Best Huawei Laptop Matebook 14 vs Matebook X vs Matebook X Pro! _ The Tech Chap
# A Comprehensive Review of Huawei’s 2020 Refreshed MateBook Lineup: MateBook 14, MateBook X, and MateBook X Pro
## Introduction
Join us as we dive into an in-depth review of Huawei’s latest lineup of laptops. The star of the show is the **MateBook 14**, alongside its siblings, the sleek **MateBook X** and the premium **MateBook X Pro**. Each of these devices offers unique features and caters to different user needs, making them standout contenders in their respective categories.
## MateBook 14 Review
The **Huawei MateBook 14** takes center stage as the most exciting addition to the lineup. Priced at a budget-friendly starting point of £750, it packs a powerful punch with its latest Ryzen 4000 series processors. This laptop is equipped with full-fat 45W Ryzen chips, offering impressive performance that even surpasses the top-tier MateBook X Pro.
The MateBook 14 boasts an ergonomic design with thin and light construction, making it highly portable despite its robust internals. Its standout feature is the inclusion of Radeon onboard graphics, which not only enhances gaming capabilities but also ensures smooth multitasking.
## MateBook X Review
For those seeking ultimate portability, the **Huawei MateBook X** is a gem. Weighing just 1kg and featuring a 13-inch display, this laptop is a testament to ultra-portability. It comes with the latest Intel Core i5 processor and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, making it ideal for users on the go.
Despite its portability, the MateBook X excels in performance for lighter workloads like browsing, video streaming, and office tasks. However, it’s essential to note that its battery life is average compared to its siblings, which might be a slight downside for heavy users.
## MateBook X Pro Review
Crowning the lineup as the premium choice is the **Huawei MateBook X Pro**. Priced at £1500, this laptop offers top-tier performance with its 10th Gen Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. It also features a discrete NVIDIA MX250 graphics card, enhancing its capabilities for more intensive tasks.
The MateBook X Pro shines in terms of design and build quality, crafted from magnesium-aluminum alloy. Its standout feature is the brightest screen among the trio, making it an excellent choice for outdoor or bright office environments.
## Key Features: Performance, Battery Life, and Ports
- **Performance**: The Ryzen-powered MateBook 14 leads in multi-core tasks, while the Intel-based X Pro matches its single-core performance. Graphics-wise, both the MateBook 14 and X Pro deliver around 30fps on low settings in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
- **Battery Life**: The MateBook X Pro and MateBook 14 tie with a battery life of nearly eight hours, outperforming the MateBook X’s four-hour runtime.
- **Ports**: The MateBook 14 stands out with additional ports, including HDMI and USB-A, while the X Pro offers a balance with its sleek design.
## Design and Build Quality
All three laptops boast magnesium-aluminum builds and thin screen bezels, reflecting premium craftsmanship. The signature Huawei Share technology enhances connectivity between devices, allowing seamless file transfers and phone control via touchscreen.
## Huawei Share Tech Feature
Huawei Share technology allows users to connect their phones with a simple keyboard touch, facilitating easy drag-and-drop of files and media. While the feature is innovative, it can occasionally feel laggy, but its utility is undeniable for device integration.
## Criticisms and Limitations
- **Lack of Thunderbolt 3**: None of the laptops support Thunderbolt 3, which might be a limitation for users requiring high-speed external devices.
- **Webcam Design**: The pop-up webcam, while secure, can be intrusive during calls. However, adjusting the laptop’s height provides a practical workaround.
## Conclusion and Recommendations
In conclusion, each laptop in Huawei’s refreshed lineup offers distinct strengths:
- **MateBook 14** excels as an all-rounder with excellent value for money.
- **MateBook X** is ideal for portability enthusiasts.
- **MateBook X Pro** caters to those seeking premium performance and design.
For most users, the MateBook 14 strikes the perfect balance, offering powerful performance at an accessible price. However, your choice should be guided by your specific needs—whether it’s portability, raw power, or a touch of luxury.
Join the conversation in the comments below to share which laptop you’d choose and subscribe for more tech insights on Tech Chat!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys i'm tom the tech chap and what could be better than a shiny new laptop well how about three of them so these guys are the operand of huawei's 2020 refreshed matebook lineup in the center we've got the new matebook 14 as you can see here it packs in the latest ryzen 4 000 series of chips over here we've got the super thin and light new matebook x with its apparent sawn off track pad here and then finally we've got the matebook x pro which blends power and portability into an ultra premium laptop firstly though a big thank you to huawei for sponsoring this video although as always i will remain objective all opinions are completely my own basically sponsorships just mean that a company gets to give me a product and i'll make a video about it but what i say you know my testing my thoughts are all completely my own and i figured since all three of these laptops are pretty interesting by themselves it would be quite useful to do a bit of a roundup and a buying guide and so by the end hopefully you'll have an idea which one's sort of best suited for you so let's start with this guy the matebook 14. it's the cheapest and in my opinion i think the most exciting it's actually more powerful than even the top end matebook x pro which costs nearly 60 more so the 14 here starts at 750 pounds or 950 pounds for this top spec one and this 20 20 refresh adds the latest ryzen processors along with onboard radeon graphics and most importantly we're getting the full fat 45 watt chips in here versus the 15 watt intel parts in the other machines next up is the brand new 13-inch matebook x with a 10th gen intel core i5 which comes in at around 1400 pounds and it's for people after a super lightweight ultra portable that's got a great screen but mainly for sort of lighter workloads you know browsing watching video bits of office work but this is all about being as thin and light as possible and finally top of the pile is this 1500 pound 14 inch matebook x pro which gets the latest 10th gen processors i've got the i7 in here along with 16 gigs of ram and importantly a discrete nvidia mx250 graphics card although you can get this with the i5 and without the dedicated graphics card for about 1200 pounds if you just want the form factor but not necessarily the best performance and as you can see i've also got this in a very snazzy emerald green although i think if i worked in the uh huawei marketing department i'd maybe call it arguably blue but either way i think it looks really smart but there's definitely a consistent design language across the line and build quality goes toe to toe with any other premium laptop i can think of all are magnesium aluminium with thin screen bezels the same great keyboard huawei share tech which i'll come back to in a second and they all come with a fingerprint reader built into the power button so it's just one press to power and log in and of course we also have this love it or hate it pop-up webcam it's great for security because you can physically hide it but not so good for looking up your nose during web calls and finally one of my favorite features is that they all come with these high res 3x2 glossy touchscreens which if you guys are familiar with my channel you know that i much prefer this aspect ratio it just means everything feels a little bit less cramped as you've got this extra vertical space now in some ways the 13-inch x and the 14-inch x pro are the most similar of the three both are lighter than the matebook 14 have intel u series processors so a little bit less powerful bit more focused on portability and they also feel a little bit more premium thanks to the one piece aluminium body with slimmer dimensions and also high-res 3000 by 2000 touchscreens this guy weighs just one kilogram honestly you have to pick this up for yourself to really get a sense of how lightweight it is while the x pro the larger one here which is 14 inches is about a third heavier and also about one millimeter thicker but importantly it's also a little bit wider and you can see they've managed to squeeze in as some speakers here beside the keyboard and actually in my experience the x pro here has among the best speakers i've ever heard on a laptop i think maybe second only to the macbook pro 16 but they are seriously seriously good and they support dolby atmos coming back to the x for just a second and you can see here it kind of looks like huawei sliced off the lower part of the keyboard deck here meaning we get a trackpad that looks like it's got a bit too close to the edge and forgot to stop it's the uh infinity pool of track pads if you like when it comes to overall size though the trackpad battery life and performance the cheaper matebook 14 here and the pro x are actually closer especially if you get this in the higher spec with that nvidia graphics chip now i'm sure you guys will agree but the most important feature when it comes to buying a new laptop or anything really is value for money and so i think the matebook 14 does give you the best bang for buck it's the cheapest and you also get the best performance but to be honest with you this really doesn't feel that much less premium than the other two yes it's a little bit thicker a tiny bit heavier the bezels aren't quite as slim and the screen's a little bit lower res although it's still 1440p basically so that's still very very good one advantage of the x pro though aside from the design and also