That is the Huawei MateBook 14 2024 ushering the lineup into the OLED realm. It is a strong improve over the MateBook 14 2023 and the 450-nit OLED panel that replaces a 300-nit IPS LCD is only one of them. That is additionally the primary stylus-compatible MateBook.
Final yr’s mannequin ran an i7-1360P – this yr’s mannequin packs a extra environment friendly and far sooner Core 7 Extremely 155H.
Huawei additionally made this yr’s mannequin lighter than its predecessor.
The laptop computer ships with a 65W charger with a built-in USB-C cable, and you’ll spec the machine with an Extremely 5 125H or Core Extremely 7 155H with 16GB of RAM, and both 512GB or 1TB of storage.
Design and construct high quality
The MateBook 14 2024 has a basic if barely forgettable design. Ours is the Inexperienced mannequin, which might be the best way to go – it is recent and fascinating in a sea of silver and gray machines. Your different possibility is exactly gray.
The laptop computer is product of steel, which is sweet. The Huawei emblem on the lid is the one ingredient of curiosity. We just like the understated look and assume it fits this machine nicely.
It is also fairly gentle at 1.31kg and skinny at 14.5mm.
Once you open the lid, you are greeted by the beautiful OLED show with fairly thick black bezels, the inexperienced color-matched deck, and the black keyboard. The preloaded inexperienced wallpaper completes the black and inexperienced theme.
There aren’t any speaker grilles on the deck of the laptop computer – these are on the underside – and also you get no refined webcam answer like on the Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 we just lately reviewed – there is a typical digicam within the prime bezel right here.
Show, keyboard, digicam, and audio system
The most important motive to get the MateBook 14 2024 is the OLED show. It is a massive step up from the nicest LCDs round and a quantum leap in comparison with the 300-nit IPS LCD you’d discover on the earlier technology MateBook 14.
This is not the identical OLED panel you discover on the MateBook X Professional 2024 – that one is each of upper decision and brighter – however you are still getting a pointy 2880x1920px touchscreen with Huawei’s staple 3:2 side ratio, 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 protection, and 95% protection of the Adobe RGB. These are glorious numbers for photograph and video work.
The panel is able to working as excessive as 120Hz and can toggle between 60Hz and 120Hz relying on the content material.
We have all the time praised Huawei for its glorious Show Supervisor app (right-click on the desktop, then extra choices for the outdated context menu) because it permits you to select between P3, sRGB, and a wide range of different gamuts.
We measured round 460 nits of SDR brightness (a bit decrease within the heart) and a excessive of 550 nits in HDR mode. These are removed from the five hundred+ nit MateBook X Professional 2024 (almost 1000 nits in HDR), however nonetheless strong numbers.
The contrasty OLED show seems to be much better than your common LCD even at barely decrease comparable brightness. PWM flickering is a matter on OLED panels and extra delicate customers might discover some flickering at decrease brightness.
The MateBook 14 2024 has the standard Huawei keyboard with glorious 1.5mm key journey, an amazing structure, a two-row Enter key, and a backlight with two levels. The one factor lacking here’s a Numpad, although it is a rarity on compact laptops.
We have lengthy discovered Huawei and Honor keyboards to be glorious for long-term use and the MateBook 14 2024 isn’t any exception.
The trackpad is an effective dimension, although not almost as spectacular as that on the latest Huawei laptops we have seen. What we do not like is the plastic floor – Huawei ought to’ve gone with glass at this worth level.
The floor is not as clean on your finger sliding. Gestures work okay however the expertise is lackluster while you’ve grow to be accustomed to glass.
The facility button is in its standard place within the higher proper nook. It homes a capacitive fingerprint scanner with caching – so it’s going to boot up and log you in with a single press.
That is the one supported Home windows Whats up biometric on this laptop computer – there isn’t any IR digicam for face scanning.
There’s an amazing collection of ports however with one large disadvantage – no Thunderbolt 4. This omission might be a dealbreaker some, so maintain it in thoughts.
There is a USB-C port (knowledge, charging, and DisplayPort), USB-A port (3.2 Gen 1), HDMI, and a 3.5mm audio jack on the left facet of the machine. There is a single USB-A plug (3.2 Gen 1) on the opposite facet. It could make for a much more versatile system to have seen a second USB-C on this facet, however alas.
Ports
The 1080p digicam is centered within the prime bezel of the laptop computer. It is solely okay when it comes to high quality. Huawei’s PC Supervisor app offers a myriad of digital backgrounds for the digicam, in addition to a Magnificence filter, auto-centering, and the flexibility to simulate that you are looking on the digicam or flip it off on a system stage.
