Huawei first introduced its latest MateBoook X Pro design back during MWC in Barcelona early in 2022, and barely six months later the company came back with another revision of the same machine. 

We say the same machine, because the look of the device is - in broad strokes - largely the same. However, with a new chassis material and finish, and improved core processing power and cooling, the experience is different. 

Our quick take

It's safe to say that - on the whole - the updated MateBook X Pro is a refinement of the original 2022 design. But arguably is the laptop that earlier version should have been. 

The updated magnesium alloy finish gives it a really lovely look and texture, the 14.2-inch display offers vivid but accurate colours and crisp detail, while the speakers elevate the experience. Plus, there's plenty of power here with efficient cooling that it copes with just about any task as long as you don't need something that needs a more powerful dedicated graphics processing unit. 

There's no denying it's an expensive machine, but given the improvements it seems - at least - that it's more worthy of that price tag than its predecessor was. 

Huawei Matebook X Pro 2022 (12th gen) - 4.0 / 5

FORAGAINST
  • Stunning matte soft-touch finish
  • Durable magnesium alloy build
  • Lightweight and slim
  • Great big trackpad
  • Display properties are impressive
  • It's quite expensive
  • Animations and graphics sometimes stutter
  • Battery life fine but not amazing

Design 

  • Magnesium alloy chassis
  • 310 x 221 x 15.6mm - 1.26kg 
  • New Ink Blue colour fusion process

The first thing that struck us about the updated version of 2022's MateBook X Pro was the finish. Because despite having largely the same styling and shape, the latest MateBook model looks and feels quite different to the original aluminium-clad model. 

Huawei replaced that aluminium alloy with a magnesium alloy casing, reducing the weight. The company also finished it with a unique fusion finish in an inky blue colour which has a lovely matte appearance, but also feels unlike most laptop surfaces we've picked up this year. 

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The finishing process used to create this look and feel gives the surface a soft-touch texture that you'd be hard pushed to tell was metal at all. In fact, it's almost plastic-like in texture, except you can tell the laptop is still solid.

It's a really interesting approach, and one that has its practical benefits too. It's lighter than the original version, but also - supposedly - more durable too. Add that to the fact that it's a generally very slim laptop, and it makes it something that's easy to carry around everywhere, and one that'll last.

What's more, it seems to be very resistant to palm grease and fingerprint smudges, rarely picking any up at all, except for that tell-tale shine on the space bar and trackpad once we'd used it for a couple of weeks. 

The hinge moves smoothly when opening and shutting, however, we did have a bit of an issue with the laptop not shutting completely flush every time. It seemed the magnets that keep it shut aren't particularly strong, and so we'd often get to it and it be every so slightly open, particularly on the left side.  

Much of the rest of its design is the same as the earlier 2022 model. That includes the large touch pad below the keyboard which reaches all the way down to the bottom edge, and features support for a number of Huawei-designed gestures like knocking for screenshots and swiping on the left or right of the trackpad to adjust volume and screen brightness. 

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The gestures are very handy, especially  the single finger gestures along the edges. For instance, when wanting to correct a typo you can swipe left or right along the top edge to move the cursor on the screen. Likewise, adjusting the volume or brightness with a swipe up or down the right and left edges respectively is very convenient. 

The only downside to the experience is the strength of the haptic feedback you get from the trackpad when you do it. There's a relatively loud clicking noise which - when we first heard it - threw us off a bit, assuming we'd pressed the trackpad so hard it had actually 'clicked'. It's not subtle feedback at all, and we think it needs dialling down a bit.

Display

  • 14.2-inch 3120 x 2080 OLED LTPS display
  • 90hz refresh rates - 1 billion colour support
  • 500 nits peak brightness 
  • 10-point multitouch 

Like the design, the display features many of the same highlights as the earlier 2022 model. That means you get a 14.2-inch OLED panel with wide colour gamut support, smooth refresh rates, good brightness and skinny bezels. 

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It's sharp too, with a resolution that's higher than QuadHD but not quite up to 4K standards at 3120 x 2080. That also means it's a 3:2 ratio display, giving you lots of surface area space, making it ideal for getting work done and editing photos. 

Its colour performance qualities also aid in that process of editing images and photos. Huawei's built this display with the ability to display 10-bit colour depth (that's over 1 billion colours), while also tuning it to be accurate. 

The panel covers 100 per cent of both sRGB and DCI-P3 colour gamuts, and you can switch between them depending on which you might need to be working with at any given time. What's more, Huawei also says every laptop display is calibrated and checked before it leaves the factory to make sure it meets the standards required. 