the better speakers is this does have the brightest screen so if you're using this outdoors or on your commute a lot or in a bright office then that may come in handy but then if we go back to the matebook x for a second obviously the key selling point of this is that portability but one other advantage is this is the only laptop of the three to come with the latest wi-fi six so if that's important to you then maybe that is another reason to go for this now i do have a couple of little criticisms about these three firstly none of them support thunderbolt 3 while we have usbc on all of them and the matebook 14 comes with a couple of extra ports we've got hdmi two full-size usb-a's there we've got one usb-c so two usb-c's on the x and then the x-pro has one full-size usb-a and two usb-c's and all have headphone jacks as well as i say unfortunately none of them support thunderbolt 3. so if you're planning to hook these up to a thunderbolt 3 monitor and have you know the display and the charging all at once which is pretty useful or even maybe attach an external graphics card if you want that extra graphics performance although honestly i'm not sure how many people do that and at least on these two at least you'd probably be bottling it quite significantly by the u series processors so thunderball 3 would have been nice to see and i think the other sort of more controversial issue is the webcam this little pop-up guy down here so you can just press it closed as you can see and you can physically hide it so if you are someone who puts a bit of tape or tries to disable the webcam for security reasons or privacy then you can just completely hide it but then again because it's on the base of the keyboard it is looking up your nose i guess the work around for that is if you are doing a web call just have the laptop a little bit higher stack on a couple of books or something and you're good to go so it's not really a deal breaker and for some people that actually might be a real selling point now moving on to performance and despite the fact that both the intel laptops here have 15 watt chips they actually do pretty well especially the i7 in the x pro which actually matches the ryzen 4 800h in single core performance in geekbench 5. multi-core is a different story though the ryzen 4800h races ahead and is fully twice as fast as the i7 jumping into a bit of cinebench and the 4800h in the matebook 14 scores over three times higher than the i7 in the x pro but it just highlights what the 14 can do with that 45 watt eight core 16 thread ryzen chip moving on to graphics and gaming and if we start with 3dmark we can see the ryzen's onboard radeon graphics slightly outpacing the x-pro's nvidia mx250 but both laptops are able to hit around 30 fps on low settings in shadow of the tomb raider at 720p now i think it's fair to say all three of these laptops are supposed to be pretty portable uh and so of course battery life is very important now the x pro and the 14 here share the same 56 watt hour battery whereas the x makes do with a smaller 42 watt hour cell so in my standard battery life test where i run a full screen youtube video at 50 screen brightness on balanced battery settings the x pro here lasted the longest at just under eight hours followed by the matebook 14 which managed under seven hours and the x here only minus four which is pretty average and a little bit disappointing but i guess it makes sense given a smaller battery the backlit keyboards are the same on all three laptops as far as i can tell the responsiveness and the clackiness if you will of the matebook x feels the same as the thicker x pro and matebook14 and it feels good to type on as for the trackpads the matebook 14 and the x pro feel pretty similar both have a responsive feeling click and a good size though the surface on this one is a little bit smoother than the 14. however the trackpad on the matebook x here as i say looks like huawei's taking a saw and just cut off the bottom and sometimes i do find my finger just sort of falling off the edge a little bit and also not being able to click right at the bottom here but it looks stylish obviously it's taking full advantage of all the space available it's got a nice smooth texture and it's very responsive so far so good then but there is one bonus feature with these laptops and that's huawei share if you have a compatible huawei or on a phone just touch the keyboard to connect and you can then drag and drop photos videos and files to and from the phone and the laptop and you can also even control the phone via the touchscreen which is very cool although it can feel a little bit laggy sometimes so all in there these are some pretty solid updates to three of my favorite thin and light laptops there are a couple of niggles you know the lack of thunderbolt 3 not everyone's gonna love the pop-up camera and these are all slightly on the pricier side especially the x pro here and actually if you do want a more affordable one of these sort of laptops then i'll leave a link to my macbook d review which i made earlier in the year but for me i think it's the matebook 14 that's the best all-rounder with that new ryzen processor the radeon graphics you know a good selection of ports the screen isn't quite as nice and it's not quite as premium overall but i think for most people including myself this really is all i need but the big question which one would you pick would you go for the matebook x the matebook 14 or the matebook x pro let me know in the comments below and if you did enjoy this video and want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe