Many laptops are proudly labelled the ‘MacBook Killer’ by their manufacturers, hoping that their model will be able to replace this favorite of all photographers, designers, bloggers and other hipsters. But we will be honest, not all of them manage to achieve it. Today we are checking what Huawei Matebook X Pro has to offer to its users, and will it become the One?
Huawei MateBook X Pro specifications
- Processor: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1260p, 2.1 GHz (up to 4.7 GHz in Boost mode), 12 core/16 streams, 10 nm, Intel Smart Cache 18 MB
- RAM: 16 GB LPDDR5, 5186 MHz
- Videochip: Intel Iris XE, 1400 MHz
- Disc: 1 TB SSD M.2 NVME
- Screen: 14.2″, 3: 2, LTPS, 3120 × 2080 pixels, 500 nits, 90 Hz, glossy, multitouch 10
- Battery: Li-Pol, 60 Wh, 4 sections
- Dimensions, W × G × B: 310.0 × 221.0 × 15.5 mm
- Weight: 1.38 kg
- Body material: anodized aluminum
- OS: Windows 11 Home
- Keyboard: membrane, with backlight
- Touchpad: matte, smooth, supports gestures and multiple touches
- Data transmission: Wi-Fi 6 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax (Intel AX201), Bluetooth 5.1
- Connectors: 2×Thunderbolt 4; 2×USB type-C; 1×3.5 mm minijack
- Additionally: 720p web camera, 6 speakers, 4 microphones, Huawei audio, proprietary Huawei PC Manager.
Delivery set and price
If theater begins with a hanger, then the impression of a product begins with the packaging. And here the Huawei designers exceeded all expectations. The buyer of the Huawei MateBook X Pro receives a chic package, thought out to the smallest detail. And when you pick up the laptop, the elegance of its design takes your breath away. In a stylish box in separate sections, in addition to the MateBook X Pro, you will find a cable with two USB-C connectors at the ends and a 90 W power supply. The price is still difficult to say, the laptop is only expected to go on sale.
MateBook X Pro design
Personally, I like absolutely everything about the appearance of this laptop, but let’s go in order. First, style and premium design. No inappropriate motley, but not just a black piece of plastic. No, everything here is much more interesting – blue matte metal, one look at which makes you want to touch this miracle of technology. It’s just a thrill to the touch – the developers managed to make a metal similar to soft touch. It is as if you are touching a velvet surface, but in a couple of seconds you feel the coolness of the metal. At first, the brain refuses to believe it, and as a result, you constantly get stuck touching the laptop. The undoubted advantage of the matte surface is that there are practically no fingerprints left on it.
If we restrain our enthusiasm and speak in more dry practical terms, the laptop body is made of matte anodized aluminum. According to the classics, the only glossy element of the laptop is the HUAWEI brand inscription on the lid. Of course, there is a simpler model in the line, which uses ordinary aluminum, but it seems to me that the aesthetic pleasure of using the top model is worth every penny invested in it.
The laptop rests securely on four rounded legs. They don’t play the main role in cooling, because the ventilation holes are located behind the laptop, but you can’t call them superfluous either.
The cover of the Huawei MateBook X Pro opens gently, and the laptop can be opened with one hand. I really liked the design solution for the hinges – they look unified in structure, and the absence of gaps when opening gives confidence in the strength of the structure. Yes, we must give credit to the designers of this laptop – despite its thinness, it gives the impression of an extremely durable gadget.
Since the display is one of the main advantages here, let’s take a closer look at it. The top and side bezels here are only 5 mm thick, and the bottom bezel is 12 mm. Due to this, the screen seems to be truly frameless, not just nominally. If we speak in numbers, the display occupies 92.5% of the screen area of the MateBook X Pro.
All the main ports are compactly located on the left and right sides. Holes for microphones were brought to the front edge, which we will talk about in more detail later.
The width of the laptop is 31 cm, the length is 22 cm, and the thickness is only 15 mm. The weight of the MateBook X Pro is 1.38 kg, so in addition to the prize for appearance, I feel free to award another personal medal for portability and compactness.
