- Huawei's been in the news a lot this year,
sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad.
Today we're gonna talk about the good,
specifically the new MateBook 14.
While it's a really nice laptop,
it's also a little bit strange.
Today I'll tell you why.
Stay tuned.
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All right, before we get started,
let's recap the current situation with Huawei's laptop.
They recently announced the Huawei MateBook 13.
We actually did a full review of that,
so go check that out
if you're interested in 13 inch laptops.
There's also the Huawei MateBook X Pro
which then got revised for 2019.
We also just reviewed that,
it's a really excellent device.
And now, we have the MateBook 14,
which kinda falls right in between of those.
And while it's a really nice laptop,
it doesn't quite distinguish itself
from those other two enough,
but it's still a very good laptop on its own.
I should also mention there is still the MateBook X,
which is the really old laptop
which hasn't been refreshed yet.
That's a fan-less system,
hopefully we'll see a refresh for that later this year.
All right, starting with the outside here,
we have Mystic Silver for the color versus Space Gray,
which you can get in Space Gray as well,
so if you want a darker hue, you can do that.
We do have the new Huawei logo here
so no more lotus flower.
It's straight up the most boring font in the world.
This is okay, it's fine, it's not distracting,
but I think this would've looked better
if they had a better font or, I don't know,
put it in the corner, I don't know.
Whatever, it works.
It's a very clean, plain design.
Switching to the bottom here,
you do get the vent system here on the bottom dual fans,
same new fan system, SharkMan 2.0,
as the new MateBook X Pro,
so the fans on this are pretty good, they're pretty quiet.
They still can ramp up if you plug this in
and ramp it up on high performance mode
you will hear those fans.
If you're using it normally,
well it's not so bad.
Looking at the bottom front,
you can see these four holes here.
These are microphones for Cortana,
or whatever you wanna use them for.
Far field microphone array, kinda nice.
We also have the speakers.
So we got two speakers on the bottom,
not my favorite design.
Very good speakers, very good audio,
as we expect from Huawei.
You do get Dolby Atmos, however,
these are the only two speakers on this device
versus having two more on the top deck
which is what the MateBook X Pro has,
so that's gonna be one of the compromises here.
Let's get to I/O.
So on the left hand side here,
this is where things going to get changed up.
You do have a USB Type-C 3.1,
however, that is not Thunderbolt 3,
so that is another compromise there.
It can do data, it can do power,
just not Thunderbolt 3.
You also have a headphone jack,
and instead of doing the full Thunderbolt 3,
they give you an HDMI port,
which is actually kinda nice.
Again, this is more geared toward the professional,
the business person,
and for a lot of people who use HDMI,
and I'm actually one of those,
I actually do appreciate having that.
You do get a small LED as well
to let you know it's charging.
And on the right hand side,
not a whole lot going on.
Two USB Type A, on of those is going to be
the full SuperSpeed ports,
so you're going to use that probably for data,
as well as for fast transfers,
and then you have a normal USB Gen 1 port, as well.
All right, looking at the display here,
we do get very thin bezels,
in fact this is very much like the MateBook X Pro
where you're not gonna have a webcam on top.
Instead, it pops up from the deck.
Some people are fans of that,
some people aren't, if you use webcam a lot,
probably not a great choice.
I don't mind this actually,
I think this is a really nice, elegant design,
but it is what it is.
For the screen itself, it's gonna be a 2K screen,
so that's a drop from the 3K of the MateBook X Pro,
so again, slightly lower resolution.
Does that matter at 14 inches
when you have a 3X2 resolution?
I personally don't think so.
Some of you might appreciate the higher res,
but it's not that big of a deal.
Now, the contrast is around 1000:1,
it's pretty good, but the MateBook X Pro
does have a better display overall.
Brightness is gonna be around 300 nits,
so it's bright enough,
not the most brightest display on the market,
but it's good enough for most people.
No auto dimming, which is actually kind of a good thing.
The MateBook X Pro's too aggressive
on auto dimming in my opinion,
but you don't even have the option here,
so that's one area where they cut back.
It is a full touch screen, as well,
so you can use touch on it, not a problem.
Does not support pen though, as expected.
Looking at the power button here,
it does have an integrated finger print reader,
so no facial recognition for Windows Hello, you use that.
And this is the new Huawei system where
it can basically log you in when
the Huawei logo pops up when it's booting up
for the first time or coming out of a deep sleep,
so you don't need to press it again to log in to Windows.
Kind of a clever design, but that's the same thing
we've seen on other Huawei devices as well.
Nothing new on the keyboard outside
the fact that this is a British keyboard,
so if you're wondering why this looks like that
and some of the symbols are a little bit different,
that's because it's a UK version.
There will be a US version, as well.
Other than that though, this is a standard Chiclet
style that Huawei's been using for a while now,
very good travel on it, just a really nice keyboard,
very nice back lit system with those black keys,
it really shines through.
No complaints about this keyboard at all.
Looking at the track pad, again,
very similar to what Huawei's been using.
Large design, very smooth precision driver,
it's just a very good track pad,
but they still also have that little issue
where this has a little bit more of a rattle
and play on this track pad than I would prefer.
I'd still like to see them use a better design here.
It's not a bad track pad at all, in fact,
it's probably one of the best on the market,
but I feel like they could still improve it by
fixing that little bit of a rattle.
