The Huawei MateBook is definitely an interesting series of laptops, they are the thing to complete your Huawei Eco-System experience. Our Matebook D15 was great but wasn’t the right fit for me as it was only using an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, which wasn’t that powerful for entertainment and work junkies like me.
Hence enter the Huawei MateBook X Pro, their current flagship laptop that is more for professionals and thinkers alike. Built for portability, on-the-go performance that can shout style and functionality. But how you may ask?
Display
One this you’ll notice about the MateBook X Pro is the shape, it’s a 3:2 aspect ratio of a 3000×2000 (3K) resolution screen, which is quite new to our view but not that weird. The more-square-ish display enables more viewing space for work to be done.
Complimented with a very bright display and 100% Adobe sRGB is a great display to use, it’s even touchscreen. Everything just bounces more sharply from your emails, facebook, and even games.
Body & Construction
Premium is the name of the game, the Matebook X Pro is a full metal body laptop with smooth other curved shells and a diamond-cut finished edge on the frame for both the lid and keyboard panel.
The rounded corners on the edges are great to bring, it doesn’t feel singled out at all in terms of materials even on the inside.
The 13.9″ Display 3:2 ratio display makes the MateBook X Pro a tad taller as compared to laptops with 16:9 ratio displays. But this is better as the overall width is smaller, making it more compact when packing to your back of carrying it around
At the left side are the 3.5mm Audio Jack, and two USB Type-C ports that also act as the Power Delivery charging ports. Here you would need most adapters such as Type-C to HDMI, LAN, or additional Type-A USB.
Fortunately at the right is a full-size USB port for your storage devices, in our case we were fortunate enough to use a Bluetooth enabled mouse so it freed us the port to use for most devices we need.
Perhaps what’s lacking on this package is even a Micro-SD slot, it would have been nice to see this side into the MateBook Pro X as like to other laptops catering into creators or professionals.
The built-in fingerprint that also power button is nice, we use it very accurately. It’s so accurate that we didn’t have any problems in registering the tip of our finger everytime to turn on the device.
The keyboard is no doubt very similar to the MacBook Pro, but the MateBook X Pro is different in feel as it has better travel distance and less clicky in sound. Actually, its the opposite as the keyboard is more-quiet and the only clicky ones you will hear are the buttons such as the arrows, space, and the enter.
The typing experience is fluid and we thank Huawei for separating the power button away from the backspace button as this is a common mistake in the MacBook Pro where you press the power instead of the backspace.
While the generous large touchpad is a welcome sight as its fluid to use, we love the touchpad’s texture and response. Simply put, we didn’t encounter any other windows laptop with a better touchpad before as compared to this.
Similar to the MateBook D, the keyboard on the Matebook X Pro is that the camera is underneath and can be accessed with a press of a button. We call it genius at first, but it has some of its cons now as the COVID-19 era has now began and making it more used than ever.
When lay flat on a table it will primarily show more of your body to down to up, making the angle a bit awkward. In most cases, we had to find a high place like a bar or but something underneath the laptop to fix the angle of the camera.
Perhaps as a suggestion to Huawei, they could put a mechanism to tilt the webcam more into a 180 degree in the future. So it could be a more natural eye-to-webcam-speaker engagement.
Performance
The Intel Core i7-10510U is a worthy processor similar to our experience to the ASUS ZenBook Duo, it can really take up most applications we throw especially work necessary ones such as emails, tons of tabs at chrome, monitoring the news, while listening to Spotify and editing some documents.
Meanwhile, for video intense applications such as utilizing the MateBook X Pro for video editing or content creation, there is the Nvidia MX250 graphics to support. We stay it’s enough for Full HD content creations to be edition such as 10-15 minuter vlogs, or even reels.
This performance seeing on a 100% sRGB display is really important, meaning you can see the work of your graphics team (should you be in a visual working department) accurately. Especially if you are very sensitive to Pantones and color usage of your work, since its a much-needed thing today to keep consistent all throughout everything you do.
Games wise, we didn’t install any in our review time as our purpose was more of it being our daily work laptop especially on-the-go and it can definitely be. But the MX250 graphics can let you play light to medium graphics of overwatch, data 2, and other light games in steam no problem.