Keyboard and touchpad
Despite its compactness, the Huawei MateBook X Pro received a very cool keyboard. It is an island type, the keys are large, so even when typing at high speed, I had no errors. Short Shift and therefore complete helplessness in using hotkeys is my personal problem, which does not give me peace with any laptop model. Otherwise, the keyboard is very convenient.
I liked the soft and not too deep stroke of the keys, which makes typing on the keyboard very pleasant and fast. The keys are pressed clearly and smoothly, without unnecessary clicking. Considering the overall quietness of the device, I can call it one of the quietest laptops I’ve ever dealt with.
The keyboard has a white backlight, with two levels, brighter and paler. Although its brightness is far from ideal, it will be possible to work on a laptop in the dark without any problems.
The Huawei MateBook X Pro touchpad is large, smooth, and pleasant to the touch. It was placed exactly in the middle, slightly sunken into the body. The front edge is the end of the laptop, thus creating the illusion of an infinite surface. Visually, it reminds me of the famous Dali clock.
The buttons of the touchpad are not highlighted separately, the entire bottom part is pressed. Pressing is clear, short, with a perceptible, but not very loud click. The sensitivity of the touchpad is high, touches and gestures are recognized without any problems. Yes, I was not mistaken – this touchpad perfectly recognizes gestures, the recognition of which you can enable in a separate Huawei Free touch application.
As expected, among the useful functions, I saw the ability to take a screenshot, start a screen recording, adjust the screen brightness and sound volume, start a fast video rewind, and also call the notification panel. What surprised me was, for example, the ability to minimize the window by touching the upper left corner of the touchpad and close the window by tapping on the upper right corner. No need to drag the mouse across the screen or aim with the touchpad – fast, simple and practical.
To be honest, what I liked most was not even the fact that these functions are provided, but the way they are implemented. When you swipe to adjust the sound or brightness, you feel a tactile feedback, as when scrolling a regular wheel.
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MateBook X Pro interfaces
Ports here are quite expected, as for an ultrabook – USB Type-C and one mini-jack. In more detail, two USB Type-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support for fast charging, high-speed data transfer and connecting external devices are located on the left near the headphone jack. On the right side, there are two regular USB Type-C ports. Huawei MateBook X Pro is also charged via USB Type-C, which is very convenient – you don’t need to carry extra cables with you.
The OTG cable slightly expands the possibilities of connecting other devices. And I understand the impossibility of fitting a full-fledged USB type-A into such a thin case. But it was definitely possible to add a card reader, given that this little one can become a portable studio for a photographer or videographer.
Display
Once you’ve calmed down a bit about the design, the next item to get excited about is the Huawei Matebook X Pro’s display. Despite the fact that this is a compact model with a diagonal of 14.2 inches, the matrix was installed here with an original resolution of 3.1K (3120×2080). On the one hand, it may seem excessive for such a diagonal, but on the other hand, it will please videographers and game designers who work with images in high resolution.
As for the quality of the matrix itself, it is simply fantastic. Colors are bright, saturated – the matrix is able to transmit more than 1 million colors, keeping them as close as possible to natural ones. It is impressive that the deviation of the accuracy of color transmission ΔE is only 1, which is much higher than the similar indicator even in some professional monitors. Therefore, this model will become a full-fledged professional workplace for everyone whose work is somehow related to the creation and processing of visual content.
The high brightness of 500 nits, as well as the contrast ratio of 1500:1 allows you to comfortably use the laptop even outside on a sunny day. We also do not forget about Display HDR 400 support, which makes the picture even more contrast.
Despite all the coolness of the screen, the refresh rate is not the maximum here – a rather modest 90 Hz. And this is probably the only “weak” place of the screen. Considering the pleasant experience of using smartphones with 120 Hz matrices, you can expect an equally smooth and fast screen from a premium laptop. Of course, 90 Hz is more than enough for the smooth operation of the interface of all programs, plus they did not forget about various flicker suppression technologies. And it is clear why the manufacturer did not pursue a higher hertz – it would not significantly affect the quality of work, but the load on the system, taking into account the high resolution of the screen, would increase many times.
