Gadgetory

Huawei has been making smartphones for a while now but there are a fairly new competitor in the whole laptop space in the era of Ultra portables and larger beefier workhorses it's hard to stand out from those that have been doing this for so long but maybe the newcomer can bring some real innovation and inspire a little more competition in this very stale market though not without taking some cues from some of the best in the class i'm rob rosenberger TechnoBuffalo and i'm here to answer a very simple question is the huawei mate book X Pro an incredibly compelling laptop that's worth your attention or just yet another MacBook Pro ripoff first off if you have not seen my review of the Dell XPS 13 I did just a few weeks ago click that link down below and check that video out it's an ultra portable from dowel that is very similar to the make book X Pro in a lot of ways and we've gotten so many requests to review this laptop and I understand why on paper it's a no compromise machine it's bringing the features and specs the device that is future-proof but also hangs on to a little bit of the past for convenience sake the main book X Pro comes in at just under three pounds and it's made out of an all aluminum material that feels very premium it's built extremely well though there's no getting around the fact that this thing looks almost like a carbon copy of a MacBook Pro but what Apple's high-end laptop is missing in some areas the mate book X Pro has specifically when it comes to ports there are two USB type-c ports on this machine with one of them being Thunderbolt 3 compatible and on the other side yes that is a full size USB a port to be honest in my two weeks of testing I use the port only a handful of times though I will say just knowing that I had it there gave me a real peace of mind and it saved me the frustration of having to dig through my backpack to find that type a to type C dongle honestly I really appreciate this best of both worlds approach and despite what other manufacturers may say I don't think it took away from the design or added any unnecessary thickness another thing I appreciate about the mate book X Pro is that almost bezel is display the computer has a 91% screen to body ratio that gives you lots of room to navigate around and take advantage of all that screen resolution the display is not 4k it comes in just under at a resolution of 3000 by 2000 so it's more like 3k but it gets very bright it's got excellent color reproduction and it's also got a touch screen which is super nice and convenient for the times that you need it movies games web browsing everything looks really good on this display though you will notice one thing is missing and that's the webcam while we did something special with the camera placement on the mate book X Pro instead of putting it under the screen or doing a notch design up at the top the webcam lives built into a dedicated key on the keyboard simply press down on that key and the camera pops up and it's ready to use it's definitely something that I've never seen done before and it's nice for those conscious of their design and especially in this day and age their privacy but I just have to say it to the angle flat out sucks and there's absolutely no way to adjust it whoever came lives in a mechanical switch you can either have it open or closed there's no in-between also if you are going to use that webcam you're going to need to sit way far back or okay a considerable distance away to be in decent view of that whopping one megapixel camera sensor okay so I'm a little bitter on that camera placement but the rest of the keyboard is actually fantastic like it's so good that I did not want to stop typing on it the keys are a chiclet style and they're very comfortable to type on and it reminds me of that old MacBook Pro style keyboard which is a very good thing there's a good amount of key travel and the entire keyboard just feels very spacious it's also spill proof but luckily I haven't had to test that yet the same story also goes to the trackpad below it's very spacious it's really smooth for navigating around the OS it's got multi-touch support and it's also significantly bigger than what you see on other laptops of this size and after using this thing for a while I really came to appreciate that extra trackpad space there's also a Windows hello compatible fingerprint reader built into the power button right above the keyboard there's not much to say about this it comes standard it works really well and it's a convenient and secure way to unlock and lock your machine so for a laptop that's been such a strong performer overall I have to say I was pretty disappointed by the built-in speakers especially after how much huawei has been hyping them up to the companies credit they are technically dolby atmos certified and they do get very loud but after listening to them for quite a while they honestly are comparable to every other pair of laptop speakers I've heard don't get me wrong they're definitely good enough for listening to music or watching YouTube videos but if you really want to sit down and watch something for an extended period of time or really listen to music do yourself a favor get a pair of good headphones or a Bluetooth speaker it's gonna be much better than the built-in speakers when it comes to performance the mate book X Pro can definitely hold its own against others in this class it has Intel's 8th gen processor inside and our unit specifically is packed with an i7 8550 you 16 gigs of ram and a 512 gigabyte nvme SSD you're getting an i7 though it is worth noting that it's running at a slower clock speed of 1.8 gigahertz but honestly for a thin and light laptop you're not going to get desktop level power but if you keep your expectations realistic you'll be really happy with the performance you are able to get out of the sink and it's an i7 so it can handle multitasking really well day-to-day usage like the standard sub email web browsing watching videos it's gonna run on this machine without any issues it can also handle 4k video editing in premiere at full quality playback without dropping frames which is nice and you can even do a little gaming well sort of our review unit has the dedicated GPU built in it's an Nvidia MX 150 and it does not come close to delivering the power of a desktop level GPU but having 2 gigs of dedicated video ram built into this laptop especially a laptop of the size is really nice don't expect any miracles here but turn down your settings to medium or low depending on the game and you can actually get games running at a very playable framerate I know many of you are curious on the battery life on the mate book X Pro and I'll just say that I came in right at the middle of the pack which is totally fine I got a very respectable 7 to 8 hours of battery life on average during my testing no real need to stress about being near an outlet but you won't be able to make it a few days with a charge during the two weeks I used it I was able to make it through an average day of work or a day of classes at school just fine as long as I wasn't doing anything super CPU intensive as a complete package the mate book X Pro is giving you a lot to consider you'll need to get over the fact it looks like a MacBook Pro because yeah it totally does but once you do you can enjoy a beautifully designed and a really well-made machine it's a very compelling package but there's a catch pricing and availability is a little up in the air right now while weigh says this machine is coming to the US but we don't know when we also don't know what the exact pricing will be when it does come from overseas the main book X Pro is price over in Europe at 1500 euros which is about equivalent to eighteen hundred US dollars just so you know this is in no way an insignificant amount of money and you're getting an ultrabook that definitely has some shortcomings but as a second attempt from a newcomer in this space I say give it some serious thought in consideration it is by no means the laptop for everybody but for those looking for a midsize lightweight laptop that has a little pep in its step you'll be very happy so what do you guys think of Huawei's latest laptop is the camera placement on this thing innovative and very interesting or is it annoying and looking at you from the worst possible and go leave a comment down below and let us know we got a lot of requests to review this lab to have some curious to hear what you guys think also be sure to subscribe to the second Buffalo YouTube channel make sure you don't miss any of our upcoming videos John's got a really cool video coming out soon where he finally reveals the specs and design of his dream phone it is awesome you definitely do not want to miss that one I appreciate you guys watching this video thanks so much for watching I am Robert Rosenthal aka that laptop guy from TechnoBuffalo I'll see you guys in the next one