Huawei MateBook X Pro Review: the Flagship Ultrabook with Gorgeous Display

Huawei MateBook X Pro Against Its Competitors in 2021

Best Choice

Huawei MateBook X Pro

Author’s Choice

Huawei MateBook X Pro is a perfect representative among other ultrabooks. Its most important advantage is excellent quality touch screen with good level of brightness and high, non-standard resolution. Lightweight, compact, and yet durable. Highly recommended!

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But how is it compared to other ultrabooks available on the market? Let’s see what makes it so different.

6 Competing Laptops

Author's Choice	Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020) Sleek and powerful Taller 3:2 display with extremely thin bezels Integration with Huawei/Honor smartphones Check Price	Check Price
People's Choice	Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2020) Great option for macOS users Comfortable and reliable Magic Keyboard Superior sound of laptop speakers Check Price	Check Price
Premium Choice	Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13.5-inch Excellent build quality 3:2 screen makes editing documents easier Optionally Metal or Alcantara finish Check Price	Check Price
Best Budget	ASUS ZenBook 13 UX325JA Thin and lightweight Long battery life Excellent value for money Check Price	Check Price
Best Design	Dell XPS 13 (2020) Soft to touch carbon or glass fiber deck Almost no bezels display Stays quiet even under load Check Price	Check Price
Best for Business	ASUS ExpertBook B9450 Extremely light and portable Versatile connectivity options Works more than one day on a single charge Check Price	Check Price

Huawei MateBook X Pro Detailed Overview

So what makes the Huawei MateBook X Pro different in the abundance of features that come directly on the laptops.

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020)

• Sleek and powerful
• Taller 3:2 display with extremely thin bezels
• Integration with Huawei/Honor smartphones

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The producer announced that it is launching sales of the flagship Huawei MateBook X Pro laptop and two more affordable models MateBook D14 and MateBook D15. Huawei MateBook X Pro has already come to our review. It is worth saying that the model itself is produced since 2018 and is updated annually.

What is it?

Huawei MateBook X Pro is the flagship ultra-compact laptop with a 13.9-inch LTPS display, a 10th generation quad-core Intel Core i7 mobile processor, 16GB of RAM, a fast SSD and a NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics discrete card.

What's interesting about it?

Huawei MateBook X Pro is a flagship ultrabook in a thin and lightweight metal case. One of the interesting features is a touch LTPS-display with a non-standard aspect ratio of 3:2, 3K resolution and minimal perimeter frames. For this purpose, the webcam had to be hidden in a button on the keyboard. There is a fairly standard set inside, as for a modern top-of-the-line ultraportable laptop: quad-core Intel Core i7-10510U processor of Comet Lake 10th generation, 16 GB of RAM, NVMe PCle SSD for 1 TB and a simple NVIDIA GeForce MX250 discrete video card. The laptop is expected to run for up to 13 hours on a single battery and can be quickly charged up to 50% in half an hour. From additional features - fingerprint scanner in the power button and multiscreen interaction with smartphones Huawei: image output, fast "drag and drop" files, simultaneous work with two devices on one screen. It works only with smartphones on Kirin 970, 980, 990 (i.e. Huawei flagships). As for quick connection there is an NFC tag.

What is included?

Huawei MateBook X Pro comes in a very small mustard-colored cardboard box with a small amount of polygraph and information, and a carrying handle. Inside, there is a smaller box made of more presentable white cardboard with golden printing. Inside there is a laptop itself, a 65W charger, a Type-C USB cable, a docking station and documentation. The docking station has a full-size USB 3.0, USB Type-C, HDMI and VGA. It is better not to lose the dock: separately it is not so cheap.

General look and assembly quality

The Huawei MateBook X case is completely metal. The producer claims it is made using diamond grinding. In any case, the used metal feels very high quality and thick, no deflections. The metal is matte and practically does not collect any fingerprints. On the upper lid there is only the Huawei logo. It looks and feels all expensive and of high quality. The gg editorial team has seen the "classic" gray version, but there is also a very interesting emerald-green one.

In comparison with the most of top expensive Ultrabooks, Huawei MateBook X Pro can not boast a big number of ports. On the left side there is a combined 3.5mm and two Type-C 3.1 USBs with charging and DisplayPort support:

On the right side there is only one full-size USB 3.0. Symmetrical slots can be seen at the side ends along the body. The cooling system collects cool air through these slots, and sound from the speakers also comes out here.