Due to the effective use of the usable area of the front panel of the Huawei MateBook X Pro, the usability did not come at the expense of compactness. Also, the aspect ratio of 3:2 is considered more acceptable for work, as it allows you to organize the workspace more efficiently and display more useful information at the same time.
In addition to the excellent matrix, the laptop also received functional software that makes the process of use even more comfortable. So, the laptop can dynamically adjust the brightness and color temperature depending on the environment, and also has TÜV Rheinland certificates that confirm the technologies for eliminating flicker and reducing the impact of blue light.
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And so that you finally fall in love with the Huawei MateBook X Pro screen, Huawei developers made it touch-sensitive. And if I usually consider it a bit redundant in a laptop, here the presence of a touch screen is justified for several reasons at once.
First of all, due to the high resolution, the interface elements are quite small, it is not possible to hit them with the cursor from the touchpad immediately, and clinging to the mouse means losing mobility. And so you press the necessary button on the screen, and that’s it. Especially since Windows 11 and the touch screen are simply made for each other. And this is the second reason to try “poking” the screen with your finger, even if you are an ardent opponent of it.
Also, the touch screen will come in handy in the same Premiere or Photoshop, compensating for the small diagonal with the convenience of interacting with the program interface. In short, there are solid pluses everywhere you look. There is only one minus – the touch screen increases the price of the device.
MateBook X Pro hardware
CPU and GPU
Huawei MateBook X Pro is equipped with today’s top mobile Intel i7-1260P processor. It offers the user 12 cores organized according to the big.LITTLE principle – 4 productive and 8 energy efficient. At the same time, 12 cores are transformed into 16 threads with the help of hyperthreading for simultaneous processing of a larger amount of data.
The processor operates at a base frequency of 2.1 GHz and a turbo mode of 4.7 GHz. It has 18 MB of Intel Smart cache, which helps the cores dynamically combine the cache. The maximum frequency of the Intel Iris Xe graphics chip is 1400 MHz.
RAM
The processor installed in the Huawei MateBook X Pro supports up to 64 GB of LPDDR5 5200 RAM, although in our case 16 GB is installed. This will be enough for rendering 3D models or 4K video, and for simultaneously running several voracious programs.
Storage
The laptop is equipped with a 1 TB NVMe SSD storage. This is exactly the volume that can come in handy when using the device as a workstation for graphic tasks. There is enough space to store current projects, for the rest – there are external drives or cloud services. By the way, the drive here is nimble, with a high speed of reading and writing.
Wireless networks
The Huawei MateBook X Pro uses an Intel AX201 chip with support for the new Wi-Fi 6 standard (MIMO 2×2 up to 2400 Mbit/s) and Bluetooth 5.1. In general, there is nothing surprising here, as you get what you expect from a modern powerful device. In this direction, it is difficult to distinguish something special.
Performance
First of all, we have a multimedia center in front of us, and secondly, a powerful working tool of a digital creator. Next, you can select a group of users who simply want to have such a stylish portable laptop. And somewhere at the end of the list are a couple of gamers who, for some reason, with a roughly similar budget, turned their attention not to an accessory enhanced by strong cooling and a discrete video card, but to our guest today. So, to be honest, you can run games here, but I can’t think of why do it, except for a performance test.
Regarding the performance of the laptop in question, I want to mention one more point. The Huawei Matebook X Pro is Intel Evo certified, which means this ultrabook meets Intel’s high internal performance standards. They include a number of parameters, for example, quick recovery of the system from deep sleep, more than 10 hours of work without recharging, the presence of Wi-Fi 6, Thunderbolt 4, charging via USB type-C and others. Such parameters show how ready the ultrabook is for real daily tasks and how high-quality user experience it can provide to its owners.
Cooling system and heating up
The cooling system here was thoroughly thought out, because the laptop is thin, the processor is powerful, and the loads are planned to be high. So the engineers had to think about how to be so clever and reduce all this to optimal indicators of heating, noise and productivity.
