4 Reasons Why You Should Pay Attention To Huawei’s New Notebook

February 25, 2018

When it comes to thin and light notebooks, Huawei isn’t exactly a household name in the United States. The Matebook X Pro might change that. With today’s reveal of the successor to 2017’s MateBook X — Huawei is proving it means serious business and intends to aggressively carve away market share from giants Dell and Apple.

The MateBook X Pro is the second notebook Huawei has ever produced, so it stands to reason that name recognition is lacking in this space, as opposed to its much larger smartphone presence. On the company’s second outing, however, they’ve managed to out-Pro Apple and dull the shine from Dell’s award-winning XPS 13 InfinityEdge display.

The appearance of the MateBook X Pro is certainly reminiscent of Apple’s MacBook Pro design language (not a complaint), but Huawei is doing a few things I appreciate to move notebooks forward.

#1: Those Bezels

Credit to Dell for pioneering a nearly edge-to-edge display in the 2015 XPS 13. It turned a lot of heads and reignited the fervor for thin and light notebooks. It also embarrassed Apple’s equivalent display offerings (and still does). Dell’s newest XPS 13 is still impressive with an 80.7 percent screen-to-body ratio. Huawei somehow managed to crank that ratio up to a phenomenal 91 percent. This means they can house a 13.9-inch, 3000 x 2000 resolution touchscreen display into the body.

#2: Smile For The (Pop-Up) Camera

Designing a screen with bezels that narrow requires a bit of engineering creativity, so Huawei decided to do something completely new with the standard laptop camera: hide it in the keyboard. The top row of function keys now houses a pop-up camera (only 1 megapixel but sufficient for video conferencing) in the center. Simply press it and it clicks open. Besides being a clever solution in the pursuit of edgeless displays, it’s also something privacy advocates will appreciate.

#3: Quad Speakers, Quad Microphones

One of the 2017 MacBook Pro’s best features is honestly its speakers. They’re clear and they’re loud and I’m never hunched toward the screen wishing for more volume. Thought I haven’t heard them in person (yet), Huawei’s MateBook X Pro is packing an impressive 4 speakers with Dolby Atmos, which the company says contain a mixture of tweeters and woofers that deliver rich bass and crisp sound. If they’re as loud as the MBP but deliver deeper more prevalent bass, it’ll be a winner in the audio department.

Speaking of audio, the MateBook X Pro’s microphone setup seems expressly designed for conferences in the office. It contains an impressive 4 microphones which Huawei says pick up sound accurately from up to 13 feet away.

#4: The Best Of Both USB Worlds

I really do prefer USB-C. It’s faster, it’s easier, and it will become universal. The XPS 13 and Apple MacBook Pro have relegated standard USB-A connectivity to the graveyard, but the rest of the peripheral world hasn’t caught up yet. So why not have the best of both worlds? Maybe it’s a trvivial thing, but I appreciate that the MateBook X Pro has a USB-A port for the various external drives and peripherals I already own, and two USB-C connections for the forward-thinking side of things. 1 of them supports ThunderBolt 3 for hooking up an external display.

Bonus: Dedicated Nvidia Graphics, Thinner Than MacBook Pro

At its thickest point the MateBook X Pro is 0.3mm thinner than the 13-inch Apple MacBook Pro. At its thinnest point it’s a full 2mm thinner, despite having a larger screen. It can also be configured with discrete graphics in the form of Nvidia GeForce MX150. Now, that’s not remotely a heavyweight GPU capable of playing everything in full visual glory at 1080p, but it’s capable of smoothly playing more lightweight titles at 60+fps, or demanding AAA games on Low at 1080p. This is a thin and light, after all.

Still, it can handle GTA V at 1080p Medium and deliver about 30fps there, so that’s a decent gauge of its horsepower.

US pricing for the Huawei MateBook X Pro hasn’t been announced yet and should release in Q2. The high-end config will cost 1899 Euros (about $2330 at time of writing) and core specs include an 8th-Gen Intel Core i7-8550U processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB nVME SSD. It also has a fingerprint sensor on the power button. You can grab more info at Huawei’s official site.

You guys know my story: I’m a MacBook Pro user (please direct flames to Twitter), and Dell made me increasingly jealous with every iteration of the XPS 13. But now Huawei has pushed that jealousy to new levels. On paper I’m really excited about this one, and hopefully I’ll have extensive hands-on time closer to the MateBook X Pro launch.

Source: forbes.com

Written by: New Generation Radio

HUAWEI