- So 2017 Huawei announced the Matebook X,
and one year later they announced the Matebook X Pro.
In 2019, well, we had the Matebook 13.
Where's it fit in between all those?
Well, today I'll tell you my full review, stay tuned.
(upbeat music)
So the Matebook 13 was announced at CES 2019,
and it quickly became one of our favorite laptops.
I think there's a lot of potential here,
and spoiler alert, it's basically a perfect 13 inch laptop.
There are a few caveats and things you should know about.
Let's give you a product tour and talk about
all the specifications first.
All right, starting with the outside here,
we have Huawei's typical space gray,
and I kinda laugh a little bit,
'cause that's Apple's color scheme as well,
but it works pretty well here,
it's carried over from their other devices.
Regarding the logo, they did change it up,
it used to be mirrored, now it's sort of grippy
and has this nice kind of cool reflective effect to it.
It's still nice, I don't love their logo,
but you know, it is what it is.
Now turning to the left hand side,
this device, it's pretty thin,
so you're not gonna get a lot of choice here for IEO.
You do get USB type C for charging,
as well as a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack,
and there's a little LED to let you
know it's charging as well.
Now on the right hand side you
just get another USB type C port,
and I gotta stress, these are type C ports,
not Thunderbolt 3.
That's gonna be a big difference between this
and the Matebook X Pro.
Now looking at the bottom it's pretty clean designed here.
You do have the intakes here as well as a couple fans
with their new Shark Fin 2.0,
I always chuckle at the names that these guys come up with
for cooling systems, but yes,
this is a refined cooling system.
It's actually very good, but you got two intakes here
to chill that chip set.
You also get the speakers on the bottom,
and I'm not a fan of that, I'll talk a little
bit more about the design choice though,
and some of the trade offs with this device.
Let's take a look here at the display,
it's 13.3 inch, 2160x1440 or 200 PPI.
It's a really nice display.
You'll get these really thin bezels.
This is basically the same display
that was found in 2017's Matebook X.
The big difference though is this year
this is now a touchscreen,
so yes you do get a touchscreen,
no, it does not support pen as far as I can tell,
so don't expect that, but hey, it's a touchscreen at least.
It's a very good display, it's a 3x2 aspect ratio,
so if it looks a little different to you, that's why.
That's the same aspect ratio as Surface Laptop,
and going by comments from a lot of you,
and I know my personal preference,
I love this aspect ratio, it's really good.
Compared to a MacBook, well that's 16x10,
a little bit wider, this is gonna be a little bit taller.
Now it's worth noting, unlike the MateBook X Pro,
this does keep the webcam at the top here,
so it's a one megapixel.
It's an all right shooter, nothing crazy,
and you get a little sensor here
for the auto-brightness of the display.
I have to point this out, Huawei is very aggressive
with their auto-display brightness,
meaning it tends to be a darker screen
than I think most people would prefer.
The good news is it will definitely
preserve your battery life,
but you'll probably wanna disable that
if you don't like the way they
aggressively use screen brightness.
Looking at the keyboard deck,
this is a spitting image of the MateBook X from 2017.
The big difference is there are
no speakers behind the keyboard here,
which is one of the big selling points of the MateBook X.
And the reason for that is because of fans.
This has dual fans now underneath it,
cooling that CPU, and well,
you can't have the speakers up here,
so they're underneath.
And that's just one of the trade-offs.
On the other hand, this is gonna outperform
the MateBook X by a lot, due to the new configuration.
All right, looking at the keyboard here,
very familiar design that Huawei's been using
for it's last few laptops,
edge to edge design here, about 1.2 millimeter for travel,
back-lit, really good typing.
I've had no issues with this whatsoever,
just really nice typing experience.
Taking a closer look here at the track pad,
very good sized, it's pretty large,
definitely larger than the original MateBook X was.
It's glass, it's smooth, it's precision.
No complaints with the clicking either.
Huawei's had a little bit of issues
with the clicking on these track pads in the past.
Hopefully that won't be an issue with this one.
I haven't had any problems with it.
Now when it compared to Apple's MacBook,
that's still a massive track pad
compared even to this one,
but this is still one of the better ones on the market.
And on the power button here,
you do get a fingerprint reader built in,
so that's your Windows hello,
and Huawei does a special trick here
where when you first press it to power on the device,
and you get that Huawei login screen,
well, it'll record your fingerprint
and save it for Windows hello,
so you don't need to press it twice.
All right, now regarding the internal hardware,
you get two specifications here,
you get a Core i5-8265U,
that is a 8th generation Whiskey Laker processor,
or you can get a Core i7-8565U, which is what we have here,
that's also a very good performer,
so this is a little bit faster than last year's
8th generation Intel processor.
It's not a huge difference,
but you do get that extra performance boost
and you get over four gigahertz now for that Core i7.
