an excellent choice if you want a compact, quiet desktop that handles everyday tasks and Copilot+ AI features without any cloud dependency. But this system is also ideal for a mini server, hardware firewall and a dozen other tasks.

You are dipping your toes into AI For those experimenting with local LLMs at 7B to 13B parameter scales and want a capable, low-cost starting point, this system ticks those boxes.

You need more than 16GB of RAM As the memory in this system cannot be replaced, the 16GB of memory you get out of the box is as much as it will ever have. Whether for LLMs, video editing, or heavy virtualisation, the stock RAM is soldered and permanent, which might not fit with larger models. Any plan to run 30B+ parameter LLM models without an e GPU is made impractical with this memory amount.

You need a discrete GPU If you want an external discrete GPU, then a machine with a PCIe slot, or OCu Link, and an OCu Link box would be a better choice. While it is possible to use USB4 for an e GPU, it doesn’t have the bandwidth that direct PCI Express or OCu Link offers.

GMKtec Nuc Box K13 A very similar design to the Au Box is built around the same platform, but slightly cheaper. It has a larger enclosure and a 5 Gb E LAN port. However, it has also been limited to 16GB of RAM with no memory upgrades being possible.

Minisforum UM790 Pro A powerful AMD system using a Ryzen 9-class processor, supported by the Radeon 780M GPU. Targeted towards creatives and gamers, the expandable memory and dual M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs allow you to boost performance according to your requirements, with the standard version already delivering remarkable capabilities.

For more professional hardware, we've reviewed the best business computers.

Mark is an expert on 3D printers, drones and phones. He also covers storage, including SSDs, NAS drives and portable hard drives. He started writing in 1986 and has contributed to Micro Mart, PC Format, 3D World, among others.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

1UK Visa Portal website leaks thousands of user passport data and photos online

2 Backrooms movie director has his say on why some film and TV adaptations fail

3 Fight Club has finally arrived on 4K Blu-ray — and its causing controversy already

4 Red Magic 11S Pro review: frightening power, but too few upgrades

5 Fitbit users are furious about being forced to switch to Google Health

Tech Radar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

Key Takeaways

News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets
Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more
Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards
Chuwi Au Box X 256V mini PC review: A microcosm of where small PC designs are heading under the current price pressures
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission