There are usually two approaches to choosing a brand new laptop. The first option is picking one that is light, slim, and practical, but these usually don’t offer the best performance for gaming or more. On the other hand, you can go for gaming laptops that provide ultimate performance, but the drawback is that they are often big, bulky, and not the easiest to bring around.
With that, choosing a laptop that can do both can be quite a hassle especially if you want a perfect blend of both. The only option that I could think of would be the MacBook route with the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, but what about Windows users? Well, it seems Huawei might have the answer with the new 2024 Matebook X Pro.
The 2024 Matebook X Pro packs an Intel Ultra 9 chipset, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of fast SSD storage, and an Intel Arc GPU. It also weighs under 1 kilogram and measures 13.5mm thin when closed. With that, it appears to have the perfect combination of a capable laptop that is also practical, at least on paper.
But how does the 2024 Huawei Matebook X Pro perform in real life? Well, to find out, I suggest you read on.
Table of Contents
Styling-wise, Huawei didn’t change much on the 2024 Matebook X Pro. At first glance, you might easily mistake it for the same laptop as before. You have a minimalist design with just the HUAWEI logo on the lid. The main difference is the material used by Huawei, which is one of the reasons the 2024 Matebook X Pro is so light.
To the touch, the lid (and the rest of the laptop) might feel like plastic due to the matte finish, but it is made of metal. Although it might feel weak given how light it is (weighing only 980g), it is quite durable. It also has good resistance to splashes and accidental spills.
We tried pouring coffee over the lid, and it didn’t leave any stain after wiping it down. This also leads us to believe discoloration won’t be an issue in the long run. Not to mention it didn’t affect the laptop at all. But of course, don’t purposely spill coffee or any other drink onto your laptop; this is still a sensitive electronic device.
The rest of the laptop is made out of the same material. It might be tough because it is spill-resistant, but it isn’t too smudge-resistant. I did notice I ended up leaving sweat marks near the keyboard, beside the trackpad.
Despite being a slim laptop, you do get several I/O ports to work with. You get three USB-C ports, two of which are Thunderbolt 4. If you still use USB-A, you get a USB-C to USB-A converter included in the box free.
One subtle but nice change that Huawei made is the design of the trackpad and the keyboard. The trackpad is nice and big for the form factor making it very easy to use. It now extends to the bottom of the laptop.
Huawei also added gesture controls to the trackpad for taking screenshots and adjusting the brightness and volume. You can still use the one on the keyboard, but it’s nice to be able to just do so without having to touch the keyboard.
The keyboard looks the same but it feels lighter and softer to the touch. I enjoyed spending my time typing using this laptop and being productive. The layout and spacing of the keys are great, and my palms didn’t feel tired even after writing several reviews and articles using this laptop.
Moving on to the display, you get a 14-inch 3.1K flexible OLED display with 10-point touch support. Yes, this is a touchscreen panel, allowing you to switch between using the trackpad or just touching stuff on the screen like a tablet.
The bezels are relatively thin all around, and they are nice and even too. Although it is a subtle feature, it’s nice that the display’s edges are rounded, making it better suited for Windows. This being an OLED panel, you get some nice and vivid colors. But it’s the blacks that impressed me the most since they get very deep.
Huawei says the panel is backed by the brand’s X-True display technology, providing accurate colors, great contrast ratios, and sharpness. In addition, it also supports AdobeRGB with up to 1.07 billion colors and 99% coverage of DCI-P3 colors.
If the jargon got you confused, don’t worry. As someone who edits a lot of photos, I can say this laptop is great if you are working in a similar field. I didn’t need to use a SpyderX Pro to calibrate the monitor anymore and was able to work using the laptop out of the box. More importantly, the colors are accurate to what you would see on a color-corrected screen or your phone.
It’s also quite bright too, making it great to use outdoors. Even if you are outside, there is no problem seeing everything on the screen thanks to its 1000 nits peak brightness.
The display also supports up to a 120Hz refresh rate, which can be set to 60Hz for better battery efficiency. But there is a Dynamic option in Display settings which lets the laptop determine which refresh rate to set itself to depending on the activity. I ended up setting it to 120Hz all the time though to make things smoother whether I’m just doing work, watching videos, or even playing games.
When watching videos or playing games though, you can fully immerse yourself in the speakers of the Huawei Matebook X Pro. You have a 6-speaker setup that sounds great and features a nice, balanced sound stage.
Audio clarity and resolution are very nice, especially considering this is coming out of a 12.5-inch chassis. It still lacks bass for my liking, but that is to be expected of a laptop speaker.
In addition, you also get a 1080P webcam which is quite useful when in Zoom or conference calls. You can automatically blur the background or change it to your liking. There is even a built-in noise cancellation feature you can toggle in the settings. Check out the sample below to see for yourself just how it is.
Powering the Huawei Matebook X Pro is the latest Intel Core Ultra 9 processor with a 40W TDP. Specifically, it runs the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H chipset and comes with 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM. There’s no need to worry about storage too since you have a fast 2TB SSD to work with.
Considering how powerful the processor is, it can easily run most applications you can think of with ease. Even if you have several applications running together like Lightroom and Photoshop with multiple tabs of Chrome turned on, I never once felt the Matebook X Pro slow down or hinder my productivity even when I was using all the multi-window features.
