But that’s not all, because by cutting down on bezels, Huawei had room for a bigger screen, so you get a high-res 13.9-inch 3000 x 2000 touchscreen while most competing systems cap out at 13.3-inches. At that resolution, and with the screen’s seriously good color reproduction, pictures, movies and anything else you’re viewing really pop.Huawei even equipped the X Pro with a neat trick for how it hides its webcam. Without a big bezel above or below the screen, Huawei stashed the webcam inside one of its keys, smack dab in the middle of the function row. When the keyboard’s backlight is on, it’s pretty noticeable, because it’s the only key that doesn’t light up. But aside from that, you normally kind of just forget it’s there, which is exactly what a webcam should do when you’re not using it. Another bonus effect of the webcam’s location, is that when it’s depressed and pointed into the guts of the system, there’s no chance it can be hacked and used to spy on you unknowingly.
The viewpoint of the webcam isn’t ideal, but if you don’t video chat with people very often, it’s the perfect place to make a webcam disappear.
Now for all you Mac die-hards, the fact that the X Pro doesn’t run macOS might be a deal breaker. But that’s really Apple’s fault for not letting other companies license its operating system, as I suspect Huawei may have wanted to ape that too. But I’m not really bothered, because Huawei did something just as good when it partnered with Microsoft to install Windows 10 Pro Signature Edition on the Matebook X Pro. There’s no bloat or added bullshit whatsoever.
There’s two USB-C ports on right along with a handy headset jack, with an extra USB-A port on the other side.
As for the specs, the X Pro has more than enough oomph thanks to a 8th-Gen Intel Core i5 or i7 CPU, up to 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD storage, and even a Nvidia MX 150 GPU if you want it. When compared to competing systems like the recently revamped XPS 13 and the LG Gram 15, our fully loaded X Pro review unit finished with top scores across every one of our standard benchmarks, which includes browser performance in WebXPRT 2015, a picture resizing test in Photoshop, and Geekbench 4. You can’t quite say the same for the X Pro’s graphics performance, as its MX 150 is more of a step up over standard integrated graphics, as opposed to something built to game on.
The fingerprint reader built into the power button lets you turn the X Pro on and sign in to Windows with a single touch.
Even the X Pro’s battery life is pretty stellar, with it lasting 11 hours and 7 minutes on our standard rundown test. That’s better than both the Dell’s XPS 13, and bigger systems like the 15-inch LG Gram, which lasted 9:28 and 10:39 respectively.One small quirk that I don’t quite get is that by default—the X Pro’s SSD came formatted into two partitions: a smaller 80GB section and a larger 380 GB division. It’s weird because there’s only one physical drive, so the system is just cutting up its storage in two for no real reason. That said, it is very minor issue.
Really, trying to pick out flaws of the MateBook X Pro isn’t an easy task. Regardless of how shamelessly you think Huawei has copied Apple’s formula, it has absolutely improved on that template in a number of very important ways.With a starting price of $1,200, the X Pro is actually $100 cheaper than a similarly equipped 12-inch MacBook or a 13-inch MacBook Pro, while offering more ports, a newer 8th-gen CPU, a larger, higher resolution screen, and of course, that nifty pop-up webcam. And on the high-end things look even better for the X Pro, because for $1,500, you get twice as much RAM and SSD storage as an equally priced MBP 13, along with discrete graphics from an Nvidia 150MX GPU. Meanwhile, the cheapest Apple laptop with a real GPU is the $2,400 MBP 15, which does offer much better graphics performance, but is overkill for most folks.
After using this system every day for almost a month, I’m actually not sure there’s another daily driver I would rather use. It feels a little weird to say this: But what do you call a laptop that looks like a MacBook Pro, but is actually much better? I guess the answer would be a Matebook.The most demanding, hardcore users need the most powerful laptops on the planet. You probably agree. You probably think we're talking about gamers and gaming laptops.Actually, though, we're talking about work, not play: applications such as computer-aided design (CAD), architecture, engineering, video editing and post production, 3D rendering and animation, virtual reality, and oil and gas exploration. The machines that take these jobs to job sites or conference rooms are mobile workstations—laptops in the top echelon of both CPU and GPU power to crunch through huge datasets and accelerate ultra-complex graphics.
Mobile workstations proudly wear their own brands, such as HP's ZBook and Dell's Precision families. (Lenovo's entries carry their own letter under the company's larger ThinkPad brand—the ThinkPad P series.) They can be breathtakingly expensive, but they can pay for themselves quickly as their users value the time they save. They're built for reliability, capable of running flat-out 24/7. And they're massive overkill for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—mobile workstations are not about spreadsheet recalculations that would take most notebooks a couple of seconds, but CGI effects that would take most notebooks forever.Table stakes for mobile workstation vendors are what are called "ISV certifications." The acronym stands for "Independent Software Vendors"—specialized software companies such as Adobe, Autodesk, Avid, PTC, Siemens PLMS, and Dassault Systemes, who work with the PC makers to guarantee that a given workstation and its graphics adapter, drivers, and other components are optimized for their apps. If you use a particular program in your job, such as Dassault's SolidWorks, look for the proper certification before buying a system.
Is a mobile workstation right for you? Frankly, for most laptop users, the answer is no. But if you work in one of the professional fields mentioned above—or if your job involves waiting for calculations or graphics processing that takes your current notebook many minutes or hours—you can justify the expense and join the elite.Before we get to some of our favorite recent reviews, let's look at some general components and choices you'll face as you shop for a mobile workstation.CPU and RAM. The rule of thumb here is to buy all the processing power you can afford. In the pro mobile workstation market, workstation-grade CPUs are an all-Intel world, centered around its highest-end Core mobile chips and its mobile Xeon processors.
While plenty of good gaming laptops, as long as they have a fast graphics card, can make do with a Core i5, mobile workstation shoppers should head straight for a Core i7 or even a Xeon, with as many cores and threads as are available. Here, you'll want to look at the specific software that you mean to run on the machine for recommendations on what grade of CPU the vendor deems ideal.A few entry-level machines, meant more for showing finished renderings to clients (or the boss) rather than producing the renderings themselves, feature dual-core processors. But most mobile workstations rely on beefy quad-core CPUs, teamed with plenty of memory—16GB is a minimum, with 32GB not uncommon and 64GB a popular ceiling. Again, your software's suggested requirements should be your guide, but erring on the side of more here, especially for demanding applications, is a safe mistake to make. Again, let the software makers' recommendations be your guide.