HUAWEI'S LATEST LAPTOP IS THE BEST ONE OUT THERE
Huawei's new MateBook X Pro has loads of specs, and an eye-catching design – and Huawei is not exactly an established brand in the laptop world.
Prior Huawei laptops had poor battery life, not enough power, terrible designs, and were not even worth considering. Turns out the MateBook X Pro is here to change everybody's mind.
The smooth metal finish (ironically also called "space grey") is as premium as it gets, the tolerance is tight, and there is no flex in the chassis or display. The laptop can even be opened with one finger, and the rest of the laptop stays put.
The MateBook has two USB-C ports, one of which supports Thunderbolt 3, as well as a USB-A port, so you can plug in most accessories without needing an extra dongle. Huawei even throws in an added adapter – in the box – for video cables like HDMI and VGA, at NO EXTRA COST! The power button features an integrated fingerprint scanner that makes logging in a breeze.
As for the laptop itself, it is under 15mm thick and weighs just under 1,5 kg, which makes it just as portable as Apple's MacBook Pro, Microsoft's Surface Laptop and Dell's XPS 13.
The laptop features a 13.9-inch touchscreen display with the trimmest bezels you will find on any laptop. It is a high-resolution, and bright screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio which makes productivity tasks, such as working with documents, or browsing the web much easier than on widescreen displays. It is basically everything that anyone can look for in a non-gaming laptop.
A deal-breaker for some might be the webcam placement. Since the bezel above the screen is so slim, there is no room to stick a standard webcam there. However, Huawei came up with the clever idea to hide the camera in a pop-up key in the middle of the keyboard, so you don't have to stick a gross piece of tape over it for privacy.
The only downside of having the webcam hiding in the keyboard is that the viewing angle is so low, and the quality of the camera is really poor. And if you need to type while you are on a video call, your fingers will block it, so if you take a lot of video calls, this will be a problem.
The MateBook's hardware includes a four Dolby Atoms speaker system, which gives the laptop louder and better sound than any other laptop out there. Huawei is selling two versions in the US, one with an eight-gen Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, as well as an upgraded model that bumps up to a quad-core Core i7 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.
The upgraded version also features a graphics card in the form of Nvidia's MX150, which means it can also be used for some light gaming and graphical work. For browsing the web, writing emails, watching videos, wasting time on social networks, or creating documents and presentations, it’s great. It’s best to liken its capabilities to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is obviously what Huawei is gunning for.
The biggest surprise of all might be that the MateBook X Pro's price starts at $1,199.99 for the lower-tier model and caps out at $1,499.99 for the fully loaded version. There is simply no other laptop on the market that offers this much, for that little.
If we had to put it in simple terms, if you are looking for a new laptop for productivity or even entertainment, the MateBook X Pro should be at the very top of your list.