Despite its size and weight, you can easily edit photos and videos on Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and Premiere. It doesn’t have a hard time rendering 4K photos despite the multiple layers and edits I go through each photo. As for video editing, there is no lag or slowing down when you’re playing back media files on the app. From our experience, it can render 4K video easily but don’t expect it to be as fast as a gaming laptop or a built desktop.
However, you do have to be careful where you install your applications and more on the Matebook X Pro. I accidentally filled up the C:/ drive which only had around 200GB available. Eventually, I ended up moving folders around to ensure that space was allocated properly.
As for the GPU, it may only run an Intel Arc graphics unit, but it is quite capable for gaming too. The laptop could easily handle playing my usual games such as Genshin Impact. I was able to set the majority of the graphics to high, and I did not encounter any framerate drops or stuttering with the game.
But what really surprised me was the capability of the laptop to run more graphic-intensive titles like Call of Duty Warzone. I was able to get around an average of 60 FPS on Warzone despite everything happening at once on the screen. However, I did have to turn down the graphics in order to keep things consistent.
It’s not the smoothest gaming experience I’ve had with Warzone, but all things considered, it’s still amazing considering the Matebook X Pro isn’t exactly a gaming laptop. As expected, performance did dip after around 30 mins since temperatures started rising.
To give you a better idea of the performance, we also ran our usual benchmark apps and you can check out the scores below.
3DMark Time Spy: 3,991
Graphics score: 3,631
CPU score: 9,119
3DMark Steel Nomad Light Score: 3,283
Graphics test: 24.32 FPS
3DMark Night Raid Score: 28,893
Graphics score: 38,181
CPU score: 12,148
3DMark Storage Benchmark (SSD 2TB): 1,842
Cinebench
CPU Single-Core: 104
CPU Multi-Core: 784
Geekbench 6.3.0
CPU Single-Core: 2,152
CPU Multi-Core: 12,606
GPU OpenCL: 32,865
GPU Vulkan: 33,805
Blender 4.1.0
Intel Arc Graphics GPU: 385.43
Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU: 174.71
One thing I didn’t enjoy with the Huawei Matebook X Pro is the heat. The laptop easily heats up even when you’re just booting it up or in the menu. It dissipates after a while, but it does make it hard to use it on your lap. When you start booting up apps though, that’s where it gets really hot.
Fortunately, the heat is all located at the bottom of the laptop and the portion above the keyboard. So unless you purposely touch those areas, you won’t notice the heat at all.The keyboard and the rest of the usual touch areas are consistently cool. But given how light this laptop is, I ended up putting it on my lap often so the heat is very obvious.
Considering how capable the Huawei Matebook X Pro is, I expected power consumption to be just slightly better than that of a gaming laptop. It only has a 70Wh battery after all. Well, I was wrong; the 70Wh battery on this laptop lasts a relatively long time.
Without gaming, we were able to go 3 hours from full charge to 55% while the laptop was connected to WiFi. Given, we were mainly writing scripts and reviews, it’s still an impressive number. Of course, when gaming while not plugged in, do expect the battery consumption to be faster.
After around an hour of playing Genshin, the battery dropped from 100 to 70 percent, which still isn’t that bad. When you need to recharge, the Matebook X Pro comes with a 90W power adapter and charges via either of the three USB Type-C ports. You can even charge the laptop using a capable powerbank if you wish to do so.
In terms of connectivity, the Matebook X Pro comes with Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6E. It also takes advantage of Huawei’s 3D Metalline antenna giving users more stability when connecting to the Wi-Fi network. If you have other Huawei devices, you can even use Super Device to your advantage.
For a laptop that is this light and capable, there surely has to be a catch. Nothing is perfect after all. Well, that’s where the price of the Huawei Matebook X Pro comes in. If you thought the previous generations Matebook X Pro was already expensive, well this new one is even more expensive.
The 2024 Huawei Matebook X Pro now retails for PHP 129,999USD 2,215INR 187,797EUR 2,110CNY 16,133 for the Intel Ultra 9 variant with 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. Granted it is expensive, there’s no doubt about it. For the same price, you can get more capable and powerful gaming laptops with a proper NVIDIA or AMD GPU. The only downside is that they aren’t as portable as this one.
If you’re still young and don’t mind carrying a more capable gaming laptop around for the roughly same price, then the 2024 Matebook X Pro isn’t probably for you. But if you’re a photographer, vlogger, or videographer who is always on the go and wants to pack a bit lighter this time around, this laptop is one you should consider. Your back will thank you too.
What do you think of the 2024 Huawei Matebook X Pro though? Is it something you will consider? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
What we liked:
What we didn’t like:
HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 (Intel Core Ultra 9 185H) specs:
14.2-inch Flexible OLED HUAWEI X-True display
3120 x 2080 pixels, 120Hz, 264 ppi
1000 nits (peak) brightness, (10-point touch screen)
3:2 aspect ratio, 93% screen-to-body ratio
Intel Core Ultra 9 185H (Series 1) processor
40W TDP, 16 cores, 22 threads, 5.1GHz max frequency
Intel Arc Graphics
16GB, 32GB RAM
1TB, 2TB SSD storage
1080p HD camera
Wi-Fi 6E, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax
Bluetooth 5.3
Ports:
2x Thunderbolt4
1x USB-C
Camera privacy switch
Power button-integrated fingerprint sensor
6 speakers, 4 microphones
Windows 11 Home/ Pro
70Wh lithium-polymer battery
90W, 65W charging (SuperCharge Turbo)
310 x 222 x 13.5 mm
980g
Morandi Blue
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