Huawei’s latest MateBook X Pro isn’t a redesign from any of its predecessors, and while that makes for a great overall experience, it does leave the webcam located in the keyboard.
Huawei’s MateBook X Pro has long been one of my favorite consumer PCs. It’s thin, it’s light, it’s powerful, and it’s just awesome. It was always the company’s top-end PC, taking a swing at Apple’s MacBook Pro. Now, here we are in 2021 and not much has changed. There’s a new color called Emerald Green that I’m absolutely in love with, and it’s a nice departure from the previous gray color. And of course, it uses 11th-generation Intel processors, but instead of dedicated graphics this time, it uses Intel’s integrated Iris Xe graphics. The chassis itself hasn’t changed, and there’s still no webcam in the display. Indeed, Huawei’s solution for a privacy guard was to actually put a pop-up camera in the keyboard. If you go back to my review of the original MateBook X Pro back in 2018, you’ll find the specs almost identical to the specs of the 2021 model, down to the millimeter and gram. Nothing has changed in terms of the actual hardware, not that that’s a bad thing. It’s not like the design itself feels dated. It still weighs in at just one and a third kilograms, and it’s 14.6mm thin. Plus, there’s a new Emerald Green color. It kind of reminds me of Microsoft’s Cobalt Blue color from its Surface Laptop lineup, a color that it just killed off with the Surface Laptop 4. I’m a huge fan of bold, beautiful colors like this, and I feel like it’s something that few laptop makers take advantage of. Everyone sticks to that boring gunmetal gray color; it’s like black on smartphones. Microsoft is moving toward more subtle colors in its Surface lineup. I’m really happy to see bolder colors from Huawei, although I’m not surprised that the Shenzhen firm can innovate with colors and design. I visited its design center in Paris a few years back and they work on some cool stuff. The lid has the word Huawei stamped in it with silver letters, giving it a bit of extra flash. It’s different from the petal logo that was on the original version. While this is quite a thin PC, it doesn’t sacrifice USB Type-A. Indeed, that’s actually one of the « Pro » aspects of it that separates it from the regular MateBook X, which is USB Type-C only. You’ll find the lone USB Type-A port on the right side of the PC. On the left side, there are dual Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack. Oddly, Huawei doesn’t actually describe them as Thunderbolt on its spec sheet, but the page is very clear that each port supports dual 4K monitors and 40Gbps data transfer speeds. In other words, they\re Thunderbolt 4 ports. I love the look and feel of the Emerald Green MateBook X Pro. I can’t go on about the color enough. It really stands out from the pack, and it’s bound to catch some eyeballs if you’re out and about with it. The screen has not changed since the first generation model. It’s that same 13.9-inch 3000×2000 touchscreen, and actually, touch support is another feature that made it « Pro » over the MateBook X back in the day. It’s got a 91% screen-to-body ratio, because the bezels are just so tiny on all four sides. Indeed, there isn’t even a webcam in any of the bezels. Indeed, the bezels are about as small as they can possibly get. Huawei also just makes good screens.