And if you're curious about this giant sticker here,
that is Huawei Share.
So that's a NFC sticker.
It's actually on top of the deck because
this is a metal device, so if you remove that,
it won't work.
Huawei share work with Huawei phones,
so if you happen to have one of those,
you can transfer photos and images back and forth
on the laptop to the phone and from the phone
to the laptop by simply tapping that.
It's a really nice design actually.
I would say it's almost Apple-esque.
It's worked so well,
and just the design and animation's great,
but it does require you have a Huawei phone.
If you're in the United States,
you have to buy one of those phones
off of Amazon through third parties
which is how I got mine,
and unfortunately they don't sell them through carriers,
but if you are comfortable with having an all Huawei system,
well, that actually works very well.
All right, let's talk about power performance
and all that other good stuff.
So first of all, this is running a Core i7-8565U,
which by now it should sound kinda boring.
Almost every laptop has that chip.
It's a really good processor, and in fact,
Huawei does really good thermals
and ramping of this chip.
In fact, it gets some of the best benchmarks we've seen,
and it matches the MateBook X Pro
for performance, as well,
so you're getting the exact same sort
of laptop in that regard.
I should also mention you'd expect the MateBook X Pro,
which has an MX250 for graphics,
maybe that's where they would differentiate it from this.
Nope, this too also has an MX250 from Nvidia.
That's an okay GPU.
It's good enough for some light gaming,
but it's not going to do a lot,
but it's better to have than not, say anything.
And it's a little bit faster than the MX150
from last year, but it's pretty much negligible,
but still, it's nice to have here.
If you wanna save some money as well,
this could be a Core i5 version, that's an 8265U as well.
So we haven't tested that one,
but it should be a good performer,
I think, for most people.
Now when it comes to the SSD,
you get 256 or 512 gigs of storage,
and it's a very good performer.
You're talking over three thousand
megabytes per second for read on sequential,
and around 18 hundred for write,
so that's right up there with some
of the best SSDs on the market.
Overall, as a performance package,
this is one of the best Ultrabooks you can get,
and that's actually really interesting
when you compare it to the MateBook X Pro
which you'd think would be much better,
in fact, it's exactly the same.
So overall, Huawei did a very good design here.
When it comes to battery life,
you're talking 57 watt-hour battery.
That's the same battery as MateBook X Pro.
Again, you should be getting a theme here
which is these are very similar laptops,
and they recycled a lot of the same parts,
and that's a good thing here because
the battery life on this is going to be excellent.
It's gonna push around 10 hours easily.
In fact, battery life for the MateBook 14
should be slightly better.
You have a lower resolution display
compared to the MateBook X Pro.
It's also not as bright,
so all those factors will probably give you
an extra half hour or an hour.
Not a huge difference, but still nice to have.
Now there are a few other physical differences, as well.
For instance, this is slightly heavier.
It's about 160 grams heavier than the MateBook X Pro,
which is not a lot, but it's enough.
It drives up the weight over three pounds,
so it's gonna be a little bit heavier.
It's also a little bit thicker
partly because of that HDMI plug,
but again, if you're using it just by itself,
it feels like a very thin and light Ultrabook.
It's a really good design considering
it's all metal, as well.
On its own, if I never reviewed any of the Huawei laptop,
well this is actually one of the best out there.
Performance is outstanding,
I think the value is actually pretty good.
The build quality is really nice,
you get that 3X2 aspect ration,
it's touch screen,
everything about it is actually really solid.
The thing that makes it strange is the fact
the MateBook X Pro exists.
Now, I should point out for value here,
this is supposed to be about $200 cheaper
than the MateBook X Pro,
and I say should be because we don't have
final pricing on this device yet,
that was just what Huawei advised us on.
And that's how you should think about this,
it's $200 less than a MateBook X Pro,
but it's gonna be about $200 more than the MateBook 13.
Those $200 matter for Thunderbolt 3,
a higher resolution display,
slightly thinner and lighter laptop?
Yeah, probably, that actually probably
makes a lot of sense.
Whether or not that drives you
to choose this over another laptop,
I'm not really sure.
It's a strange laptop, but on its own,
I think Huawei did a very good job here,
and again, they keep batting it
out of the park here for laptops.
Now, the Huawei name is a bit controversial,
so I know a lot of you are gonna
bring that up in comments,
and that's up to you to decide.
I actually use Huawei products,
and I have no problems with them.
None of their laptops of phones
have ever been shown to be doing anything nefarious,
and I think that's really important.
You can quickly test this by connecting
it up to a wifi network and using a packet analyzer,
and it's fine.
So, I'll leave that decision to you,
but overall, if you're looking for a nice 14 inch laptop,
I think this is one of the best on the market.
It is a little bit cheaper than MateBook X Pro,
I don't think those differences matter for most people,
but at least it's slightly cheaper
and you get more options, that's always a good thing.
All right, so there's a quick review
of the Huawei MateBook 14.
Now if you want more information about this device,
make sure you go to the description,
we'll try to have the links there for you.
It should be hitting global markets
sometime in May.
We'll have more information about that on Windows Central.
Otherwise, leave me a comment or questions below,
and I'll try to answer those.
If you liked this video, give us a thumbs up,
and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching,
take care, everyone.
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