Huawei MateBook X Pro (2021) Review: A Sleek and Vibrant Notebook
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 28, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Intel
- Huawei
- Laptops
- Matebook X Pro
- Tiger Lake
Final Words
The laptop/notebook market is very competitive. The whole range of prices for laptops, from $200 to $2000+, involve a series of tradeoffs for performance, battery, versatility, customization, portability, and everything in between. It goes beyond simply putting a processor and a display into a chassis, as the form of the chassis will define the cooling, which in turn defines the power available to what is inside. Not only this, but companies in the laptop supply chain might offer discounts for buying multiple modules, or committing to stock, or have a variety of certifications which if the device can achieve, there might be co-marketing budgets applied. Not only this, but it also should look good – probably. Everything from the $200 Chromebooks, to the $1400 mid-range portables, to $2500 space-age sub 1.5kg 17-inch notebooks, and to the desktop replacements, all have to balance the cost and design for performance and appeal.
Huawei may only be a young entrant into the laptop OEM market, but in its fourth year it does have a good foothold in a number of these areas. Despite issues with the entity list, it can still buy processors from Intel, licenses from Microsoft, and offer machines into the global market with a design flair traditionally made for its smartphones. Ever since the first MateBook E 2-in-1, Huawei has applied a superior aesthetic to its devices, however what it has had to work on is usability.
The MateBook X Pro 2021 (13.9-inch) is one of the premium laptop offerings from Huawei. Our model features the latest Intel 11th Generation Core i7-1165G7 quad-core processor, a thin-bezel 3000x2000 resolution display, 16 GB of LPDDR4X memory, a 1 TB Samsung NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi 6, and a 56 Watt-hour battery all in a 1.33 kg (2.9 lb) aluminium unibody chassis, 14.6 mm (0.57 inches) at its thickest point.
This laptop is designed to sit square opposite equivalent MacBook Pro 13-inch models, with a larger resolution, more default memory, more default storage, while being both lighter and thinner, for about the same price (give or take $100). The equivalent storage/memory version from Apple would be +$800, however the M1-based MacBook Pro wins on battery life and performance. There are also a large number of competitive Windows-based machines at this price point as well.
In isolation, Huawei does a number of things right. The portability and feel is good, the trackpad and keyboard are certainly better than average to use, and the power button as a physically separate key design with a built-in fingerprint is a big plus. The display is big, and vibrant, and the device has both Type-C and Type-A ports, which are a must.
However it does get a few things wrong – that webcam placement has to disappear at some point. It’s somewhere between not-present and useless. If Huawei doesn’t want to put it in the display where it traditionally sits, it needs to think of a solution. Beyond that, the battery life isn’t really as great as I thought it would be. We achieved just under 9 hours for light work – either video playback or web browsing – when really I would be expecting 13+. We’ve seen similar 10th Gen and 11th Gen Intel processors get 13-16 hours, although those have lower resolution (1080p) displays. The performance ultimately isn't that stellar, compared to others in this market, perhaps due to the design limitations and 15 W limit in order to get the display and chasis of this caliber. This is some of the tradeoffs that laptop manufacturers have to make.
The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2021, with 16GB/1TB, is available in the UK for £1300 (Space Grey) or £1400 (Emerald Green) with a current deal for £150 rebate as well as a choice between a free Huawei Monitor, Watch GT2, or Matepad T10, all worth ~£200.
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dontlistentome - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
In the UK at least Lenovo are awful re stock. Like you it showed 2-3 weeks delivery. I ordered 5 at 4.30pm and they arrived the next morning. I even spoke to their business sales team (LenovoPro) who had no idea of leadtimes or stock level. Just how many sales are they losing?eek2121 - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Our software does not work on an M1 Mac. They won't be firing me any time soon. They would fire you, however, if you pushed us moving to M1 Macs since our company would not be able to get work done. The estimated cost of moving our software to an ARM compatible solution is 1.1 million dollars. Our software is used by governments around the world. Those governments ALL use x86...we've not had a single request for an ARM port, M1 or otherwise. That includes the 0.45% of users that use a Mac.m00bee - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Most proletary office software doesn't run om macs, at least not on my office.sonny73n - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
@lemurbuttonThe only thing you'll bite is your tongue or the dirt. I've been in IT mostly in networking for over 25 years with a computer degree. I've had 1000s of clients and I haven't seen anyone use a Mac for work. So my conclusion is that you're just a troll spewing craps. I won't waste any more of my time with you.
star-affinity - Saturday, October 2, 2021 - link
@sonny73nI've also been in IT for almost 25 years and Macs has been a part of businesses in parallel with all non-Apple computers where I've worked. It all depends on what the area of work done with the computers. For graphical, typography and design related stuff Macs have often been used while more ”business” stuff such as finance and ”office stuff” has been more of a Windows thing.
gund8912 - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
Google has been using exclusively MacBook pros for work, Oracle is offering people MacBook pros when employees upgrade hardware. So almost everything runs on MacOS except few programs (outliers), Apple just introduced ARM Macs will take time to port everything.Windows laptops and Macs have their own advantages.
But for me battery life, trackpad, MacOS work flow/UI are great compared to Windows laptops.
Linustechtips12 - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
I would love to hear you explain to me why pages is better than word or google docs online or would you care to explain why most of the world runs windows and isn't macOS the "easy, clean,bloat-free, anyone can do it" kinda os have you ever even tried to do split-screen on a mac, don't even get me started on "system preferences" horrible layout compared to windows even windows search in windows 11 is fairly competitive compared to spotlight and that's on a still beta OS.star-affinity - Saturday, October 2, 2021 - link
I think Pages is much better than Word or Google Docs when it comes to doing page layout work.Interesting, I don't see how System Preferences is horrible in layout compared to Settings in Windows. And what about having to user interfaces for the settings like it has been in Windows 10 – the ”classic” UI and the ”modern”. If that isn't messy and confusing I don't know what. We also have the fact that most third party apps have different ways of doing the user interface – there is no coherence and many apps still looks like they are designed for Windows 95 or Windows XP.
Good if Windows 11 has a search that is competitive with Spotlight – about time. :D
Agree on the split screen – Windows has better built-in window management than macOS. But I just install the free and open source Rectangle and things are fine: https://rectangleapp.com/
gund8912 - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
Split screen is easy, what are you talking about ?Did you ever try to switch between virtual desktops in windows how awful it is ? I never used multiple virtual desktops on Windows because it was un intuitive to use, I use it all the time now on MBP.
Kuhar - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Haha, just be careful not to get a single hair stuck between your screen and your keyboard on MBA... it might break. So fragile, so useless. On the other side you can throw X1C from your desk and it will just continue working with whatever. One could go on and on and on but there is no way to change simple minded fanboy.