Earlier this year we got a look at the new Matebook X Pro which was an outstanding piece of kit. Today we’ve had confirmation that the Matebook 14, a step-down but still a very capable machine, is on its way here. It’s a 14″ model that is designed to be a daily workhorse, desktop replacement and perhaps — depending on your choice — a casual gaming option.
The screen and body
The specs are everything you could hope for in a current era laptop. The 3:2 aspect screen runs at 2160 x 1440 and 1000:1 contrast ratio with a 178-degree viewing angle. This isn’t the whole story with the screen though, the bezel is only 4.9mm around the entire screen which is striking as soon as you open the laptop. If you’re a regular user of touch screen laptops, the sensitivity of the multipoint touch screen will tick that box for you.
The metallic body presents well and truly looks like it belongs in any environment with a sleek, subtle and professional feel. The package (minus charger) weighs 1.53kg and is a 15.9mm thin chassis with a diamond cut edge around the entire body which is an outstanding touch for the machine.
The internals and connectivity
For the Aussie market, Huawei is bringing the Core i7 model with 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia MX350 video card. This is powered by a 56Wh battery that — on paper — has the capacity to last all day. Even if you’re struggling for power, the 65W charging brick is roughly the same size as a quick charge power adapter for phones and is lightweight compared to many other laptop chargers.
From a connectivity standpoint, there’s everything you can want or expect right now plus a touch more. The particularly useful option in the current market for those who are still transitioning is the standard USB port. This complements the audio jack, USB-C (also for charging) and HDMI for external screen connectivity. The SSD storage gives the Matebook 14 a speedy startup from the time that you press the power button (with built-in fingerprint reader) to start the login process.
There’s a lot more to explore in with the Matebook 14 which we’ll be doing across the coming weeks with a review unit on the test bench at the moment.
Thanks Phil.
In the market for a new windows laptop and was looking at Surface Laptop 3 – same specs for about same price – the video card being the main difference and I am not into gaming or video editing so that shouldn’t be an issue.
interested in your thoughts as to how the Matebook stacks up….especially re keyboard / trackpad…. and your thoughts ( if any ) about buying a Huawei product.
Cheers
I recently got one of the AMD versions (4600h) from china for the express purpose of setting it up with Linux for development work. I only paid $1200 for it from Taobao which ended up being closer to $2k by the time it was landed in Australia with all the extra shipping and duty costs. The AMD version is a very fast laptop, the build quality is actually really nice with the full metal frame and large res screen with small borders. The trackpad is quite large, not sure vs the surface laptop but I believe it is bigger than… Read more »
I would hold tight on any purchase; 11th Gen Intel processors and the latest Gen AMD’s are about to be released for the holiday season with lovely examples from ASUS (Zenbook S) and Lenovo (x1 Nano) as well as HP (Spectre).
You’ll also see a surface laptop 4 appear very soon as well.