Most of the rear end is occupied by a hinge, no more functional elements are visible. Although, in fact, it covers another part of the air inlet openings and the hot air outlet area.

In front there is only a laptop neckline to open the lid.

What is interesting at the bottom: four microphones closer to the front end, a small hole in the back to drain the liquid (if you suddenly flooded the camera) and four round legs for stability. At the same time, the rear ones are slightly higher.

The frames are very thin, it is reported that the display occupies 91% of the total area. The upper and side frames are of the same width, the gap at the bottom is a little wider. A small Huawei logo is in the middle of it, and on its left part a sensor for external lighting is hidden in order to automatically adjust the brightness of the screen.

On the working surface we can mark the round button to switch on the notebook, placed above the upper right corner of the keyboard. It also acts as a fingerprint scanner. On the sides of the keyboard there are grids of built-in speakers, which are four in total.

The camera is placed in a kind of "button" between F6 and F7 and has a sliding mechanism.

The laptop is perfectly assembled, does not bend anywhere, does not creak and does not give in to twisting. All details are perfectly matched. It is very compact: 304x217x14.6 mm (11.97x8.54x0.57 inches) and weighs only 1.33 kg (2.9 pounds), so carrying it every day is not a problem at all.

How convenient it is?

The hinge allows you to open the laptop with one hand, and the maximum angle is about 135°. I think this is enough to work in most situations. There may be users who need to be able to open the laptop at 180°, but somehow it's very difficult to come up with such a scenario. The layout of the keyboard is almost standard "ultrabook". Without an additional digital block, with a bar-shaped Enter key, two long Shifts and a reduced height top row. The operation mode of F row can be switched with the Fn button and there is a corresponding indicator on it. The row may work either in the "classic" mode of the F-buttons, or in the mode of additional functions for adjusting the brightness, volume, etc. The above mentioned camera is a little unusual. In fact, it is in the place of F7 and shifts all subsequent buttons in the row to the right. The row ends with the Delete button. The arrows block is not separated from the other keys and is combined with Home, End, PgUp and PgDown via Fn. The round power button is located to the right above the keyboard and is combined with the fingerprint scanner. It works very fast, and the combination with the power button allows you to turn on and immediately unlock the laptop.

The buttons are standard in size, the distance between them is 2 mm. They have a rather short and quiet stroke. Subjectively, it seems that the stroke is slightly shorter than usual in ultrabooks and takes a little time to get used to. But after a couple of hours you can print quickly and without errors. There is a white backlight with two levels of brightness. Thanks to the black buttons, the characters can be seen very well.

Huawei MateBook X Pro Touchpad is large. Not the largest possible, but definitely more than the average in ultra-compact notebooks. It has an excellent glass coating, high sensitivity and positioning accuracy. You don't need to plug the mouse in while you're using it. it's doing a great job.

Placing the camera in the "button" - this solution is not new and it has both its pros and cons. Paranoid people will not have to tape the webcam with a plaster or tape. The camera's angle is not optimal, it looks in the owner's nostrils, so you will have to find the best position for video calls. The camera itself has a resolution of 1 MP and a rather mediocre image quality.

How good is the screen?

The laptop has a 13.9 inch touch screen display. It uses an LTPS matrix with a non-standard 3:2 aspect ratio and 3000x2000 resolution. The company decided to choose this option so that more information could be placed on the screen when working with documents, tables or websites. When watching video, of course, the top and bottom will be black stripes. The screen is covered with protective glass due to the use of the sensor. It has a very good Oleophobic coating, but it is noticeably gleaming.

The producer claims that the screen has a maximum brightness of 450 cd/m², 1500:1 contrast ratio and color coverage of 100% of sRGB color space. As we mentioned before, there is a ambient light sensor for automatic brightness adjustment (can be switched off). And besides the standard Windows settings, there is a possibility to adjust the color temperature and turn on the blue filter to protect your eyes.

By personal impressions, the screen is great. Very clear picture due to high resolution, excellent color rendering, very good brightness reserve and maximum viewing angles. Perhaps the only compromise in all this is the glass, which will shine abundantly in the street. Measurements showed that the screen is really very good. The maximum brightness was 439.549 cd/m², which is close to the stated figure of 450. Black field brightness is 0.405 cd/m2, and static contrast is 1085:1. Display color coverage is close to sRGB color space, calibration is very good. There is a minimal lack of red and even less excess of blue. The average color error of ΔE is only 2.52, which is a very good indicator.

What about performance, autonomy and sound?

