Huawei has just taken the wraps off the latest additions to its MateBook laptop line at MWC 2019 in Barcelona. Say hello to the MateBook 14, and the 2019 update to the MateBook X Pro.
The new Windows 10 laptops follow on from the launch of the company’s MateBook line a couple of years ago, and the impressive MateBook X Pro launched just last year at MWC. The industry is warming to Huawei as a laptop manufacturer, with shipments up by 4x over 2017 and the range receiving awards and positive reviews from across the spectrum.
Huawei’s MateBook laptop brand stands for a few key features – there is of course a wonderfully thin profile to the devices, a 3:2 display with a high screen:body ratio across the line, biometric security in the form of a fingerprint reader in the power button, and popup camera in the keyboard offering users peace of mind that the laptop’s camera isn’t watching their every move (it also lets them make the bezels ridiculously small around the screen).
MateBook X Pro, 2019 style
The MateBook X Pro weighs in at 1.33kg and a thickness of just 14.6mm. Inside that body there’s an impressive 3000×2000 resolution display with, an 8th generation Intel Core i7 8565U (Whiskey Lake) processor and NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics with 2GB of DDR5 RAM. Huawei’s SharkFin cooling system also makes a return, offering enhanced thermal performance and minimal noise.
On the audio side, the MateBook X Pro carries Dolby Atmos certification, with four speakers inside the laptop’s main body.
Portwise, you can expect to find 1 USB-A, 1 USB-C and a 3.5mm headphone jack adorning the sides of the laptop. The USB-C port is a Thunderbolt 3 port that now runs at the full speed allowed by the standard (the old MateBook X Pro only ran at half speed).
MateBook 14
The company is also introducing a new variant into the non-X-Pro line in the MateBook 14, a larger model of the recently-launched MateBook 13.
MateBook 14 brings a 90% screen:body ratio and a whopping 15 hours of video playback battery life. It’s got a single high speed USB A port, 2 USB C ports, HDMI output and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
One Hop to share them all
On the software side, Huawei’s placing a lot of focus on their “Huawei Share One Hop” system, designed to facilitate smooth sharing of text and video between a phone and the laptop. It relies on NFC to pair the devices together and works in a pretty smooth fashion.
You can use One Hop to copy text on one device and paste it on another, share the clipboards, send images back and forth between the two and capture video of whatever’s happening on laptop screen to the phone.
One Hop is neat, but it does require a Huawei phone running the latest version of EMUI (so basically only the Mate 20 Pro at this point). It’s solving an issue that multiple companies have had a shot at over time – Apple features some tight integration between Mac and iOS devices, and Microsoft has a laptop-to-phone system of their own, but that’s less intuitive to set up.
Huawei took their time bringing the original MateBook X Pro to Australia, only touching down on our shores in late 2018.
Having found much favour in the local market (and indeed elsewhere), we’re hoping to see the full range of 2019 models find down under sooner rather than later.
