Huawei Matebook X Pro
Hardly an original design, nor without its flaws, but the Matebook X Pro’s charms are hard to resist
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PRICE £1,417 (£1,700 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com
Looks aren’t everything, but it certainly doesn’t hurt if your laptop happens to be a thing of aesthetic and ergonomic beauty. That’s something Huawei clearly gets: we’d say its exquisite Matebook X Pro vies with the Dell XPS 13 for the title of this month’s most attractive laptop.
As soon as you pick it up, the Matebook X Pro feels desirable. With a footprint of just 304 x 217mm it’s deliciously compact, and the warm grey metallic shell is impressively sturdy. It sits quite heavily in the hand, packing a substantial 1.32kg into that small chassis, but the USB-C “wall wart” power supply weighs just 198g, meaning the system as a whole is highly portable.
Inside, the 13.9in sc reen is far larger than you’d expect in a frame of this size, courtesy of some very narrow bezels – which Dell fans will find familiar – and it’s a delight to gaze upon. The backlight goes up to a terrifically bright 504cd/m2, while its native 3,000 x 2,000 resolution giive s you a diamonndsharp 259ppi. Even the shape is a winner: we find the 33:2 aspect ratio better suited to productivity tasks than the 16:9 format used by other manufacturers.
On that point, the keyboard and touchpad deserve a mention too.
Here, Huawei’s inspiration seems to have come from the MacBook Pro, but that’s no bad thing. The keys are well spaced with a positive action, and the touchpad is as big and responsive as you could ask for. It’s a laptop we’d be happy to work on for extended periods, and while a battery life of 9hrs 31mins isn’t exceptional, it suuggggeessttss you might manage a full day away from the mains.
Whatever you’re doing, Windows and applications feel gloriously nimble. That doubtless has something to do with the 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD – whose read rate of 2.6GB/sec is one of the fastest here – and it’s partnered with 16GB of RAM and a tenthgeneration Core i7-10510U processor. Surprisingly, considering how slick it feels, the Matebook X Pro actually achieved this month’s lowest score in our real-world benchmarks, but the margin was tiny and the synthetic Geekbench 5 tests cast it in a much better light. If you really need all the performance you can get, the six-core Dynabook is a better bet, but the Matebook X Pro is meaty enough to churn through heavy apps and even VMs with zero slowdown.
Graphical performance gets a boost from an Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU. This isn’t in the same league as the GTX 1650 found in Microsoft’s Surface Bookk 3 ( see p89), but the Maatebook X Pro gave a faiir showing in the 3D sttakes, romping throughh our 720p Dirt:
Showdown test at aan average of 74fps, and aachieving a creditable 113fps in the off-screen GFXBench Manhattan benchmark. Frame rates plummeted in the onscreen test, but that’s only because the display has such a high native resolution.
While there’s plenty to like about Huawei’s Matebook X Pro, there remain a few caveats for business buyers. The first is that the screen is highly reflective: that helps graphics and videos look rich and vibrant, but glare from office lights and windows could be an irritation.
NNeexxtt, a word about ccoonnnneeccttiivviittyy. The Matebook X Pro’s small case offers just two USB-C ports – one of which is used for charging – and a single USB-A 3 connector. An adaptor in the box adds HDMI, VGA and two more USB ports, but that’s an extra widget to carry around, and it still doesn’t cover Ethernet. It’s a shame too that the internal wireless module is limited to last-generation 802.11ac, with no support for Wi-Fi 6.
Finally, since there’s no room for a webcam above the screen, it’s hidden instead under a fake key between F6 and F7, which pops up when pressed. We’ve seen this idea before on older Dell XPS 13 models, and in truth it’s never worked all that well: videocallers end up gazing directly up your nose, creating a distracting and unprofessional impression. Windows Hello face-recognition is ruled out too, though you can log in biometrically using the fingerprint reader built into the power button.
All of this colours the Matebook X Pro as a “prosumer” laptop rather than a real professional machine – and that’s confirmed by the inclusion of Windows 10 Home ( although see
p125). Business buyers may conclude that a less glamorous system is a better fit for their day-to-day needs.
Even so, the Matebook X Pro is fundamentally a very likeable machine. No one could blame you if you opted to turn a blind eye to its limitations and treat yourself (or your staff) to this gorgeously slim, stylish and snappy little computer.
“The X Pro’s keys are well spaced with a positive action, and the touchpad is as big and responsive as you could ask for”