Huawei MateBook X Pro (2021) Review: A Sleek and Vibrant Notebook
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 28, 2021 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Notebooks
- Intel
- Huawei
- Laptops
- Matebook X Pro
- Tiger Lake
System Performance: Web, Emulation, 3D Modeling
As we’ve covered a number of times in reviews of this level of laptop – the offering from Intel compared to AMD is quite different. At the same power level, AMD has up to 8 cores with 16 threads, while Intel only offers half that, in exchange for some go faster AVX512 instructions and built-in on-die Thunderbolt. Also, single thread performance is a key factor of Intel’s design, aiming for a super-fast immediate response for most tasks that are simple point and click on a work device. We saw on the previous page that this 15 W processor will offer up to 38 W instantaneously, and this is likely to be important on a number of our system performance tests.
That being said, we did have some issues running PCMark’s video compute workloads on our machine. PCMark10, no matter that the system was fully updated, would not correctly finish the video display and streaming encoding in its test suite. This is somewhat annoying, as that is the first test in PCMark’s run, and also part of the PCMark battery test. We were unable to find the root cause in our time with the device.
The mix of performance in the 1165G7 is interesting because it clearly lacks on some of the more demanding workloads, but ends up ahead on the lighter workloads like Optane and Dolphin. WinRAR is a mix of multi-thread and DRAM speed, so the Intel is in the ballpark there.
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Oliveira_Salazar - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Very poor review.No direct comparisons with the latest MacBook Air. No M1 mention at all.
It would be extremely easy to include the MacBook Air and/or Pro in a lot if not most of these benchmarks/comparisons. Even the Intel version.
The MBA is the default laptop of this category and everything should be considered against it. Let's not even mention how inspired Huawei is by MBP's designs. You mention that they are trying to place this in a segment where the Macs are their main competition, but don't feature them in any testing at all?
It's pathetic.
This machine is absolutely obliterated performance wise in all metrics. Specially while on battery.
You only make a poor argument that "an equivalent specced Mac is +800$", but "wins on battery life and performance". Is that fair? Is that the whole relevant story? Wouldn't a competent review also include something like "a 500$ to sometimes 600$ cheaper, completely silent MacBook Air beats this in almost all performance metrics and usage scenarios, sometimes by a lot, and wins heavily in battery life too, but only has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, while a version with the same RAM and Storage costs only 100 to 200$ more"
Why isn't there detailed performance testing while on battery power? These are thin and light machines for a reason. It's incredibly low effort to default to a pathetic "browsing test" and "200 nit video playback" to measure battery life.
People use these devices on the road. The default state of all laptops is unplugged. All performance testing should be done by default while on battery, and a separate one while plugged in, all conditions the same, and conclusions should be made.
Unless someone really really needs windows, these laptops should never be recommended at this point. They have are horrific value compared to what an Air offers while on battery.
But people that only read this review wouldn't know.
dontlistentome - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
I'll bite.The MBA is the default laptop of this category - no, it really isn't. If you need to fit into a Windows infrastructure, the default will likely have a HP, Dell or Thinkpad logo on it. Macs are *horrible* to use in a corporate environment. Given their input into the protocol the Thunderbolt implementation is borked (mostly round MST tagging for multiple displays). But then again the MBA can only drive one external panel.
Your price comparisons are **way** out. A Macbook with 16gb/512GB is not $200 more, it is $400 more minimum - the closest comparitor to this is $1450 - $50 less and that's before discounts which don't exist on Apple.
My team has 50+ laptops - mostly Thinkpad X1 Carbon of various gens, some Macs for the off balls. They are used 95% at a desk with power. That's the PCs and Macs (including the M1 Macbooks).
Go off and have a cuddle with your Macbook and feel great about what a genius you are. Meanwhile the rest of the world is still Windows.
lemurbutton - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
I'll bite.The Macbook Air M1 is significantly better than this laptop, and any Windows laptop in its class. Windows itself is less advanced than MacOS. The only thing Windows has that the Mac doesn't is AAA games. That's it. The Mac does everything else better.
Your Thinkpad X1 Carbon sucks compared to M1 Macs.
They should fire you for not buying M1 Macs.
dontlistentome - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
I have both (X1 Gen 9 / MBA M1). Do you?dnanatech - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
I have/had all of those (i7 X1gen6, i7 Matebook XP 2018, M1 MBA), and i7 Latitude 7390.The Mac is significantly better than all 3. X1 has unreliable fingerprint reader, a dim screen, weirdo Fn vs Cntrl key layout (i know it can be re-mapped in BIOS), overheats like a furnace, etc.
Worst of all, all the Windows machine have various battery-performance issues (sleep/hibernate drain, pickiness on chargers, low charging rate, etc), some of which is due to the common OS layer, and some of which is hardware unique to each machine.
It's not limited to these 4 device samples and generation. This goes back many generations to other machines I've had both on Windows side and Apple. Some of the Windows machine are sanitized as corporate-managed devices, and the others I've kept barebone and lean. After a long enough, I have to assume it's the nature of Windows laptops to have battery-related issues.
gescom - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
"Thinkpad X1 Carbon sucks compared to M1 Macs"Please do elaborate.
mmrezaie - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
I had to buy Macbook pro M1, because I needed a laptop and I couldn't find X1 anywhere and lenovo support told me it may take a very long time. M1 laptops are amazing, but X1 is something else. I will still if I had a choice would go X1, just for the keyboard and Linux.Samus - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
My wife had a MBP M1 and returned it after a week. Running legacy applications was like using a Core 2 Duo-era Macbook. And MOST PROGRAMS ARE LEGACY PROGRAMS. I don't think people realize even ADOBE hasn't ported even half their creative suite to M1. And many of the legacy apps have known issues. For example, you can't use Adobe Forms for Acrobat. Literally, the program CANNOT RUN on M1.https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/apple-...
So unless you exclusively use Apple software and treat the machine like a toy for Safari, Mail and Photos, it's unreliable and the power is wasted.
She went back to using her 2018 MBP and fixed the keyboard that was the problem anyway, and will wait a year or two before revisiting a new Macbook.
mmrezaie - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
Well, I do a lot of data science development and also system software developments. M1 is very good. My grip is with macOS. There are so many quirks I want to do which I cannot, but I could in Linux. On the other hand, macOS has much better support on desktop side compared to Linux.If I could have M1 arm on Linux, ooh that would be one sexy long battery and capable enough muchine.
star-affinity - Saturday, October 2, 2021 - link
”My grip is with macOS. There are so many quirks I want to do which I cannot, but I could in Linux.”Could you mention a few examples of those quriks? Just curios...