That is the Huawei MateBook 14 2024 ushering the lineup into the OLED realm. It is a stable 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 quicker 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 contemporary 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 good. The Huawei emblem on the lid is the one ingredient of curiosity. We just like the understated look and suppose it fits this machine effectively.
It is also fairly mild at 1.31kg and skinny at 14.5mm.
If you open the lid, you are greeted by the stunning 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 lately reviewed – there is a typical digital camera within the prime bezel right here.
Show, keyboard, digital camera, and audio system
The largest motive to get the MateBook 14 2024 is the OLED show. It is a large 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 era 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 facet ratio, 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 protection, and 95% protection of the Adobe RGB. These are wonderful numbers for photograph and video work.
The panel is able to operating as excessive as 120Hz and can toggle between 60Hz and 120Hz relying on the content material.
We have at all times praised Huawei for its wonderful 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 quite a lot of different gamuts.
We measured round 460 nits of SDR brightness (slightly 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 stable 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 everyday Huawei keyboard with wonderful 1.5mm key journey, a terrific format, a two-row Enter key, and a backlight with two phases. 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 wonderful 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 current Huawei laptops we have seen. What we do not like is the plastic floor – Huawei ought to’ve gone with glass at this value level.
The floor is not as clean in your finger sliding. Gestures work okay however the expertise is lackluster whenever you’ve turn out to be accustomed to glass.
The facility button is in its normal place within the higher proper nook. It homes a capacitive fingerprint scanner with caching – so it can boot up and log you in with a single press.
That is the one supported Home windows Howdy biometric on this laptop computer – there isn’t any IR digital camera for face scanning.
There’s a terrific collection of ports however with one enormous disadvantage – no Thunderbolt 4. This omission could possibly 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 aspect of the machine. There is a single USB-A plug (3.2 Gen 1) on the opposite aspect. It could make for a much more versatile machine to have seen a second USB-C on this aspect, however alas.
Ports
The 1080p digital camera 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 gives a myriad of digital backgrounds for the digital camera, in addition to a Magnificence filter, auto-centering, and the power to simulate that you are looking on the digital camera 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 stable output. There’s even a greater than affordable layer of bass beneath, making this an excellent laptop computer for media consumption.
Efficiency, battery life
The Huawei MateBook 14 2024 ships with a selection 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 couple 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 a 1TB PCIe 4.0 unit with wonderful efficiency.
Geekbench and disk velocity
We carried out our normal 1-hour stress take a look at of the MateBook 14 2024 to see the way it handles the Core Extremely 7 155H in apply. 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, operating the identical 155H. Whereas these machines shortly throttled to mid-20W, the MateBook 14 2024 held its processor at 40W all through the take a look at.
That is about 2.5GHz with out a problem. The followers have been on for your entire take a look at however are barely audible in a typical workplace setting. This can be a completely ample 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 take a look at and 9 hours and 10 minutes within the searching take a look at – greater than stable showings.
Conclusion
The Huawei MateBook 14 2024 is a superb laptop computer for on a regular basis use. It is mild, 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 one of the best worth within the phase, and one of the best geared up with the Core Extremely 7 155H and an OLED show.
Nonetheless, Intel’s Lunar Lake chips promise enormous features in battery endurance, because of TSMC’s 3nm course of. On the efficiency aspect, Lunar Lake must be quicker, although it isn’t as drastic – it is largely about effectivity.
AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 300 collection are each quicker 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 dearer laptops. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus ARM-based chips are much more environment friendly, seemingly simply as quick because the Core Extremely 7 155H, but in addition obtainable for across the similar cash. So these are the more than likely units to show away the MateBook 14 2024 purchaser.
There’s at all times a greater deal across the nook. There are at all times reductions ready to occur. However for proper right here and proper now, the MateBook 14 2024 presents wonderful worth for cash and makes for a terrific candidate in your essential 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 help and 120Hz refresh price
- Huawei’s helpful 3:2 facet ratio
- Good battery life – 10 hours of video streaming
- Comparatively mild for a 14-inch machine
- 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 provide 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 Howdy, simply fingerprint