The Huawei MateBook 16 is described by Huawei as a “Artistic” laptop in a skinny & mild aluminum chassis that appears elegant in a boardroom or any customer-facing exercise.
It is extremely potent for some kinds of Artistic purposes akin to mild Photoshoping and excels at multimedia and leisure actions. On this review, we’ll present you its strengths and weaknesses in a extremely aggressive market.
Notice: the Ubergizmo definition of a Artistic laptop is one which’s able to benefiting from heavy graphics duties, akin to video enhancing and compression. Graphics processors extremely speed up this.
Specs highlights& configurations
As typical, Huawei’s configuration choices are simple. The principle variation lies within the CPU choice, the place you’ll be able to decide an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H or the extra highly effective AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU (like our take a look at unit). The 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and show are an identical to all MateBook 16.
The draw back of this simplicity is that Huawei won’t fulfill niches the place customers may need 32/64GB of RAM or 1/2TB of storage. I’ll guess that Huawei’s goal person profile is the one who needs a basic 15.6-16 inch skinny & mild productiveness laptop, and for that, these choices are acceptable.
Design
The Huawei MateBook 16 makes use of a variant of the confirmed MateBook design language, as seen just lately within the MateBook X Professional, which we beforehand reviewed. It appears to be like nice and might be the poster baby of company boardroom-friendly designs.
The chassis is manufactured from CNC aluminum which makes it further inflexible whereas having a skinny profile (17.8mm) however on the expense of weight (4.38 Lbs / 1.99 Kg) when in comparison with computer systems just like the Lenovo X1 Excessive Gen4 (3.99 Lbs) or the MacBook Professional 16 (3.5 Lbs).
“THE POSTER CHILD OF CORPORATE BOARDROOM-FRIENDLY DESIGNS”
The aluminum floor remedy feels good to the contact and is sort of proof against fingerprint smudges, making the laptop look clear always. For the time being, “House Gray” is the one colour out there.
Keyboard and trackpad
The keyboard appears an identical to the MateBook X Professional by way of width and key sizes, however the important thing journey appears barely longer, and a few customers may recognize that. The keyboard has agreeable tactile suggestions that’s agency and bouncy in the appropriate quantities.
The outsized glass trackpad appears to be like spectacular, is ultra-smooth, and is good for big scrolling motions or complicated 3-4 finger Home windows gestures for optimum productiveness. There are not any bodily trackpad buttons, however you should use a two-fingers press to emulate the Proper mouse button when you don’t like going to the lower-right nook for a one-finger click on.
I discover the inputs to be very snug and match for intensive typing, however I wanted that the keyboard’s backlight was brighter.
Ports and connectivity
Attributable to its dimension, the MateBook 16 has a greater port choice than its 14-inch cousin. You’ll find two full-size USB ports on the appropriate aspect. There are two USB-C (+energy), a full-size HDMI, and the three.5mm audio connector on the left aspect.
| 2x USB-C (Energy, Information, DisplayPort) |
| 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 |
| 1x Full-size HDMI |
| 1x 3.5 mm headset and microphone 2-in-1 jack |
The shortage of a full-size SD card reader signifies that Artistic customers should not the first goal, despite the fact that this laptop is quick with CPU-heavy artistic apps like Cinebench.
The USB-C ports don’t assist Thunderbolt as it’s an Intel technology not out there on this AMD-powered platform. That stated, except you intend to make use of this laptop as a desktop substitute (with a cool laptop docking station), it shouldn’t be a sensible subject.
Wi-Fi 6 (2×2 MIMO) and BT 5.1 ensures near-universal connectivity, however understand that some opponents now function Wi-Fi 6E, which is extra future-proof when you improve your router within the subsequent few years.
On a 1000 Mbps symmetrical connection, we reached real-world Wi-Fi speeds of 205/434 Mbps in downloads and uploads, respectively.
Sound high quality
This 16-inch chassis leaves ample room for the stereo audio system positioned on both aspect of the keyboard. The 2 audio system are highly effective and output excellent-quality audio, one thing that Huawei has labored laborious to incorporate and protect in all their dearer laptop designs.
Watching films or listening to music may be very nice, and you may flip the laptop into an impromptu cellular speaker for a small out of doors gathering if you must.
Show
The 16-inch 3:2 side ratio show is outstanding as a result of it presents practically ~9 inches of vertical usable house as an alternative of the ~7 inches for a basic 15.6-inch (16:9) laptop show. The additional floor makes any laptop exercise extra “productive.” I really like this, however I additionally want there was multi-touch assist.
The 2520×1680 decision shouldn’t be spectacular, however I discover it ample for office-type work, multimedia leisure, and optimum battery life, which is the first aim. There’s no 4K choice.
The 360 NITs of brightness we measured is common as there are laptops able to reaching as excessive as 600 NITs. Since this display screen has a shiny floor, you’ll need to orient the show to keep away from as a lot glare as potential, particularly open air. For those who usually work in that sort of setting, it’s one thing to consider.