From the point of view of its hardware content, Huawei MateBook X Pro turned out to be quite a typical flagship ultrabook, such configurations are found in a large number of models. It received the Intel processor of the 10th generation of the Comet Lake family. Namely - 14nm quad-core Intel Core i7-10510U with a cycle frequency of 1.8 GHz (up to 4.9 GHz Turbo Boost), support for 8 streams HyperThreading and 8 MB SmartCache. In fact, it’s a kind of Intel Core i7-8565U version with higher frequencies. The first notebooks on Intel Core i7-10510U appeared at the end of last year, so there are no surprises. Built-in graphics Intel UHD Graphics operates at a frequency of up to 1150 MHz, with the help of a modest NVIDIA GeForce MX250 with 2 GB of GDDR5 discrete video memory, a basic core frequency of 937 MHz and Boost 1038 MHz. RAM - 16 GB LPDDR3-2133, works in two-channel mode and dissolved. Wireless interfaces: dual-band Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, 2x2 MIMO (without Wi-Fi 6 support) and Bluetooth 5.0.

The laptop shows the typical performance of today's top ultra-portable notebooks, without any surprises. That is, with any office applications and the abundance of tabs in the browser, the laptop can cope without any issues, as well as with simple editing of photos. Huawei MateBook X Pro, of course, is not designed for games and complex video editing.

The laptop is equipped with a 1TB Samsung PM981a NVMe PCIe3 x4 MZVLB1T0HBLR-0000 SSD. It is very fast. Perhaps one of the fastest on the market, except for new models with PCI Express 4.0 x4:

The laptop has a cooling system with one Shark Fin 2.0 fan. As you can guess from the name, its blades are made in the form of shark fins. In practice, at low loads the fan is absolutely silent, it begins to "rustle" only at peak loads, and in this case, its sound is not annoying and is generally not noticed in the office environment. There are also no problems with stability: at peak loads, the interior temperature is almost constant at 73°, so no overheating is observed.

Out of pure curiosity we decided to run a couple of not the most demanding games Gears Tactics and Spec Ops The Line on Huawei MateBook X Pro. Both were running in 1920x1280 resolution. Gears Tactics was indignant at the "weak" configuration, which does not meet the minimum requirements, but started and worked with a frame rate of about 30 FPS with minimal graphics settings. Spec Ops The Line does not support this non-standard aspect ratio and works with black bars. But at maximum graphics settings, the FPS rate ranges from 55-60 frames per second.

Huawei MateBook X Pro is powered by 56 W*h battery. From official information it is expected to stand 13 hours of office work, 11 hours of web surfing and 15 hours of "typical usage". In reality it’s different, which is quite usual, actually. So, with active Wi-Fi, working in a browser, minimal photo editing, a small amount of video on YouTube and a 50% brightness of the screen, the laptop can operate about 7 hours. Not a record figure, but a very decent one. Fast charging is supported: 50% in half an hour. It takes about an hour and a half to charge it fully.

The laptop's audio system consists of four speakers. They sound very good, taking into account its weight category. The volume is enough for a small room, and the quality is quite good for watching movies or videos. For music lovers, the quality will be still a little low. The bass is weakly expressed and in general the sound is quite "flat", in comparison with other ultrabooks.

And now a few words about additional features. The laptop supports Huawei Share, which is designed to simplify the interaction between laptop and smartphone. But Huawei Share only works with smartphones on Kirin 970, 980, 990 processors. In other words - with Huawei's flagship smartphones of the last three years. For quick pairing of the smartphone with a laptop there is an NFC tag under arrows. Accordingly, it is not recommended to peel the tag off.

Huawei Share allows you to do the following: to move files back and forth with a simple Drag-and-drop, to use a shared clipboard, to use a smartphone and notebook in multi-window and to record the laptop screen on your smartphone.

It is worth mentioning PC Manager, which allows you to monitor the status of your notebook easily and quickly, to update drivers, to use the clipboard, to look through the notebook manuals, as well as to contact the service immediately if necessary.

How Does It Stack Up Against Competitors?

People's Choice – Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2020)

Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2020)

• Great option for macOS users
• Comfortable and reliable Magic Keyboard
• Superior sound of laptop speakers

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In addition to the powerful 10th Generation Intel processor the new Apple MacBook Pro 13 includes updated Magic Keyboard with more reliable scissor mechanism and physical Escape key in the left upper corner. A 500-nit brightness Retina display features True Tone, which optimizes colors and contrast to match the ambient lighting. The touchpad is excellent as always. And speakers sound remarkably good as for a laptop. It does everything you'd expect from a device of this class. This is a great choice for anyone who is tied to the Apple ecosystem and prefers macOS to Windows.