Now another big difference between
that Core i5 and the i7 model,
it's gonna come down to a GPU.
Now I don't wanna oversell this,
the Core i7 has an MX150 GPU in it.
It's an Nvidia 1, it's what most companies
are using in place of Iris Plus or Iris Pro Graphics,
which are not available for 8th generation processors.
It's a good GPU, it's gonna give you a little boost,
and for those of you paying attention,
this is the 25 watt version of that GPU.
There's actually two versions of it,
so this is the more powerful one.
It's still not very powerful.
I don't wanna sell this as like a GTX 1050 or 1060 even,
but it does give you that little extra boost,
which hey, I think a lot of us will take,
especially in a 13 inch laptop.
Now the Core i5 version sticks with
Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics,
so you're gonna have that.
When it comes to storage, it's 256 or 512 gigs of SSD,
very good performer.
They are using Western Digital SSDs in this,
which is weird, I've never actually seen
a Western Digital SSD, but excellent performance,
3500 for the reads and 2500 for the writes.
That's a very good performing SSD.
I don't see any reason to upgrade that if you wanted to,
unless you just needed more space.
And when it comes to RAM,
well you get eight gigabytes of DDR3.
It's all right, it's nothing outstanding,
but I think for this class it's totally fine.
All right, a few other bits about this laptop,
you do get Bluetooth 5.0, which is a nice change to have.
You also get Dolby Atmos sound,
so Huawei's been one of the companies embracing Dolby,
and I applaud them for that.
I really am a big fan of Dolby Atmos
for the speakers, not just the headphones.
Pretty good audio, those speakers are on the bottom,
so they're not gonna be the best sounding,
but they are really good for what they are.
I would rate them as above average for this class.
Now when it comes to battery life,
you're talking about a 42 watt hour battery,
and you get a nice compact type C charger.
Battery life is gonna be around seven hours
for the version with the MX150 in it.
You'll get a little bit more if you
use the Core i5 version of course.
And I actually find that pretty good.
I've had no issues here with the battery life.
You can extend it if you do keep
that screen brightness down a lot,
but overall I've been very happy with the performance
and the battery life of this device.
All right, so let's bring it all in,
the Huawei MateBook 13's a really interesting laptop.
Now it fits right in between the MateBook X from 2017
and the MateBook X pro.
Let me talk a little bit more about that.
So this now has a touch screen
where the MateBook X did not.
This is also a fan system with the option
for discreet graphics with the MX150.
Again, the MateBook X doesn't have that.
The MateBookX though is a half pound lighter,
and you absolutely feel that.
It's also significantly thinner.
You also get a little bit better audio
because of the speaker placement,
because of no fans.
This is basically a more powerful version of the MateBook X.
Now if you want even more than that,
well, you do get the MateBook X Pro,
which is gonna be a larger display.
You also do get two type C ports,
but one of those is gonna be Thunderbolt 3,
and it's a bit of a bummer here.
I kinda wish this did have Thunderbolt 3,
but I kinda understand they're
trying to keep the price down.
Don't forget you don't get Thunderbolt 3,
but you do get an MX150, which is kinda rare
to find in a 13 inch laptop.
Everything else though was fantastic.
The display is very good with these say 100% SRGB,
and I actually did clock it at that.
It's an excellent display, very good brightness,
a little aggressive on the auto setting,
but you can change that yourself.
It also has that 3x2 aspect ratio,
which again, besides Microsoft
is hard to find in this class,
so I'm really happy to have it.
Typing is also good, as well as the track pad.
Everything about this is kinda perfect.
I guess the one issue's gonna be Huawei itself,
which is under increasing fire
from a lot of world governments,
because of their supposed practices.
Now I don't really wanna weigh in on that,
I'll just say if you work in an intelligence agency,
well, you probably shouldn't use Huawei.
If you're just a straight up consumer,
well, I don't see a problem with it.
I use Huawei for my phones and my laptop,
so I don't really have a problem with it,
but I'll leave that for you to decide,
just be aware of the controversy.
So there's a quick look at the Huawei MateBook 13,
one of the best laptops so far in 2019,
although it's still early.
Now if you're interested in buying this device,
well you could pick it at Amazon, Newegg, and Microsoft
starting on January 29th.
You can also go to a Microsoft store
if you're lucky enough to have one near you,
and pick it up February 4th.
Now if you want more information about this,
including my full review,
make sure you go to the description below,
we'll have all the links.
Leave me a comment though, and tell me what you think.
What can Huawei do to make this laptop even better,
especially when it comes to that pricing and feature set?
Otherwise if you liked this video,
give us a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching, take care everyone.
8265U or the 8565U, that's a core i7 process,
8565, I got the other one on top,
(censor beep)
Should I say January 29th?
No, 'cause we're gonna be publishing this on the