HUAWEI MATEBOOK X LAPTOP

HUAWEI MATEBOOK X LAPTOP REVIEW: MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN USEFUL

A throwback to the bad old days of Windows laptops

When I first laid eyes on Huawei’s MateBook X, I was smitten. Lust at first sight. This Windows 10 laptop wastes no space around its 13-inch screen and full-width keyboard. It weighs almost nothing, and is barely thick enough to fit a headphone jack. If beauty is defined by efficiency, which I think it is, then the MateBook X is the most beautiful computer I’ve seen this year.

Looks are just one aspect of what makes a good computer, however, and Huawei still has to prove that it can be as good at making laptops as it has shown itself to be with smartphones. To demonstrate its value, the Chinese company has matched a comprehensive spec sheet with an attractive price on the MateBook X. The laptop starts at $1,099 with an Intel Core i5 processor, 256GB of fast storage, 8GB of RAM, a high-resolution display, and Dolby Atmos sound. The Prestige Gold variant I am reviewing today costs $1,299 and upgrades the CPU to a Core i7 and doubles the SSD storage to half a terabyte. Both options are priced competitively and look absolutely stunning.

It’s almost too good to be true.

The exterior of the MateBook X is all sturdy, handsome aluminum. It has a demure matte finish that contrasts nicely with eye-catching chamfers along the edges of the machine and around the touchpad, keyboard, and power button. I doubt everyone will love the extra touch of bling from Huawei — the edge highlights on the MateBook are polished to a mirror finish — but it does give the laptop’s design some intrigue and character. The overall build quality of the MateBook X is worthy of this laptop’s flagship status. It is tough and rigid, the display is very well protected, and I’m especially impressed by the total absence of keyboard flex from such an exceedingly thin device.

Other than its lean looks, the keyboard is probably my favorite thing about the MateBook X. It doesn’t compromise on layout, offering large, well-spaced, and properly arranged plastic-capped keys spanning the full width of the laptop. It also doesn’t shortchange me on key travel, which is positively luxurious compared to Apple’s practically flat butterfly keyboards in the newest generations of MacBook and MacBook Pro. I’d rank Lenovo’s subtly concave keys on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon as my current favorite laptop keyboard, but Huawei isn’t far behind.

The one thing I dislike about the MateBook’s keyboard is its uneven backlight, which fails to illuminate each key in a uniform fashion. The stem of the Y key is darker than the rest of it, the top left of the G isn’t as bright as the bottom right, and the O isn’t a perfect circle of light. For such an otherwise spiffy design, using the MateBook X in the dark feels like I’m typing on an especially filthy keyboard where dirt buildup is blocking the light.

Things go from imperfectly good to almost perfectly bad when you move from the keyboard to the trackpad. The chronic issue of unresponsive and misbehaving Windows touchpads seemed to have abated in recent times (thanks to laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and Microsoft’s Surface devices), but it’s back with a vengeance on the Huawei MateBook X. This is nominally a Windows Precision touchpad, but it behaves nothing like it. Steering the cursor on this computer is like trying to guide a drunk person home. I often have to perform multiple swipes across the extra-wide surface of the pad to get the pointer to move just a few pixels — only to find my next swipe driving it halfway across the screen. It’s unreliable and unpredictable, and therefore deeply unpleasant to use.