Crowdfunded in China: segways, gaming PCs, and smart bikes

This month’s list of our top five favorite crowdfunding campaigns in China all come courtesy of JD Coufenzi, and range from the practical to the overly-extravagant. Here’s our picks for March:

iFunk Shadowblade – $500 gaming laptop

Gaming laptops tend to be big, heavy, expensive machines with short lifespans, but iFunk wants to change all of that with its sleek and powerful 13-inch ultrabook. Starting at just US$500, the Shadowblade sports an Intel i7-4510U processor, 8GB RAM, a 128GB solid-state hard drive, and 1080p resolution. It weighs 1.3 kg and claims six hours of battery life. It says it can play high-end PC games like Final Fantasy 13, the latest Assassin’s Creed, and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It can also run intensive software like Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro.

Best of all, the laptop is just two centimeters thick. Worst of all, it still has integrated graphics rather than a separate dedicated graphics card. That’s a lot of promises for a relatively unheard-of brand, but if iFunk can pull it off, it could be the Xiaomi of laptops.

The Shadowblade has raised RMB 1.66 million (US$267,000) with 11 days remaining on JD Coufenzi.

Smart bike JW650 and ASO Summoner – Smart bike hardware

These two products share a lot of similarities, so we’re grouping them together. The JW650 is a geared bicycle fitted with sensors and a heads-up display built into the stem (the part that holds your handlebars). The sensors zap real-time info to the display – speed, distance, calories, etc – which in turn zaps the info to your phone so you can monitor progress. The bike costs just under RMB 10,000 (US$1,600), and the project has raised RMB 4.66 million (US$750,000) so far with just over three weeks remaining.

For those who want better data on their rides but don’t want to buy a whole new bike, there’s the ASO Summoner. The gadget looks just like a plain handlebar stem, with the exception of the QR code plastered onto the top. Scan that QR code to link the internal gadgetry of the Summoner to a smartphone app as it collects and analyzes ride data. The ASO Summoner costs RMB 349 (US$56) and has raised RMB 62,000 (US$10,000) with just under a month remaining.

Automatic car cover – retractable raincoat for your car