When you spend around 50% of your waking hours at work, given the opportunity, you want to be working on something that’s enjoyable to use. The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2023 is precisely that. Enjoyable.
I’m going to start with the obvious here, this MateBook is not a gaming machine, yes, it does come with a 13th Gen i7, a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM, but its Intel Iris Xe Graphics is its downfall. I’m not saying you can’t play games on this notebook. Fortnite, Minecraft, GTA5, and most last-gen games will run ok if you have to tweak the settings a little, but this notebook was not built for games.
For fun I decided to run a gaming benchmark in any case, if you are curious, you can find the 3DMark scores for Timespy at the bottom of this review. Of course, I wasn’t able to do Port Royale, the Xe Graphics just was not meant for that kind of punishment.
Here’s what the MateBook X Pro is, though; the prettiest little laptop to grace my office desk. The review unit we had at NAG was the White Edition, which is said to be inspired by ink-wash paintings. While it is pretty, I was constantly scared of getting it dirty, personally, I would opt for the space-grey colour, but if you’re able to keep your hand free of Cheeto dust, then white might be for you.
If you haven’t already guessed, I spend a lot of my time “writing”, this means I’ve got my hands on my keyboard and my eyes on my monitor most of the day. The MateBook was terrific to work on, mainly because of these two things. While the keyboard is the standard chiclet that comes on most keyboards, it didn’t feel as chittery as some laptop keyboards can feel. The keys felt solid and allowed my hands to dance across them like a professional ice skater performing in front of the world. [okay, okay, settle down Chazz Micheal Micheals -Ed]
The standout feature though is the display.
I’ve only seen colours as bright and as vibrant when playing games on the LG C2 OLED. While the screen size is only 14.2 inches, because of how well the notebook displays everything, it felt much bigger. The colours are juicy. They pop right out of the screen and from every angle, thanks to the magnetically-controlled nano-optical layer. This layer blocks reflections on the screen, so you’re able to get the full viewing experience from all angles as well as working under sun/fluorescent light. It was always a joy to turn the notebook on and take it all in.
With a display like this, you wouldn’t be wrong in thinking this would be a great laptop for creatives. Huawei does advertise it as a creative laptop, and as such, I was tasked with installing and attempting some creative work. At the time, I was working on a bit of video editing, so I decided to see if Davinci would work well on the notebook. On my first opening of the application, it worked fine, I was able to edit, cut, adjust and throw clips around just as easily as on my main desktop. I finished the project on my desktop and rendered it, then copied the project over to see what the rendering times would be on the MateBook. Davinci wouldn’t open anymore. It would load forever and ever no matter what I did. So I left it.
It had no issues with my 3D Printing software, though, that worked without a hitch and sliced up all the files perfectly well every time. Maybe the review unit I got is an Adobe snob, but I, unfortunately, didn’t get the time to ask it.
Ignoring the fact that I couldn’t edit any of my footage on the notebook, I still carried on using it every day. It was just a good experience working on the thing. The touchpad is also ginormous, so I didn’t feel like I always needed my small wireless mouse all the time. The touchpad comes with some neat shortcuts that make using the notebook easier. Swiping on the right adjusts the volume while tapping the top right corner will close the currently open application. YouTube videos during lunch hours were great to watch because of the speaker and screen combination. While the speakers aren’t going to compete with a proper sound system, for laptop speakers, I’d put them near the top of the pile. The 90W charger allows me to extend my lunch break as well since I can get 2 hours extra of battery life from just a quick 15-minute charge.
Of course, the notebook comes standard with all the Huawei connect features like Super Device and Super Hub. Both of these allow for a seamless transition between all your Huawei devices. You can instantly move work from your phone or tablet onto your notebook and then wirelessly add your Huawei Vision-enabled screen as a display. Dragging and dropping files in Super Hub is also a seamless experience, supposedly. Unfortunately, the notebook was the only Huawei device I had with me, so I could not get into the nitty-gritty of Huawei’s smart device features.
The thing is, even with all the greatness that is this notebook’s display, it’s a R35,000 machine. For a device that I was only able to do general work on, that’s a pretty steep price. I’m not saying I hate the notebook; I don’t, I love it, but I could certainly pick up a cheaper option and have enough change to get something else that I could enjoy and if I had the money, that’s the route I would take.