button down below i'll see you next time right here on the tech chathey guys i'm tom the tech chap and what could be better than a shiny new laptop well how about three of them so these guys are the operand of huawei's 2020 refreshed matebook lineup in the center we've got the new matebook 14 as you can see here it packs in the latest ryzen 4 000 series of chips over here we've got the super thin and light new matebook x with its apparent sawn off track pad here and then finally we've got the matebook x pro which blends power and portability into an ultra premium laptop firstly though a big thank you to huawei for sponsoring this video although as always i will remain objective all opinions are completely my own basically sponsorships just mean that a company gets to give me a product and i'll make a video about it but what i say you know my testing my thoughts are all completely my own and i figured since all three of these laptops are pretty interesting by themselves it would be quite useful to do a bit of a roundup and a buying guide and so by the end hopefully you'll have an idea which one's sort of best suited for you so let's start with this guy the matebook 14. it's the cheapest and in my opinion i think the most exciting it's actually more powerful than even the top end matebook x pro which costs nearly 60 more so the 14 here starts at 750 pounds or 950 pounds for this top spec one and this 20 20 refresh adds the latest ryzen processors along with onboard radeon graphics and most importantly we're getting the full fat 45 watt chips in here versus the 15 watt intel parts in the other machines next up is the brand new 13-inch matebook x with a 10th gen intel core i5 which comes in at around 1400 pounds and it's for people after a super lightweight ultra portable that's got a great screen but mainly for sort of lighter workloads you know browsing watching video bits of office work but this is all about being as thin and light as possible and finally top of the pile is this 1500 pound 14 inch matebook x pro which gets the latest 10th gen processors i've got the i7 in here along with 16 gigs of ram and importantly a discrete nvidia mx250 graphics card although you can get this with the i5 and without the dedicated graphics card for about 1200 pounds if you just want the form factor but not necessarily the best performance and as you can see i've also got this in a very snazzy emerald green although i think if i worked in the uh huawei marketing department i'd maybe call it arguably blue but either way i think it looks really smart but there's definitely a consistent design language across the line and build quality goes toe to toe with any other premium laptop i can think of all are magnesium aluminium with thin screen bezels the same great keyboard huawei share tech which i'll come back to in a second and they all come with a fingerprint reader built into the power button so it's just one press to power and log in and of course we also have this love it or hate it pop-up webcam it's great for security because you can physically hide it but not so good for looking up your nose during web calls and finally one of my favorite features is that they all come with these high res 3x2 glossy touchscreens which if you guys are familiar with my channel you know that i much prefer this aspect ratio it just means everything feels a little bit less cramped as you've got this extra vertical space now in some ways the 13-inch x and the 14-inch x pro are the most similar of the three both are lighter than the matebook 14 have intel u series processors so a little bit less powerful bit more focused on portability and they also feel a little bit more premium thanks to the one piece aluminium body with slimmer dimensions and also high-res 3000 by 2000 touchscreens this guy weighs just one kilogram honestly you have to pick this up for yourself to really get a sense of how lightweight it is while the x pro the larger one here which is 14 inches is about a third heavier and also about one millimeter thicker but importantly it's also a little bit wider and you can see they've managed to squeeze in as some speakers here beside the keyboard and actually in my experience the x pro here has among the best speakers i've ever heard on a laptop i think maybe second only to the macbook pro 16 but they are seriously seriously good and they support dolby atmos coming back to the x for just a second and you can see here it kind of looks like huawei sliced off the lower part of the keyboard deck here meaning we get a trackpad that looks like it's got a bit too close to the edge and forgot to stop it's the uh infinity pool of track pads if you like when it comes to overall size though the trackpad battery life and performance the cheaper matebook 14 here and the pro x are actually closer especially if you get this in the higher spec with that nvidia graphics chip now i'm sure you guys will agree but the most important feature when it comes to buying a new laptop or anything really is value for money and so i think the matebook 14 does give you the best bang for buck it's the cheapest and you also get the best performance but to be honest with you this really doesn't feel that much less premium than the other two yes it's a little bit thicker a tiny bit heavier the bezels aren't quite as slim and the screen's a little bit lower res although it's still 1440p basically so that's still very very good one advantage of the x pro though aside from the design and also the better speakers is this does have the brightest screen so if you're using this outdoors