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020) vs Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2020)

Premium Choice – Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13.5-inch

Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13.5-inch

• Excellent build quality
• 3:2 screen makes editing documents easier
• Optionally Metal or Alcantara finish

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The same as Huawei MateBook X Pro, Microsoft’s 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 3 has a bright touch screen with 3:2 aspect ratio. It's available with a unique fabric-feel Alcantara palm rest, if you choose Platinum or Cobalt Blue color. And there are Matte Black and Sandstone options with more traditional machine aluminium finish. Redesigned keyboard offers deeper key travel and the trackpad has become 20% larger in comparison with the previous generation. New Intel Core i7 quad-core processor provides impressive performance for office-centric and content creation workflows. You can get up to 7-9 hours on a single charge depending on usage. And thanks to a new fast-charging option the battery can be charged up to 80% in about an hour. We appreciate that Microsoft is still using its Surface Connect port.

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020) vs Microsoft Surface Laptop 3 13.5-inch

Best Budget – ASUS ZenBook 13 UX325JA

ASUS ZenBook 13 UX325JA

• Thin and lightweight
• Long battery life
• Excellent value for money

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ASUS ZenBook 13 has pretty solid specs in a slightly more compact aluminum case for a reasonable price. It has a reasonably bright 13.3-inch screen with matte finish. Intel Core i7-1065G7 Ice Lake CPU provides great effectiveness for everyday use. The integrated graphics are still not good enough for modern games. But two Thunderbolt 3 ports allow an external GPU to be hooked up. The trackpad with NumberPad functionality is placed below the backlighted keyboard. Battery life is exceptional. The 67-Wh battery gives up to 13 hours of real-life usage. ASUS has included the fast-charge technology that allows you to charge up to 60% in less than 50 minutes.

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020) vs ASUS ZenBook 13 UX325JA

Best Design – Dell XPS 13 (2020)

Dell XPS 13 (2020)

• Soft to touch carbon or glass fiber deck
• Almost no bezels display
• Stays quiet even under load

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Dell XPS laptops are valued for their design, and Dell XPS 13 is even better. Thanks to the updated hinge the lid can be opened with one hand, the keyboard feels amazing, and rubberized carbon fibre or white woven glass fiber palm rests are very stylish and attractive. It’s fast, quiet and supports Wi-Fi 6 technology. Dell also managed to fit the webcam with Windows Hello support above the 13.4-inch 16:10 screen. The battery lasts more than 10 hours in everyday use. XPS 13 delivers a tempting package of performance, build quality and beauty.

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020) vs Dell XPS 13 (2020)

Best for Business – ASUS ExpertBook B9450

ASUS ExpertBook B9450

• Extremely light and portable
• Versatile connectivity options
• Works more than one day on a single charge

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ASUS ExpertBook B9 case is made of Magnesium and Lithium alloy, so it is light and durable (MIL-STD 810G certified). It's packed with quad-core Intel Core i7-10510U processor with Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics, 16 GB RAM in dual channel mode, fast NVMe SSD and the latest Wi-Fi 6 connectivity. It features a 14-inch Full HD display with slim bezels and 94% screen-to-body ratio. Despite the thin body, you'll still find a full-size USB 3.2 and HDMI ports, two Thunderbolt 3 ports and Gigabit Ethernet connection through the microHDMI interface (with included adapter). The 66-Wh promises up to 24 hours of use. In reality though, that number will vary based on how you actually use it.

Huawei MateBook X Pro (2020) vs ASUS ExpertBook B9450

The Verdict

Huawei MateBook X Pro is an perfect representative among other ultrabooks. Its most important advantage is excellent quality touch screen with good level of brightness and high, non-standard resolution, thanks to which the picture is very detailed. The laptop has a lightweight, compact, yet durable and very high quality body. All other mandatory features are also present: performance, fast drive, convenient input devices and good battery life. 

There are not so many ports, but competitors also suffer from this disease, and the dock included quite solves this problem. Webcam is among controversial solutions, especially in the global transition to remote work and online. It is not so good both in quality and convenience of location. The second point is price. On the one hand - it is not cheap: you can find a cheaper laptop with a similar configuration inside, but a simpler screen. On the other hand, Huawei MateBook X Pro is referred to the premium segment, so it should not be cheap.