Huawei MateBook X Pro (2021) Review: A Sleek and Vibrant Notebook
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 28, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Intel
- Huawei
- Laptops
- Matebook X Pro
- Tiger Lake
Display
On paper, the specifications for the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2021 seem impressive – a 3000x2000 resolution LTPS display that gives a 91% screen-to-body ratio. At a 13.9-inch diagonal, that translates to 260 pixels per inch, which is a key target for devices in this price bracket. Huawei rates the display as a 450 nit brightness with a 1500:1 contrast ratio, which is above a lot of traditional 300 nit displays that sometimes plague this price point. On top of this, Huawei promotes a 100% sRGB gamut for color accuracy, and the screen supports 10-point multi-touch as well as gestures.
As mentioned a few pages prior, because Huawei has moved the webcam from the display to the keyboard, this allows the display to go as far up to the edge of the chassis as Huawei could make it without sacrificing rigidity. Any laptop looks really good when a display almost touches the edge, which when combined with the 450 nit brightness does make the device stand out.
The panel is listed as the Tianma XM TL139GDXP01, and the official specifications match those Huawei has provided.
For our testing today, we’re using the X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter.
Brightness and Contast
As for maximum brightness, we’re right on specification, however in our testing the black level is certainly higher than other devices in the market, which leads to a lower-than-advertised contrast ratio.
Battery Life
Taking advantage of the bigger-than-13-inch form factor, Huawei has equipped the MateBook X Pro 2021 with a 56 Wh battery, which is about 10-20% bigger than the 45 Wh batteries we see in the smaller size. Without the presence of a discrete GPU, one might argue that this battery should go for a long time, however the high-resolution display might prove to be an Achilles heel. Huawei’s documentation lists a 10 hour battery life for local video playback, which would be just enough for a long haul flight.
For our testing, we calibrate the display as close to 200 nits as we can (in this case, brightness set to 62), and progress through both a movie workload and a web workload. We would have also tested using PCMark’s battery test, however the test would always fail when video decoding, as mentioned previously.
It’s worth noting that Huawei lists the battery as 56 Wh (typical). Our battery reported 55.4 Wh when fully charged.
Our movie test at 200 nits is just below the 10 hour mark quoted, however Huawei seems to have done their testing at 150 nits, according to the website. 529 minutes is actually quite low compared to a number of laptops that the MateBook X Pro 2021 competes against.
The web test does slightly better than our movie test, even though the screen is doing a lot more whites, but it isn’t having to process so much video. Normalizing for the battery capacity, we get 10.2 minutes per Watt-hour, which again isn’t a great result compared to the previous generation hardware or AMD’s offering.
Charge Time
Huawei ships the laptop with a 65 W charger with a Type-C port, and a C-to-C cable to connect it to the laptop. For our charge test, we discharge the battery down to 5% with a high powered workload, then down to 2% while on idle to cool it down. The system is then plugged it in, set on low power, with the screen still at 200 nits, and then monitored the charge level as reported as a function of time up until the reported charge no longer moved.
As well as our output report, I also put one of these in the loop. It showcased that the laptop was charging around 48-52 W constantly for the first 80 minutes or so, at 20 V / 2.5 A.
For our charge profile, we achieved:
- 2% to 10% charge in 7 minutes
- 2% to 65% charge in 60 minutes
- 2% to 90% charge in 87 minutes
- 2% to 100% charge in 110 minutes
Even though the charger is listed as 65 W capable, I didn’t see it ever go up to 65 W.
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dontlistentome - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
In the UK at least Lenovo are awful re stock. Like you it showed 2-3 weeks delivery. I ordered 5 at 4.30pm and they arrived the next morning. I even spoke to their business sales team (LenovoPro) who had no idea of leadtimes or stock level. Just how many sales are they losing?eek2121 - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Our software does not work on an M1 Mac. They won't be firing me any time soon. They would fire you, however, if you pushed us moving to M1 Macs since our company would not be able to get work done. The estimated cost of moving our software to an ARM compatible solution is 1.1 million dollars. Our software is used by governments around the world. Those governments ALL use x86...we've not had a single request for an ARM port, M1 or otherwise. That includes the 0.45% of users that use a Mac.m00bee - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Most proletary office software doesn't run om macs, at least not on my office.sonny73n - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
@lemurbuttonThe only thing you'll bite is your tongue or the dirt. I've been in IT mostly in networking for over 25 years with a computer degree. I've had 1000s of clients and I haven't seen anyone use a Mac for work. So my conclusion is that you're just a troll spewing craps. I won't waste any more of my time with you.
star-affinity - Saturday, October 2, 2021 - link
@sonny73nI've also been in IT for almost 25 years and Macs has been a part of businesses in parallel with all non-Apple computers where I've worked. It all depends on what the area of work done with the computers. For graphical, typography and design related stuff Macs have often been used while more ”business” stuff such as finance and ”office stuff” has been more of a Windows thing.
gund8912 - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
Google has been using exclusively MacBook pros for work, Oracle is offering people MacBook pros when employees upgrade hardware. So almost everything runs on MacOS except few programs (outliers), Apple just introduced ARM Macs will take time to port everything.Windows laptops and Macs have their own advantages.
But for me battery life, trackpad, MacOS work flow/UI are great compared to Windows laptops.
Linustechtips12 - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
I would love to hear you explain to me why pages is better than word or google docs online or would you care to explain why most of the world runs windows and isn't macOS the "easy, clean,bloat-free, anyone can do it" kinda os have you ever even tried to do split-screen on a mac, don't even get me started on "system preferences" horrible layout compared to windows even windows search in windows 11 is fairly competitive compared to spotlight and that's on a still beta OS.star-affinity - Saturday, October 2, 2021 - link
I think Pages is much better than Word or Google Docs when it comes to doing page layout work.Interesting, I don't see how System Preferences is horrible in layout compared to Settings in Windows. And what about having to user interfaces for the settings like it has been in Windows 10 – the ”classic” UI and the ”modern”. If that isn't messy and confusing I don't know what. We also have the fact that most third party apps have different ways of doing the user interface – there is no coherence and many apps still looks like they are designed for Windows 95 or Windows XP.
Good if Windows 11 has a search that is competitive with Spotlight – about time. :D
Agree on the split screen – Windows has better built-in window management than macOS. But I just install the free and open source Rectangle and things are fine: https://rectangleapp.com/
gund8912 - Monday, October 4, 2021 - link
Split screen is easy, what are you talking about ?Did you ever try to switch between virtual desktops in windows how awful it is ? I never used multiple virtual desktops on Windows because it was un intuitive to use, I use it all the time now on MBP.
Kuhar - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Haha, just be careful not to get a single hair stuck between your screen and your keyboard on MBA... it might break. So fragile, so useless. On the other side you can throw X1C from your desk and it will just continue working with whatever. One could go on and on and on but there is no way to change simple minded fanboy.