After plainly sitting on the sidelines for years, Huawei’s newest has exactly the kind of sensibility we’ve been looking for in a luxury laptop. The Huawei MateBook 13 is another fantastic release from Huawei, offering performance comparable to or better than many laptops in its class at a lower price. The Huawei MateBook 13 delivers all a flagship laptop can do – and more – for the same or even less money. So let’s see the features of the Huawei MateBook13 that make it worth the money.
Table of Contents
Design
The MateBook 13 appears to be essentially identical to the X Pro, albeit significantly smaller. The entire case of this laptop is made of aluminium, although it is not unibody like the X Pro. Instead, it has a plastic chassis with metal outer-sheets, just like most other mid-range PCs. This laptop is housed in an aluminium body in your choice of Space Grey or Mystic Silver.
While the webcam in the X Pro was successfully hidden beneath the keyboard, Huawei has done this MateBook right by placing the webcam above the display. However, it is only rated for 0.9 megapixels at 720p resolution.
The MateBook 13 is somewhat heavier and, by a hair, slimmer than the current MacBook Air, measuring just 0.59 inches (14.9mm) thin and weighing a tiny 2.87 pounds (1.3kg). The keyboard and touchpad on offer here are as impressive, with ample key travel at 1.2mm and snappy, strong feedback.
Display
If you liked the touchscreen display on the X Pro, you’ll adore it on the MateBook 13. While the screen is a little smaller today at a straight 13 inches on the diagonal, it still produces a 1440p image with 100 percent of the sRGB colour palette.
Another area where the MateBook 13 excels is functionality. The 3:2 screen makes the footprint taller than most other 13-inch laptops, leaving room for a properly sized keyboard, armrest, and clickpad, as well as a power button with a finger sensor.
The MateBook 13 has a 13-inch IPS touchscreen with a 3:2 2160 × 1440 px resolution. Huawei chose a mid-quality screen for this model, with average brightness and contrast levels but exceptional sharpness, viewing angles, and colour reproduction.
Performance
Huawei MateBook 13, identical to retail units, featuring Core i7-8565U WhiskeyLake processors, 8 GB of RAM, and Nvidia MX150 graphics. Impressive multi-core figures suggest a general-purpose computing beast. It has Nvidia MX150 graphics that are more powerful than others.
The Huawei MateBook 13 appears to be a standard iterative improvement to its predecessor. However, Huawei was able to squeeze even more graphical power out of the same processor this year, thanks to enhanced thermals and 25% faster fans inside. These fans also contribute to the laptop remaining surprisingly cool under load when compared to similarly thin and light devices.
This Matebook 13 only has a 41.7 Wh battery, which is less than what you’ll get in most other options in the category. Huawei claims that the MateBook 13 will provide up to 9.6 hours of local 1080p video playback.
Endnote
Huawei’s Matebook 13 offers a distinct mix of characteristics and capabilities in a reasonably priced package. The 3:2 high-resolution touchscreen, the compact form-factor, the competent hardware implementation and cooling module, as well as the fast and quiet keyboard, are its strong selling factors.