As a result, the Huawei MateBook X Pro received a Shark Fin cooling system with two fans and radiators for passive cooling, as well as an intelligent device temperature control system.
According to my own observations, the laptop can safely be called absolutely silent in normal work without high loads like the browser, background music, messengers, YouTube videos. When you load it with more serious tasks, for example, editing in Adobe Premier Pro, some noise is already heard, and the laptop itself becomes noticeably warmer. However, for an ultrabook, the cooling system here is really great.
Battery life
Considering the voracious processor and insatiable screen, the picture with autonomy turned out to be ambiguous. On the one hand, a powerful lithium-polymer battery is installed here, but the power consumption of the laptop here is clearly higher than average.
Our today’s hero was able to offer about 5 hours in the format of office work or Internet searches with a screen brightness higher than average in the mode without connecting to charging. Lower the brightness a little – and you can get about 6 hours. Watching movies in the maximum resolution at medium volume using Wi-Fi without recharging will last about 6-7 hours. If you play some resource-demanding game, the battery will last for about 2 hours, but again, why?
A 90 W power supply unit is supplied with the laptop. With its compact and modest appearance, it gives quite good performance in terms of charging the laptop — in 15 minutes with the screen on, the laptop gained 20% charge, in an hour it was possible to gain about 70%. To charge the MateBook X Pro to 100%, it will take an hour and a half, plus or minus 5 minutes.
Software, sound and camera
Right out of the box, Huawei MateBook X Pro runs on the most current Windows 11. However, some proprietary software from Huawei has been added here.
Huawei Sound, as you can guess from the name, is responsible for the sound. First of all, this is a smart equalizer that has ready-made presets for different usage scenarios – for built-in speakers and for connected wired headphones.
The sound is really spacious and high-quality, the bass is clearly visible, as well as the stereo effect from the speakers located on the sides of the case. The volume is also good, so watching a movie on it will be great, even with such a screen (yes, yes, I can’t let go of my admiration for the wonderful matrix, so I will take this opportunity to mention it again).
But that’s not all, as you can also adjust the microphone settings in the application. Moreover, the Huawei Sound system includes not one, but as many as 4 microphones that record surround sound (their openings are visible on the front of the lower panel of the laptop). There is both general noise reduction and an option to amplify the voice. In short, a complete package of technologies to make your communications simpler and clearer.
And if we have already talked about conferences, I will also note the good quality of the webcam installed in the Huawei MateBook X Pro. Despite the rather modest resolution of 720p, the video came out clear and smooth, with the correct exposure of the overall picture.
If you take into account that this laptop is primarily a tool for a person who works with visual content, it is worth remembering that they work, for the most part, remotely. And therefore, there is a need to regularly contact the customer or the team to resolve work issues. And in this case, a high-quality webcam and an improved microphone become another plus of this already advanced laptop.
The second program that deserves special mention is Huawei Super device. It allows you to connect other devices to the laptop, such as a smartphone or tablet. At the same time, the connected device acquires several functions at once.
First, it serves as an additional screen, expanding the usable area for work. Second, it allows you to easily transfer files between devices. And all this without the need to connect the device via a wire, which is very convenient both in itself and from the point of view of the available ports. AI Search allows you to search for the files you need immediately on the Internet, on a laptop, and on connected devices.
And all this sounds amazingly good, until you know that only Huawei devices can be combined here. This is a very logical move and a common practice – you can mention the same Apple or Samsung, but it also imposes the same restrictions as those of competitors.
Conclusions
The Huawei MateBook X Pro is the laptop that convinced me that a professional designer/photographer/videographer’s MacBook alternative exists. It’s the perfect powerful work machine in a super compact form factor, with a stunning screen and extraordinary shell and software capabilities. It was not without minor shortcomings – limited ports and not the greatest autonomy, but these are rather common problems of the entire class of similar devices, and not specifically of this ultrabook.
In fact, only two things can keep you from buying – a high (but more than justified) price and the fact that you simply do not need such powerful equipment. But who would turn down a Ferrari even if they weren’t racing?
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