Honor MagicBook 14
A stunning amount of power wrapped up in a high-quality chassis, with its only obvious weakness being the screen
SCORE
Range starts at: £458 (£550 inc VAT) Model tested: £558 (£680 inc VAT) from hihonor.com
Imagine for a moment that Honor and Huawei are brothers (Honor was a sub-brand of Huawei until it was sold to a Chinese consortium in late 2020). The elder brother, Huawei, is lavished with all the top-end kit while the junior sibling makes do with hand-me-downs. Nevertheless, there’s no disputing the fact that they share the same DNA, right down to the size of the bezels and the all-metal construction of their chassis.
Honor, though, has its eye on the value prize. While the MateBook 14 enjoys shiny bezelled corners, the MagicBook looks rather plain in its gunmetal livery – which Honor optimistically calls “Space Grey”. The key to these sacrifices is that they don’t compromise the build quality, with Honor showing eve every other budget laptop maker the way forward. The lack of plastic is ob obvious when compared to, say say, the Acer Aspire 5.
This quality applies to the cheapest version of the MagicBook 14 14, which includes 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. That Tha saves you £120 over the model we tested, but we think it’s a false economy because that lesser model includes a Ryzen 5 3500U processor; that may not sound like a big downgrade on the 4500U in our test machine, but there’s a huge difference in their performance. The Ryzen 3500U version scored 109 in our benchmarks, while the 4500U version raced to 165.
Both processors feature AMD’s Radeon Vega graphics, and it’s an excellent inclusion for this price. The MagicBook returned an impressive 59fps in Dirt: Showdown and 32fps in F1 2020, both at High settings at Full HD. Note that the Huawei MateBook 14 has eight graphics cores to the MagicBook 14’s seven, and this gave it a proportional boost, but that’s rarely going go to be the difference between a game ga being playable and not.
Arguably, the MagicBook will be better because it has a 1,920 x 1,080 panel to drive, while the MateBook must power 2,160 x 1,440 pixels if it’s to play games at its native resolution. But, given the choice, there’s no doubt which panel we’d prefer to gaze at. There’s nothing awful about the MagicBook’s IPS screen, but compare them hem side by side and it’s obvious that it can’t an’t match the colour range or punch h of its sibling. That’s reflected d in their test results: 57% sRGB coverage versus 89%, 277cd/m cd/m2 peak brightness ness against 400cd/m d/m2, and a 5.43 average Delta E to the MateBook 14’s 1.22. Nevertheless, this screen is a world apart from the cheap panel nel in the Asus VivoBook 14, 1 for example. xample.
The MagicBook enjoyed revenge over its brother in our battery tests, lasting for 11hrs 24mins to the 6hrs 51mins of the MateBook. We’re also pleased to say that both include lightweight USB-C chargers, although note they’re wider than normal – this can make it tricky to slip another plug into a neighbouring socket. The good news? They’re rated at 65W and that means quick charging, with half an hour pushing the battery from zero to very nearly 50%.
“The MagicBook enjoyed revenge over its brother in our battery tests, lasting for 11hrs 24mins to the 6hrs 51mins of the MateBook”
O One e d drawback a bac of o t the e all-metal a eta chassis is weight, with the MagicBook ok 14 making a notable dent in a rucksack at 1.4kg. The 1kg Huawei MateBook X feels ethereal in comparison. These laptops share the same phone-linking feature we describe in the MateBook X review, although Honor calls it “Magic-link” and embeds the required electronics in an unsightly sticker to the right of the touchpad (not shown).
The touchpad is generously sized and a joy to use if you’ve mastered Windows’ gestures. We’re also fans of the keyboard. Okay, “fans” might be too much, but for a budget laptop it’s pleasant to type on with a quiet action and large keys – note the double-height Enter key. You even get backlighting thrown in.
Honor embeds a fingerprint reader in the power key but there’s no support for Windows Hello, with the pop-up webcam nestled between the F6 and F7 keys. No one wants to take part in a video call from that angle. What’s doubly annoying is that the video quality is among the best here, and the mics pick up sound well. Even the speakers are respectable, although if we had Bluetooth speakers to hand we’d switch to them.
So that leaves one important question: is the Huawei MateBook 14 worth an extra £280, or £180 if you ch oo se the Ryzen 5 version? If you have the cash, yes
– the upgrades are obvious. But for anyone on a tighter budget the MagicBook 14 is head and shoulders above similarly priced rivals.