The end result of all of that is a very good screen, and one that's very versatile. We used it for a number of tasks, and it's equally adept at all of it. For simple writing and document editing, the crispness of the display mean text was clean with smooth curves and fine lines. Likewise, its colour performance meant it was an ideal panel for tweaking photos and images in our image editing app (Affinity Photo). 

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What that means is that it's a canvas which aids your work rather than acts as an obstruction. Viewing angles are strong too, with the image on screen remaining consistent whether you're looking at it head on, or from an angle. So whether you're sharing the screen with someone else, or needing to push the display back at an angle, your visual experience won't suffer. It's even relatively good at handling reflections and ambient bright lighting thanks to its magnetically-controlled anti-reflective layer. 

When you add its colour, brightness and contrast properties to its loud six speaker system, it even makes for a great media consumption experience. Watching shows on Disney+, Netflix and the like was genuinely a joy.

We didn't feel like we were compromising by choosing to watch our shows on the Matebook X Pro, thanks to that combination of great visuals and great sound. Plus, with fan noise being generally very quiet, there was no competing with the laptop itself to hear either. 

With 90Hz refresh rates you can have a smooth experience in terms of animations too, but it's not enabled by default. You need to go into the setting and switch that on. The same is true of the HDR feature, which isn't something that we think is really worth doing. 90Hz does help with things like the cursor moving on screen quickly, but most animations in the system aren't fast or smooth enough to take advantage. 

The other minor thing worth noting about the display: its surface measures 9H hardness, making it durable and resistant to scratches. 

Performance and ports

  • Intel Core i7 12th gen, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
  • 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 2x USB-C 3.2 ports, 3.5mm input
  • 60Wh battery, 90W charging
  • Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2

While Huawei doesn't really market this as a do-everything, all-powerful creative machine, there's plenty of power here that it should be able to get any task done with the minimum of fuss. 

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As mentioned at the beginning, the previous 11th generation Core i7 processor has been replaced with the newer 12th gen version. You also get a solid 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and a 1TB SSD as standard. That goes some way at least to explaining the high price. 

That combination of a more traditional Intel Core processor, with Intel Iris Xe graphics means you get that balance between efficiency, performance and battery, without losing compatibility with all of your most used apps and services. 

What we found was that the laptop could handle most tasks we demanded of it. Even editing large 32MB files didn't seem to be too much of a trouble for it, although there were times we felt like the experience could be more responsive and speedy. Launching into the multi-window view showing running apps and desktops showed a little stuttering, as did zooming in and out of images during the image editing process. 

It's not always lightning quick and stutter-free then, but at the same time, we feel the right balance has been struck. Because of the upgraded internal cooling and the efficiency of the internals, the fans weren't needed all that often. And even when we did kick the laptop into performance mode and it got a little warm, the fans were barely audible. They're super quiet. 

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And - while it still retains that sleek and slim build - Huawei has been able to add more efficient cooling into the body of the new MateBook X Pro. 

Combine all of that with four USB-C ports - with two of those being Thunderbolt 4 capable - and you have the ability to plug in pretty much anything you need. Although, if you still use legacy peripherals that require USB-A connections, you'll obviously still need a dongle for those, as well as for reading memory cards. 

Still, the upside here is that unlike some laptops, you get USB-C ports on both sides. 

You've got everything you need wirelessly too, with support for Wi-Fi 6 and (in some regions) Wi-Fi 6E, for faster connections with minimum latency. We tested it at home with the Eero Pro 6E mesh network, and found it outperformed all of our other Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E products, coming much closer to our theoretical download speed peak. Where our Android and iOS devices might have reached a peak of 400Mbps, the Matebook was a solid 500Mbps, even when connecting to one of the outer network routers, and nowhere near the primary router. 

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In daily performance, then, for tasks like watching movies and videos, you don't get any buffering whatsoever. You click 'play' on your streaming service, and the video just starts. Likewise, app and game downloads are fast.

Battery life is decent enough too. Although, given how long Arm-powered machines like the most recent Macbooks and SQ3-powered Surface machines can go on a full charge, what classes as 'good' battery life is much higher than the 8 hours of use you can get from a full battery on the Huawei Matebook X Pro.

Still, it's good enough that you can just about do a full work day on it with the performance set to an efficient mode, which is does by default when you're away from the charger. The laptop ships with a 90W charger that's about the same size as a phone charger too, so it's easy enough to carry it around with you if you need a top up while you're out and about. 

To recap

It's safe to say that - on the whole - the updated MateBook X Pro is a refinement of the original 2022 design. But arguably it is the laptop that the earlier version should have been in the first place.