Outside of the smartphone and tablet sphere, Huawei isn’t a brand you’d usually associate with PCs and notebooks. Since the introduction of the Matebook at MWC 2016, that has certainly changed. If you’re looking for an alternative to the MacBook Pro, ThinkPad X1 Carbon or even the ASUS ZenBook Pro, Huawei’s upcoming MateBook X Pro may be your best bet. The Chinese tech giant has teased that its latest notebook is coming to Malaysia in October.
I’m not going to lie. I think the MateBook X Pro is stunning. From its gorgeously thin form factor and impeccable build, it even goes one up on the MacBook Pro that has long set the standard for design and craftsmanship. Weighing just 1.33kg, with depth of 14.6mm at its thinnest point.
What will take your breath away is the near bezel-less display. It rocks a FullView design – an astonishing 91 percent screen-to-body ratio. This means it manages to squeeze a 14-inch screen into a 13-inch chassis. And the screen? Gorgeous. A 13.9-inch LTPS touch-screen display with a 3:2 screen aspect ratio. It offers 3K (3000×2000) resolution and delivers 100% Adobe sRGB colour gamut, 1500:1 contrast ratio and 450nits of brightness.
Under the hood it’s powered by up to an 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8550U processor with up to NVIDIA GeForce MX150 with 2GB of GDDR5 VRAM. It packs up to 16GB LPDDR3 2133MHz RAM and up to 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD.
In terms of connectivity and expansion, it offers a 3.5mm stereo headphone jack, USB Type-C, Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) port, and USB Type-A (USB 3.0). It offers Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac (2.4GHz / 5GHz 2×2 MIMO), Bluetooth 4.1 and also Dolby Atmos audio with quad speakers and quad digital microphones.
It boasts a large 57.4Wh Li-polymer battery that Huawei claim will give you up to 12 hours of use. The notebook comes with a 65W MateBook Charger.
What you’ll also appreciate is the full-size, spill-proof, backlit chiclet keyboard and oversize touchpad. The power button also integrates a fingerprint sensor for one-touch sign-in with Windows Hello.
Another cool addition is the recessed camera that sits discreetly on the keyboard. It only pops up when needed.
The notebook runs Windows 10 Home out-of-the-box.
How much will the MateBook X Pro go for in Malaysia? As reference, the base i5 model with 8GB memory and 256GB of storage sells for CNY7,988 in China. This will put it in the MYR5,000 range in Malaysia. I’ve noticed grey imports going for around MYR5,900 at the moment. Huawei’s first MateBook sold for MYR5,399 in Malaysia.
You don’t have long to wait, so let’s see how aggressive Huawei prices this in the local market.
Stay tuned for updates.
For more information, visit consumer.huawei.com.