or on your commute a lot or in a bright office then that may come in handy but then if we go back to the matebook x for a second obviously the key selling point of this is that portability but one other advantage is this is the only laptop of the three to come with the latest wi-fi six so if that's important to you then maybe that is another reason to go for this now i do have a couple of little criticisms about these three firstly none of them support thunderbolt 3 while we have usbc on all of them and the matebook 14 comes with a couple of extra ports we've got hdmi two full-size usb-a's there we've got one usb-c so two usb-c's on the x and then the x-pro has one full-size usb-a and two usb-c's and all have headphone jacks as well as i say unfortunately none of them support thunderbolt 3. so if you're planning to hook these up to a thunderbolt 3 monitor and have you know the display and the charging all at once which is pretty useful or even maybe attach an external graphics card if you want that extra graphics performance although honestly i'm not sure how many people do that and at least on these two at least you'd probably be bottling it quite significantly by the u series processors so thunderball 3 would have been nice to see and i think the other sort of more controversial issue is the webcam this little pop-up guy down here so you can just press it closed as you can see and you can physically hide it so if you are someone who puts a bit of tape or tries to disable the webcam for security reasons or privacy then you can just completely hide it but then again because it's on the base of the keyboard it is looking up your nose i guess the work around for that is if you are doing a web call just have the laptop a little bit higher stack on a couple of books or something and you're good to go so it's not really a deal breaker and for some people that actually might be a real selling point now moving on to performance and despite the fact that both the intel laptops here have 15 watt chips they actually do pretty well especially the i7 in the x pro which actually matches the ryzen 4 800h in single core performance in geekbench 5. multi-core is a different story though the ryzen 4800h races ahead and is fully twice as fast as the i7 jumping into a bit of cinebench and the 4800h in the matebook 14 scores over three times higher than the i7 in the x pro but it just highlights what the 14 can do with that 45 watt eight core 16 thread ryzen chip moving on to graphics and gaming and if we start with 3dmark we can see the ryzen's onboard radeon graphics slightly outpacing the x-pro's nvidia mx250 but both laptops are able to hit around 30 fps on low settings in shadow of the tomb raider at 720p now i think it's fair to say all three of these laptops are supposed to be pretty portable uh and so of course battery life is very important now the x pro and the 14 here share the same 56 watt hour battery whereas the x makes do with a smaller 42 watt hour cell so in my standard battery life test where i run a full screen youtube video at 50 screen brightness on balanced battery settings the x pro here lasted the longest at just under eight hours followed by the matebook 14 which managed under seven hours and the x here only minus four which is pretty average and a little bit disappointing but i guess it makes sense given a smaller battery the backlit keyboards are the same on all three laptops as far as i can tell the responsiveness and the clackiness if you will of the matebook x feels the same as the thicker x pro and matebook14 and it feels good to type on as for the trackpads the matebook 14 and the x pro feel pretty similar both have a responsive feeling click and a good size though the surface on this one is a little bit smoother than the 14. however the trackpad on the matebook x here as i say looks like huawei's taking a saw and just cut off the bottom and sometimes i do find my finger just sort of falling off the edge a little bit and also not being able to click right at the bottom here but it looks stylish obviously it's taking full advantage of all the space available it's got a nice smooth texture and it's very responsive so far so good then but there is one bonus feature with these laptops and that's huawei share if you have a compatible huawei or on a phone just touch the keyboard to connect and you can then drag and drop photos videos and files to and from the phone and the laptop and you can also even control the phone via the touchscreen which is very cool although it can feel a little bit laggy sometimes so all in there these are some pretty solid updates to three of my favorite thin and light laptops there are a couple of niggles you know the lack of thunderbolt 3 not everyone's gonna love the pop-up camera and these are all slightly on the pricier side especially the x pro here and actually if you do want a more affordable one of these sort of laptops then i'll leave a link to my macbook d review which i made earlier in the year but for me i think it's the matebook 14 that's the best all-rounder with that new ryzen processor the radeon graphics you know a good selection of ports the screen isn't quite as nice and it's not quite as premium overall but i think for most people including myself this really is all i need but the big question which one would you pick would you go for the matebook x the matebook 14 or the matebook x pro let me know in the comments below and if you did enjoy this video and want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe button down below i'll see you next time right here on the tech chat\n"