Huawei's MateBook X Pro is a stylish fully-loaded workstation with superb sound that is light enough to lug around all day every day.
This is the most beautiful I have tried to date. The notebook's bezel is only 0.5mm thick on all sides and has a resolution of 3K, which makes the images shown on screen extremely crisp. It is also a touchscreen making casual webpage and text scrolling easy, but I found it a little too sensitive, which can result in mistouches when adjusting the screen angle. It also has world-class colour accuracy, a boon for those who do photo and video editing on a regular basis.
The dark blue matte aluminium body of the notebook, both exterior and interior, gives the machine an elegant appearance. It looks expensive.
It also has loud, clear and bassy speakers. My family thought I was using a sound bar to blast out music while I was simply using the MateBook's loudspeakers. My other notebooks provide not even half of what this machine can do, not to mention the bass it can provide.
I love the large, precise and feature-packed touchpad. The touchpad occupies approximately half of the lower body of the machine. You can even slide from the sides of the touchpad for additional controls. Slide on the top part of the touchpad for fast forward and backward video control; slide the right for volume control; and on the left for brightness control. Also, you can use your knuckles on the touchpad to initiate screen recording and screenshots. This is a genuinely nice touch and reduces the need to search for those controls on the keyboard.
It has a sturdy keyboard which resembles what you would find on Apple's best notebooks. But a person with larger-sized fingers, like me, may find it difficult to type fast due to narrower gaps between keys. The MateBook also offers a backlit keyboard for dark or dim environments, although I wished the brightness was better.
The notebook is extremely fast for video editing. But the absence of a dedicated graphics card means you may not have the best gaming experience. I did try playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which ran fine outside of occasional stutters on the game's high settings. So anything but hardcore gaming should be a breeze on this device.
No USB-A port is a bummer, but the bundled USB-C to USB-A dongle does the job fine. You just need to remember to bring it with along if you use thumb drives and external hard disks to transfer files on a regular basis.
Logging on to Windows 11 with face recognition using the webcam is fast and accurate. My younger brother looks remarkably like me, but the computer still denied him entry. The power button doubles as a fingerprint reader for situations where you cannot look straight at the webcam.
The Huawei MateBook X Pro is a strong contender for the best notebook of 2022.
SPECS
- CPU: Intel i7-1260P (12th gen)
- Screen: 90Hz 14.2" touchscreen, 3120 x 2080 pixels (92.5% screen-to-body ratio)
- Weight: 1.38 Kg
- Body dimension: 31 x 22 x 1.5 cm
- RAM: 16GB (DDR5)
- Storage: 1 TB NVMe PCIe SSD
- Audio: six speakers, four microphones
- GPU: Intel Iris Xe Graphics
- Camera: 720P HD (front)
- OS: Windows 11 Home
- Colour: Blue
- Bundled in the box: USB-C to USB-C cable, USB-A to USB-C cable, 65W power brick
- Connections: WIFI6, 4 USB-C ports, Bluetooth 5.1, headphone jack
- Price: 79,990 baht