Perhaps one thing to note is that when you connect the laptop to an external display, you have to note that the 3:2 aspect ratio will be followed when duplicated. So on a 16:9 ratio display, you will see some parts of your screen not displayed since the screen is matching the source. Better to always extend the screen if possible if this is the case.
80GB is allocated to the drive C of the MateBook X and the remaining of the 1TB SSD is diverted to Data Drive D upon opening. In this case, you should always install your applications on the Drive D to avoid your C drive being full.
While its a small thing, and understandable to increase performance it means that copying big files will have to be copied into drive D first before proceeding to any destination drive.
Battery Life
Battery is important for us, and the Huawei MateBook X Pro is one of the laptops that can do this decently. We can get up to 6 hours of conservative use on the laptop, meaning very minimal brightness with WiFi browsing, Email, and minimal audio.
While on max usage of maximum brightness, working on tons of tabs, office, emails, and with Spotify music on the side can bring us close of 3 hours with the MateBook X. It’s not really a lot, but the experience is very similar to the MateBook D 15.
But fortunately charging the battery on the Huawei MateBook X Pro is a breeze in just 2 hours with its 65W Power Delivery adapter. It can even quick charge up to 22W other devices such as the Huawei MatePad Pro and the Huawei P40, so its one less bulky thing to carry when on-the-go.
Speakers and voice
The speakers on the MateBook X Pro are actually four with two-firing at the bottom and two at the keyboard side areas. Consider the two at the top more of tweeters more of the high notes and for voice, while the main speakers are at the bottom-firing at each side.
Audio clarity is great, the volume is full and loud for a laptop in its size and it’s one of the noteworthy laptops we should say that can be compared to a MacBook when it comes to speaker performance.
While voice wise, the MateBook X Pro the audio clarity when using in video conferences is superb even on speaker mode there is no echo feedback. Something we really like cause most laptops today in our experience have the annoying audio feedback when using the speaker as their main source of audio.
Software Touches by Huawei
The PC Manager by Huawei is built-in into the device, making it convenient to update drivers when available. They actually figured out to give updates similar to smartphones instead of PC users having to go to the official manufacturer’s website just to check for updates.
The PC Manager also ensures possible issues are discovered such as low storage, high-consuming applications, or even optimizing the parts in the future unlike before you have to check disk and defrag.
Additionally, since the screen is a touchscreen. It has the capability of do gestures like the Huawei Phone. So commands to screenshot is just a 3-finger swipe down with different modes such as customs, sizes, and even clearing the selection.
Now, this is nifty for us especially that you don’t have to activate the snipping tool anymore and just screenshot directly with your finger.
Huawei Share is one of the reasons to get this laptop
If you already own a Huawei P30, Mate 30, P40 series laptop then this would let you enjoy the Huawei Share experience of mirroring the device right through the laptop. It’s capabilities of having a virtual display of the laptop right in front of the display, even utilizing the touchscreen display to control the phone is like magic.
In our tests, watching videos and even witnessing games can be done. Heck, you can even simply screen capture the Huawei Share application from the laptop to OBS for faster streaming accessibility instead of downloading 3rd party applications like APowerMirror.
It’s fast, virtually has no lags in our tests, and best of all is that the built-in NFC on the laptop can simply sync any Huawei compatible device. Older EMUI version devices can do sync, like the P20 series but only file transferring and there is no mirroring possible.
Conclusion – Who is it for?
With a price tag of Php119,990, the MateBook X Pro isn’t a joke laptop. The bright sRGB 100% Color Gamur coverage, decent 10th generation Intel Core i7 Processor, and MX 250GPU are all enough for professionals who need a powerful laptop without the “Gaming” aspect.
We wished that Huawei was generous enough to provide more accessories into the package such as a type-c adapter hub for HDMI or a premium laptop sleeve as other laptop manufacturers do at the price point. Since the 3:2 ratio size is kinda unique, it will be quite hard to find a snug fit laptop sleeve for this.
If you currently own a Huawei Mate 30 or P40 series smartphone, you’ll love the MateBook Pro X with its Huawei Share technology. It simply makes the interaction between devices seamless and worth using the exclusive feature. It removes the hassle of moving back and forth devices and lets you focus on one screen, and even transfer data as fast as using a USB Cable.