“THE IMAGE QUALITY IS EXCELLENT WITH HIGH COLOR GAMUT AND COLOR ACCURACY”
That stated, the picture high quality is superb with excessive colour gamut and colour accuracy. Subsequently, the show additionally works for net growth, mild Photoshop, and different actions the place you want color-accurate visible content material.
The camera is hidden in a keyboard key between the F6 and F7 keys as typical with Huawei. Hiding the camera permits for a lovely prime bezel, however the lens location isn’t ideally suited for making you look good throughout video calls.
Digital camera location apart, the picture high quality is common and nowhere nearly as good as Huawei telephones’ selfie cameras, but it surely’s fairly commonplace for PCs, sadly.
Huawei ecosystem
As you already know, Huawei additionally makes smartphones and tablets. The corporate has created an ecosystem with Huawei Share, a platform to attach various kinds of Huawei gadgets. Connecting laptop and pill is completed over BT and is each simple and safe.
With it, you’ll be able to shortly switch recordsdata between Huawei cellular gadgets and the laptop or remote-control the telephone to work together with mobile-only apps with out having to succeed in for the handset on a regular basis.
It’s additionally potential to reflect or lengthen the Home windows desktop onto a Huawei pill, thus turning it into an exterior monitor. I like this concept as a result of the pill you carry throughout a flight turns into your monitor within the resort, making it much more useful (and price carrying).
The display screen’s content material is shared over Wi-Fi, so there’s somewhat little bit of lag however I discover it to be acceptable for workplace use. For those who personal each gadgets, the Huawei MatePad Professional 12.6 makes for a wonderful show and with the E-Pen you can even create a really attention-grabbing Photoshop sketching setup.
I’d counsel utilizing the pill’s USB-C enter for the HDMI sign over a wired connection sooner or later (along with the Wi-Fi connection).
Lastly, it’s additionally potential to make use of a Huawei telephone to file the pc’s display screen for demo functions. General, Huawei share will help hold clients inside the identical ecosystem.
Huawei MateBook 16 Efficiency
Our MateBook 16’s AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (35W) exhibits comparable CPU efficiency to the Intel Core i7-11800H discovered in lots of high-end laptops akin to the brand new ThinkPad X1 Excessive Gen4. Benchmarks akin to Geekbench 5 or Cinebench present this clearly.
For the worth you pay, the Huawei MateBook 16 has superb CPU efficiency and our Geekbench/Worth chart demonstrates this very effectively. That’s exactly why AMD CPUs have been all the fashion just lately, however Intel is combating again, at the least on Desktops.
The AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU’s efficiency is akin to cellular workstations operating on Intel Gen11
For the worth, the CPU efficiency is nice
Under, the PCMark 10 “Artistic” sub-score tends to be CPU (+Disk) heavy, which is why the MateBook 16 rating is akin to the ACER Predator Triton 300 SE which has a lot sooner graphics, as demonstrated by 3DMark.
“FOR THE PRICE YOU PAY, THE HUAWEI MATEBOOK 16 HAS VERY GOOD CPU PERFORMANCE”
The CPU pace, paired with very respectable SSD efficiency, yields a excessive PCMark rating that confirms this laptop’s standing as a wonderful productiveness laptop.
Nonetheless, a scarcity of discrete GPU makes GPU-intensive duties (like gaming or GPU video enhancing) much less performant than computer systems geared up with an RTX 3050 Ti (and above). It’s not an issue for many individuals who don’t want such graphics pace, however different “Artistic” laptops have higher GPUs when you use graphics-heavy apps.
Huawei MateBook 16 Battery Life
With an 84 Wh battery capability, the MateBook 16 takes benefit of its dimension to pack loads of power reserves that may be replenished with the 135W USB-C energy provide.
In our workplace productiveness exams, the laptop scored 16 hours of battery life, one of many highest endurance we’ve seen so far. The chart additionally exhibits the battery life distinction with laptops designed to realize increased peak graphics efficiency, like workstations or gaming laptops.
The battery cost pace is okay as you’ll get about 27Wh value of power in 30mn of charging. Some laptops can do a lot better, however this can be a typical charging pace.
Conclusion
The Huawei MateBook 16 (official web page) is an aesthetic laptop that will be a wonderful selection for workplace productiveness and light-weight creativity customers who need a big show. I like the nice industrial design and construct high quality. The laptop may be very agreeable to make use of, even when you work many hours with it each day.
From a specs/value standpoint, there are potent opponents such because the Dell Inspiron 16, Lenovo’s Legion 5i, or the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE. However on this fashion of CNC-aluminum chassis, the MacBook 16 might be an alternate for these keen to change over to macOS and pay way more.
“HAVING EXCELLENT CPU PERFORMANCE AND LONG BATTERY LIFE IS A RARE COMBO”
The Huawei MateBook 16 retails for 1199 Euros (~$1385), practically half the price of the most cost effective MacBook 16 ($2499). That’s a large distinction in worth for the use case we’ve described.
This laptop might be very attention-grabbing for Artistic customers who largely require excessive CPU efficiency (Cinebench) as a result of the Ryzen 7 5800H CPU can compete with Intel’s Core i7-11800H at a considerably cheaper price. Having wonderful CPU efficiency and lengthy battery life is a uncommon combo.
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