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Introduction
Huawei and Honor smartphones are having a difficult time outside of China, so it stands to reason that companies are looking for other sources of revenue to keep the ship stable. And with the Windows license secured, laptops are an obvious candidate to fill a part of the gap. But are they competitive enough to get a sizeable share of that market?
We now have the Honor MagicBook 14 for a review and we’re about to see if its real-life performance matches the great value for money promised by its spec sheet.
If the MagicBook 14 looks familiar it’s because it’s primarily a renowned MateBook D 14 laptop but at a slightly lower price. Which means it should offer even better value than the parent company’s offering.
It is already available in Western markets and can be configured with AMD’s Ryzen 5 3500U or 3700U CPUs, both with a TDP of around 15W. While not worth gaming, these processors have already proven to be a solid choice for office work, browsing, and multimedia consumption.
The MagicBook 14 also surprises with an excellent 1080p resolution IPS panel and great sounding stereo speakers. Plus, the laptop features an all-aluminum design and a decent amount of ports. None of those things sounds particularly impressive on their own, but finding them all in this price range (€ 550 to € 600 in Europe) is practically impossible. Let’s see what else this classy working-class hero has to offer.
Design and input devices.
The MagicBook 14 is definitely one of the sturdy types in its class. The entire chassis is made of aluminum, except for the plastic bezels around the display. The downside to that is that the laptop is a bit heavy. 1.4kg isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but it’s definitely not among the lightest laptops of this size, either.
The extra weight, however, comes with extra resistance. We didn’t find any flex points – the area next to the hinge feels hard, the area of the palm rest is stiff, and the center of the keyboard is the only point where the chassis gives way but only after a lot of force is applied.
Even the lid feels stiff enough with minimal flex, while the hinge is perhaps even a little too tight. You cannot open the notebook with one hand, so you should always hold the base when opening it. On the plus side, there is no wobble when the laptop is placed on an unstable surface, the lid can be opened up to 180 degrees, and the base is heavily indented so you can open the lid more easily.
Fully open and fully closed
Other small but cool design options are the beveled edges around the lid, the fingerprint integration with the power button, and of course the built-in pop-up camera in row F. Which in turn has allowed for very bezels. fine. Despite its mid-range position, the laptop really does have a premium, modern feel.
Bezels and camera close-up
The keyboard has good-sized keys with nice comments and clicks. They are also well spaced, and the LED lighting is discreet with two adjustable levels. We felt we were able to reach our normal typing speed, while the sound coming from the keyboard can be more described as a “soft rattle”. The touch panel is responsive, it is a little wider than usual (it gives us a little HP atmosphere), clicky and precise.
We would have appreciated a slightly longer key and the touchpad is quite difficult to press in the upper half. Also, LED lighting could be a little brighter. Of course, this is largely problematic, as we can’t immediately pinpoint a better alternative without going up several market segments.
Finally, let’s talk about the location of the port. The I / O capabilities on the MagicBook 14 are solid and the connectors are evenly distributed on both sides. The left houses the USB-C connector used for charging and data transfer, the USB-A 3.0 connector and the HDMI connector are right next to it.
On the right, you’ll find the 3.5mm audio jack and another USB-A 2.0 port. For the vast majority of users, this port layout should be adequate because the charging cable and HDMI cable will not get in the way when using the laptop with an external monitor and mouse in a confined workspace. We just want the second USB-A port to be 3.0 instead of 2.0.
I / O
Screen and sound
One of the MagicBook 14’s key selling points is the display. And not just because of the slim bezels. The laptop easily stands out from its peers with an excellent 1920 x 1080px IPS LCD panel. We did a quick background check and the display is manufactured by BOE with the model number TV140FHM-NH1. The previous iteration of the device had a similar TV140FHM-NH0 BOE panel, so it’s probably safe to assume that the former is a revision with minor changes.
The display reaches a respectable 277 nits of brightness with high contrast and vivid colors. The matte surface helps with reflectivity and works well in most conditions. Still, if you take it to the park on a bright sunny day, you will start to struggle.
Sound is another great aspect of this laptop. Unlike the previous generation, where the speaker grilles were on either side of the keyboard, this time they are placed at the bottom of the chassis near the edges. And to our surprise, this did not detract from the great audio experience. The sound coming out of the stereo speakers is full, forceful, and even the speech doesn’t sound muffled. Not to mention that it also has solid lows.
Of course, this will also be affected by the surface on which you place the laptop. After all, it is intended for use on a desk, so if you put it on your lap, the sound will be slightly distorted.
Bottom side and speakers
Overall, the multimedia experience on the MagicBook 14 is impressive. The display is excellent for the asking price, while the sound quality and volume are unrivaled at this price point and form factor. We are quite puzzled by the sound coming out of this little chassis.
Battery duration
Honor promises that the MagicBook 14 will last a full day of work away from the plug, which means around 8 hours of normal use. We got similar resistance, but “normal use” is very subjective.
Suffice it to say that for office work, you will get the advertised 8 hours or at least be very close.
Honor was able to fit into a fairly large 56 Wh unit that supports fast charging through the USB-C connector. Honor the markets that the included 65W charger can replenish approximately 46% in just 30 minutes, and our simple 30-minute charge test confirms that claim.
