Decent to good quality Chinese tablets had enjoyed an unchallenged run as viable alternatives to the big-name manufacturer products, which were often priced far higher. This run continued till the arrival of Google’s Nexus 7 and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, earlier this year. Both were/are high quality products, with a solid brand backing, and an exceptionally high price-performance ratio, and both were priced in the sub-$300 segment positioning them as highly attractive buys – not to be missed. Clearly the Chinese supply makers, who were already selling at sub-$300 levels had only option left, that was to raise the bar on specs and feature-sets, failing which they faced the immediate threat of extinction.

Chinese tablet manufacturer Chuwi has now launched a new retina-display equipped tablet, dubbed the Chuwi v99. The 9.7″ slate is equipped with a display sporting a resolution of 2048 x 1536, the same as Apple’s new iPad, but is  priced under $300. The Chuwi v99 is  powered by a 1.6 GHz Rockchip RK3066 ARM Cortex-A9 dual core processor, coupled with 1GB of RAM, and equipped with the Mali 400 GPU, 16GB of internal storage, microSD card slots for additional memory, a whopping 10000 mAh battery, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on board. Impressive, eh? And all that for under $300.

I couldn’t help but notice the striking resemblance to a certain tablet on the dark side, especially the back of the Chuwi v99. Wonder if we’re going to see another courtroom drama soon. Anyway, the standout feature on this tablet has got to be the high-res IPS display which is at par with the new iPad. And watch this brief video below, to see how sharp the Chuwi v99 display really is.