When you come across the word “ultrabook” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? A fantastical textbook that can fly and shoot lasers or a super-thin laptop with great battery life and performance?
If it’s the latter, you’re in the right place.
Today we’re reviewing Huawei’s best ultrabook so far, the Matebook X Pro.
All-Metal Build
First things first, Huawei made sure to keep the Matebook X Pro as slim and sleek as possible while still giving users the experience of a full-size laptop. In fact, it compares favorably against the likes of Dell’s XPS series and Apple’s MacBook Air with its thin profile.
Once you look at the laptop this way, a lot of things start to make sense. The whole thing is encased inside an aluminum body and feels a bit heavier than it should.
It appears as if the laptop wasn’t balanced properly, at least our review unit wasn’t. It was fairly noticeable while typing something, the left side floats above the table a tiny bit and you can press down on it.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Open up the lid and you’re greeted by an ample-sized backlit keyboard with fairly large keys and a decent amount of travel (1.2mm). This owed itself to a fairly pleasant typing experience (not counting the balancing issue I pointed out earlier).
There was one weird quirk with the Fn key on the Matebook though. If you press it and it lights up that means it won’t work and if the light is off, then it does work. Pretty odd.
The touchpad was quite wide (akin to MacBooks) and had palm rejection so accidental touches won’t register. It was also pretty accurate: accuracy is a sore point for many laptop OEMs and Huawei is doing it right.
Navigating through Windows or browsing is made easier because of this. Add to that the usual gestures like pinch to zoom and three finger swipe to swap between different windows and you’ve got yourself a great trackpad.
I/O Ports and The Dock
Design-wise there was one thing that I didn’t like about the Matebook X Pro and that was its lack of ports. On the right side, you’ll find the only full-size USB-A port while on the left side there are two USB-C ports (one of those is Thunderbolt 3 so that’s a plus) and a headphone jack.
There is no SD card slot, HDMI, or any other port on the Matebook X Pro.
If you want more, you’ll need to get a “Huawei dock” which connects to one of the USB-C ports on the left side. The dock has a USB-A, an HDMI, a VGA, and another USB-C port.
Huawei might be taking Apple’s approach here thinking “less is more” while the opposite is true. Other companies selling similar ultrabooks do offer more ports with Dell’s XPS-series being a good example.
Very Impressive Speakers
With small size come bad speakers. That’s usually the case with ultrabooks and they often lack good speakers but that wasn’t the case with the Matebook X Pro.
It comes with four different speakers and Dolby Atmos support. They can get extremely loud and the sound itself is quite punchy, though it lacks bass. The sound was pretty accurate too but distortion sort of creeps in if you push up the volume above 80%. They’re good for watching videos or listening to podcasts but avoid listening to music on these, they don’t really match up to Apple’s Macbooks.
Touchscreen 3K Display
Other than decent speakers, Huawei Matebook X Pro also boasts one of the best displays in its category. Dell’s XPS series doesn’t come close and the Macs all have sizeable bezels.
The Matebook houses a 13.9-inch LTPS display with a 91% (!) screen-to-body ratio. The bezels on the top and the sides are just 4mm thick, which not only makes the experience immersive, any other laptop you use after this won’t look good enough.
Its resolution goes up to 3K (3000 x 2000) in a 3:2 aspect ratio, the same as Microsoft’s Surface tablets and laptops. Although it works well with productivity apps and browsing, it doesn’t agree with regular videos and movies, with large black bars appearing on the top and bottom.
The display is color accurate, covering 100% of the sRGB gamut. It goes up to 450 nits in terms of brightness, has 178-degree viewing angles, and has an impressive 1500:1 contrast, with deep blacks and punchy colors. Image editing and watching movies will be a blast on this thing.
The 10-point touchscreen works well with media consumption and browsing the web, though you’d be hard-pressed to use the Matebook that way as the touchpad is good enough for navigation.
Weird Webcam Placement
Making the display virtually bezelless came at a cost. Huawei removed the webcam from the display (where it usually is on laptops) and instead placed it on the keyboard, in between the function keys near the top.
Press the camera button and it pops right out. When not in use, you can press it down again to hide it. It’s pretty handy if you’re conscious of your privacy.
Even though the quality is pretty good, the angle makes it very awkward to use, especially if you’re typing. It won’t be wrong to call it a “nose cam”.
Hardware and Performance
Thankfully Huawei took special care in the performance department.
You get the choice of either an 8th Gen Intel Core-i7 or a Core-i5 on the Matebook X Pro, along with 8/16 GB of RAM and 256/512 GB SSD storage. It would’ve been nice to see a 1 TB storage variant as well, as more ultrabooks now have that option.
The bootup sequence was fairly quick. Once you press down on the power button, it takes just 8 seconds to get to the login screen. Having a good processor and SSD combo makes all the difference here as apps and software opened up fast and didn’t lag at all. Don’t try gaming on this as you won’t get very far with no dedicated Nvidia/AMD GPU.
Setting up Windows Hello is also fairly straightforward thanks to the fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button. It’s fast and doesn’t show up with errors often.
Huawei also includes a PC Manager app on the Matebook X Pro, which lets you transfer data directly from your Huawei phone over Wi-Fi. It also keeps the drivers up to date and keeps other things in check.
Battery Life and Fast Charging
The Matebook X Pro has a 57.4 Whr battery and manages 9-10 hours of uptime on a single charge, depending on your use.
In my testing, in which I installed software, listened to music, browsed the web, transferred data, and did a lot of word processing, it managed to last around 9.5 hours easily.
I never had to dial down the performance (set to high performance) or the brightness (set to 50%) to conserve battery.
Other than that, it also comes with a 65W adapter with fast charging enabled. With 30 minutes of charging it can get you 6 hours of use. It can also charge from 0-100% in around 1.5 hours.
Verdict
Overall, Huawei Matebook X Pro is a very compelling piece of machinery and is up there with the best in its category, like the MacBook Pro or the Dell XPS/HP Envy ultrabooks. With a great keyboard and touchpad, coupled with decent battery life and performance, you get your money’s worth.
It does have some quirks but none of them is deal-breaking and can be ignored for the most part. We will definitely recommend this to anyone out looking for a brand new Windows ultrabook.
price?
265K
It does not seem better than Yoga 920. Its just normal ultra book