Another interesting thing to note is that the 14-inch version of the MagicBook we’ve reviewed has a larger battery than the 15-inch flavor. So if resistance is what you are looking for it is highly recommended that you choose the smaller model.
Hardware, performance and upgradeability
As we said earlier, the new Honor MagicBook 14 gives you a choice only between AMD CPUs and in markets outside of China and a fairly limited choice between Ryzen 5 3500U and Ryzen 5 3700U.
We got the Ryzen 5 3500U for our review, but we can’t imagine that the overall experience is much different than that of the Ryzen 5 3700U. The Ryzen 5 3500U offers four cores with a 2.2 GHz base clock and a boost of up to 3.7 GHz. There are multiple threads, so you get 8 threads.
The cores are based on the Zen + architecture using the enhanced 12nm manufacturing process. It is a small advance over previous generation 14nm node based CPUs using the original Zen architecture. Performance per clock has been increased a bit, allowing for slightly higher clock speeds while keeping things going at the 15W TDP stadium.
An important side note here is that AMD is about to bring its 15W Zen2 CPUs (4000U series) based on the considerably more efficient 7nm manufacturing process. However, with the current pandemic, it probably won’t be widely available for a few more months at least.
However, that’s a long time in the tech world, so it’s only relevant for those in no rush to get a new machine. And the good news is that the current MagicBook 14 setup is already doing a good job of drilling.
Since the 14-inch model doesn’t have a discrete GPU, the system will be relying on the built-in Radeon RX Vega 8 with eight CUs (512 shaders) and running at 1200MHz.
8GB of DDR4 memory tags, which should be enough for most users, but we wish there was a 16GB configuration available. Unfortunately, you cannot upgrade it yourself as the RAM chip is soldered to the motherboard.
The good news is that this is not the case with storage. There is a standard M.2 device mounted on the latest PCIe NVMe interface. The available storage variants are 256 GB and 512 GB.
So what about system stability and temperatures? We run a standard CPU + GPU stress test for about an hour to verify how the cooling system handles high loads over time. Please note this is not an accurate representation of real life usage. Test the hardware in extreme scenarios that would not normally occur. After all, no one will use 100% of the CPU and GPU for that long.
Using the FurMark stress test tool, we subject the CPU to a 100% hourly write test. The CPU ran at its maximum frequency of 3.7GHz for a time before dropping to 3.0-3.1GHz and remaining there for the remainder of the test. At this point, the CPU temperatures were around 70 ° C.
After an hour passed, we also ran the GPU stress test. At 100% load, the integrated GPU managed to maintain 1200MHz core clock speeds with some minor fluctuations, while temperatures did not exceed 61 ° C.
We can conclude that the design of the cooling system is sufficient for the hardware and can handle extremely high loads for long periods of time without any risk of overheating. The CPU and GPU implementation is also excellent as both chips managed to utilize their full clock speeds. The surface temperature around the keyboard was also more than acceptable.
software
Needless to say, we ran our tests on Windows 10 pre-installed with all the latest drivers and updates installed. Honestly, there’s not much to talk about: the system works smoothly, boots up very quickly, and the fingerprint reader scans your fingertips when you turn on the PC and connects you super fast. There are no problems with the fingerprint or the operating system at all.
Screenshots of the PC Manager application
The only pre-installed third-party software we found is the PC Manager software that can be used to pair your Honor or Huawei smartphone with the NFC and sync your messages, data, and even receive calls from the MagicBook. PC Manager also offers a clean and easy way to keep your device drivers up to date.
It’s definitely refreshing to see an OEM not pre-install a bunch of bloatware and keep things simple with just this app. Sure, it’s debatable if you really need PC Manager, but if you’re involved in the Honor / Huawei ecosystem, you probably want it anyway.
Verdict and alternatives
The Honor MagicBook 14 is a unicorn of some kind. The Chinese manufacturer was able to find a really nice and comfortable place in the laptop market where the device not only outperforms its few rivals, it also outperforms its class.
Surely, if you try hard enough, you can find some good 14-inch laptops for about the same price, whether it’s with good input devices, long battery life, or a nice IPS display. But matching the entire package that is the Honor MagicBook 14 is almost impossible. And that’s before looking for competitive performance, amazing speakers, and great build.
Things that can make you look away include the somewhat heavy chassis (1.4kg), the moderately shallow keyboard, and the fact that it has a USB 2.0 connector on one side. However, if you have € 600 to spend, it will not be easy to find an alternative that is not committed elsewhere.
One of them is the Acer Swift 3 laptop with the new 10th generation Intel chips and a very good IPS panel. But it is even heavier despite its smaller battery and is not as well built as this one. Also, it becomes considerably more expensive when you combine CPU and storage. However, you would get a wider range of connectivity options with Swift 3.
So if you can get an Honor MagicBook 14, you are unlikely to regret your purchase.
Pros
- Premium feel, elegant design, solid construction.
- Very good IPS panel.
- Good price / performance ratio.
- The battery life is excellent and fast charging is a good advantage.
- Loud and great sounding speakers.
Cons
- I / O could be better.
- The keyboard is just a little shallow.
- A little heavy for a 14-inch.
