One of the draw of Apple devices is the aesthetic. Apple is the undisputed trendsetter in gadget design, but the pricing though, is something else altogether. Fortunately though, for those who appreciate Apple kind of aesthetic, but not the high prices, there is the Huawei MateBook 13 Laptop. Announced at the same press conference as the Huawei nova 4, Huawei’s latest mobile computer sports a minimal metal body, featuring diamond cut chamfered edges and treated to fine ceramic sandblasting, and it sports a very desirable “full-screen” display.
By “full-screen,” it merely means it has very narrow bezels, but I suspect it is not nearly as narrow as the new Razer Blade Stealth. It is thin too, coming in at just 14.9 mm and mind you, that number is the thickest part of the body, and it tips the scales at mere 1.28 kilograms (2.82 lbs). The display is a 13-inch IPS item that offers 178 degrees wide viewing angle in 3:2 aspect ratio. The display also packs 2,160 x 1,440 pixels to result in, if anyone care to know, 200 ppi.
Located at the top of the display is a 1 MP web cam and it has a dedicated power button integrated with fingerprint sensor. Buried inside the chassis is the a choice of 8th-generation, AKA Whiskey Lake, Intel Core i5-8265U or i7-8565U processor, 8 GB LPDDR3 2133 MHz RAM, 256 or 512 GB NVMe PCIe SSD, Intel UHD Graphics/NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU with 2 GB GDDR5 VRAM. It is not fan-less like the higher end MateBook X Pro, though; instead it has a proprietary fan-based cooling setup called Shark Fin Fan 2.0 – so-called due to its shark fin-like design.
With this cooling system, a dual fan setup separates the two heat sources, namely the CPU and the GPU, for a more efficient heat dissipation. Software is also use to aid in monitoring temperature to enable efficient heat removable. Overall, the cooling system produces 25 percent more air volume, while specially designed dual fan linkage is said to reduce noise by as much as 3 decibels over traditional fans, said Huawei.
Other features include dual-band WiFi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, 2×2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0 (it also supports 4.2, 4.1, 3.0 and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR), a 3.5 mm audio jack, two USB-C ports (one of which has DisplayPort support), dual digital microphone, dual speaker system, a 41.838 Wh lithium polymer battery and a couple of sensors, including light and hall sensor.
And there’s apparently, built-in NFC to enable Huawei devices to share files with the MateBook 13. Additional, the battery also gets fast charging, affording it up to 2.5 hours of use with just 15 minutes of charging. Other than the NFC and possibly, the fast charging, the Huawei MateBook 13 is just another laptop and it rightly is because, the starting price is just 5,399 yuan which works out to be around US$780, according to today’s going rate. Now, that’s what I call affordable. Pre-order for the Huawei MateBook 13 Laptop is on-going in China.
All images courtesy of Huawei.
