Hands On With Huawei's Matebook Windows Laptop

BARCELONA—Huawei has ascended very quickly to the top of the smartphone heap. Now information technology's come gunning for your laptop. The Matebook, introduced hither at Mobile World Congress, is Huawei's first laptop, a $699, convertible Windows 10 Professional tablet with a classy case and some excellent accessories. I got some time with it hither in Barcelona.

The Matebook is a slim, all-metal tablet, only 6.9mm thick and weighing 22 ounces. Its basic specs state it somewhere in the eye of the mob of Surfaces, Lenovos, and whatnot currently flinging 2-in-1s at u.s.a.. The 12-inch, ii,160-by-one,440 IPS LCD screen is razor precipitous, although it falls short of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4'southward 2,736-by-i,824 resolution. The ane.1GHz Intel Cadre m3 processor in the model I saw exceeds the low-cease Surface Pro four model'due south speed, although it won't lucifer more expensive laptops.

The Matebook will come in Intel Core m3, m5 and m7 configurations, with 4GB or 8GB of RAM and 128 to 512GB of SSD storage. Those will toll $699 to $1,599. At that place'south no expandable storage—or expandable anything, actually. The keyboard costs $129, the dock $89, and the pen $59.

On the side, between the book buttons, in that location's a fingerprint scanner. Huawei says it's super-fast and even recognizes the sides of fingers, which seems very of import given how you'd grip it. At that place are dual stereo speakers on top.

The Matebook's strength is in the look of its accessories. Start with the keyboard: it'south a wraparound simulated leather case that however feels more than similar leather than plastic; it's warm, soft, and not sticky. It doesn't feel like it would attract lint or dirt. Open information technology up, and the case has big, white keys with ane.5mm of throw. It's comfortable on the lap, if a scrap wobbly, but more stable than the Apple iPad Pro.

A separate, matching case contains a force per unit area-sensitive pen and a USB-C dock. The dock expands the laptop's single USB-C port to offer two USB 3 ports, a USB-C passthrough for charging, Ethernet, HDMI, and VGA. The stylus functions equally a pen when information technology'south close to the screen, only when yous pull it abroad from the laptop information technology becomes a laser pointer and slideshow controller. Yes, that'south a gimmick, but it's a very useful i.

The Wacom-based pen was extremely responsive when I tried it, with excellent pressure sensitivity. As it uses Wacom technology, it should work with Windows apps that back up pressure level sensitivity.

Huawei claims 10 hours of office work or 9 hours of video playback on ane bombardment charge, and says the bombardment charges to max in two hours.

If only Huawei had included the keyboard in the base of operations price, it would have a killer response to the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and Lenovo Miix. As it is, the dressed-upwardly low-finish model with keyboard and dock costs $917, which makes information technology almost $100 less than a base model Surface Pro iv with keyboard. That's nonetheless compelling, considering how expert-looking this laptop/tablet is, and how the fake leather encompass looks better than the Surface'due south Blazon Cover. We're looking forward to getting this one into the labs.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/tablets/10454/hands-on-with-huaweis-matebook-windows-laptop

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