Honor Magicbook 14 Notebook Review: Where Style Paints a Picasso
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 15, 2020 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- Notebooks
- Zen
- honor
- Picasso
- MagicBook
- Magicbook 14
- Ryzen 5 3500U
CPU Performance
We have picked a handful of our CPU tests to give a sense of the overall performance of the system. As this is a Picasso based APU, it is built on the Zen+ microarchitecture, and it is expected to perform accordingly.
In our new AI benchmark test, here is the data for Inference and Training combined. This is a test which likes cores, but also the Zen 2 parts do really well here. The Magicbook sits above a first generation Ryzen mobile processors, as well as above the Core i7 in the Matebook Pro X.
WinRAR is a test that likes memory bandwidth, and unfortunately this is one of the downsides of using that older Picasso platform - DDR4-2400 memory speeds aren't that great in the grand scheme of things.
For GeekBench synthetics, we see a small lead over the first generation Ryzen parts in ST, which grows in MT. Still a bit far behind the i7-8550U, however.
Dwarf Fortress is another one of our new benchmarks, which mainly focuses on single core performance. As is perhaps to be expected, the Zen+ processor doesn't go well here, limited by its cTDP down mode which restricts the higher frequencies that the other CPUs are able to reach.
Two rendering tests to finish, and we have the R5 3500U ahead of the i7-8550U in both comparisons.
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jabber - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link
Wow like 99% of computer users in the 21st century..I never use those keys.Or Scroll Lock/Pause/Break/PrtScr and most of the F keys. The C64 had it right with about only 4 of them.
RSAUser - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Page up and down you could argue unless you're pretty much anyone who codes or uses spreadsheets or word documents (heck, I even used it on this page to scroll down to these comments).Home and end key you can't, jumping from beginning to end of line is pretty common usage, also allowing you to get back to the top in office documents.
jabber - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
Never use em!Spunjji - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
The majority of users use the scroll wheel. In my experience it's basically just coders who use these functions, and most of them are capable of remapping keys to account for the loss.Spunjji - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
You seem to have missed the part where these deficiencies are assessed against the cost. If you can't afford anything more expensive, then this is a good result for the money.pjc15 - Saturday, May 16, 2020 - link
IMO, you can't heap praise on the design of a laptop that has so many design cues copied from the MacBook Air. It may be "legal" to copy, but it is completely lacking in integrity on the part of Honor. It was mentioned in the article that the chiclet design was copied, but that doesn't even matter. They copied the font on the keys and the shape of the keys, like the arrow keys. It would not surprise me if the cutout on the keyboard housing to lift up the display was a millimeter copy of the MacBook Air. Even internally, it looks very similar.It would be more accurate to say that it looks like a generic clone of a MacBook with some added touches, not that it has a notably good design.
yannigr2 - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link
Really? We are talking about laptops. Many laptops will share common design choices. What's next? Are we going to call a copy, every laptop that comes with a screen, a keyboard and a touchpad, because, well there where thousands of other models before, also combining a screen, a keyboard and a touchpad?jabber - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link
Yeah it's like car design. Most are generic. It's only the grille and badge that separate them.bigboxes - Sunday, May 17, 2020 - link
And why does this bother you?Spunjji - Monday, May 18, 2020 - link
The Macbook Air took a bunch of design cues from earlier Sony and Toshiba ultraportables, including the chiclet keyboard. How far do we want to go back?