Digicam
There are two audio system on the underside of the MateBook 14 2024. They provide surprisingly loud and strong output. There’s even a greater than cheap layer of bass beneath, making this an excellent laptop computer for media consumption.
Efficiency, battery life
The Huawei MateBook 14 2024 ships with a alternative of Intel Core Extremely 5 125H or a Core Extremely 7 155H (in our unit) – these are final yr’s 7nm Meteor Lake, that are simply now being changed by Intel’s newest Lunar Lake processors. The 155H has a complete of 16 cores with 6 efficiency cores with a peak clock of 4.8GHz, 8 environment friendly cores, and a pair of low-power effectivity cores. There’s 16 GB of RAM regardless of the model, and you’ll have both 512 GB or 1 TB of storage.
Graphics are dealt with by the 8-core Arc GPU with a peak clock of two.25GHz.
The SSD on our laptop computer is a 1TB PCIe 4.0 unit with glorious efficiency.
Geekbench and disk velocity
We carried out our standard 1-hour stress check of the MateBook 14 2024 to see the way it handles the Core Extremely 7 155H in observe. The laptop computer had no points cooling the processor beneath intense load and carried out notably higher than the Huawei MateBook X Professional 2024 with the Core Extremely 9 185H and the Honor MagicBook Artwork 14, working the identical 155H. Whereas these machines shortly throttled to mid-20W, the MateBook 14 2024 held its processor at 40W all through the check.
That is about 2.5GHz with out a difficulty. The followers had been on for your entire check however are barely audible in a typical workplace atmosphere. This can be a completely enough laptop computer for workplace work and may simply deal with some extra demanding duties like photograph and video modifying, and even light-to-moderate 1080p gaming.
Thermals
The MateBook 14 2024 comes with a big 70Wh battery – the identical dimension because the MateBook X Professional 2024, and 15% larger than the 60Wh contained in the Honor MagicBook Artwork 14. We ran two checks on this laptop computer – a YouTube video loop at 400 nits and 80dB quantity, and a browser loop at 400 nits. The MateBook 14 2024 managed a formidable 10 hours and 20 minutes within the streaming check and 9 hours and 10 minutes within the shopping check – greater than strong showings.
Conclusion
The Huawei MateBook 14 2024 is a wonderful laptop computer for on a regular basis use. It is gentle, well-made, and really well-equipped. You get a robust Intel Meteor Lake processor, 16 GB of RAM, as much as 1 TB of storage, nice ports, and a very good OLED show.
This configuration will set you again £1,199 (£999 on the time of this text) or €1,350, which is a bit lower than mainstream rivals just like the Asus Zenbook 14, Acer Swift Go 14, or the Lenovo ThinkPad E14. The 13-inch Apple MacBook Air is €1,530 with 512 GB storage and €1,760 with a terabyte SSD. That makes the MateBook 14 2024 the perfect worth within the phase, and the perfect outfitted with the Core Extremely 7 155H and an OLED show.
Nevertheless, Intel’s Lunar Lake chips promise large positive aspects in battery endurance, because of TSMC’s 3nm course of. On the efficiency facet, Lunar Lake must be sooner, although it isn’t as drastic – it is largely about effectivity.
AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 300 sequence are each sooner and extra environment friendly than the Meteor Lake chip contained in the MateBook 14 2024, however they’re additionally fairly new and are available in costlier laptops. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus ARM-based chips are much more environment friendly, possible simply as quick because the Core Extremely 7 155H, but in addition obtainable for across the identical cash. So these are the almost definitely gadgets to show away the MateBook 14 2024 purchaser.
There’s all the time a greater deal across the nook. There are all the time reductions ready to occur. However for proper right here and proper now, the MateBook 14 2024 presents glorious worth for cash and makes for an amazing candidate on your important moveable laptop computer.
Huawei will begin delivering the MateBook 14 2024 within the second a part of October.
Execs
- Above 400-nit OLED touchscreen with HDR assist and 120Hz refresh fee
- Huawei’s helpful 3:2 side ratio
- Good battery life – 10 hours of video streaming
- Comparatively gentle for a 14-inch system
- Nice port choice – USB-C, two USB-A’s, HDMI
- Intel Core Extremely 7 155H with thermal headroom
- Recent in Inexperienced
Cons
- No Thunderbolt 4 is inexusable
- Intel-only, rivals supply higher efficiency
- And, it is Intel’s last-gen Meteor Lake, whereas Lunar Lake is now on sale
- Plastic trackpad is a letdown
- No face login Home windows Whats up, simply fingerprint
