This year’s Mobile World Congress will definitely feature some great smartphones, but Huawei has decided to showcase a Windows laptop before unveiling its flagship mobiles.
While the P20 is scheduled for a release in March, the company has taken the opportunity at MWC 2018 to announce their all-new MateBook X Pro.
The MateBook X Pro (2018) is the successor to the MateBook X launched last year, and looks strikingly familiar to Apple’s MacBook Pro, with an aluminum body that’s available in “mystic silver” or “space grey”, and features a chiclet keyboard paired with a large trackpad. The major attraction of the device, according to Huawei, is the fact that they’ve actually managed to fit in a 14-inch 3K LTPS screen into the body of a traditional 12-inch laptop.
The MateBook X Pro comes with a massive 91% screen to body ratio, along with a 178-degree viewing angle range. Considering this design, the webcam had to be placed somewhere other than the top of the screen. Huawei chose to hide it in the keyboard. The company emphasized on the privacy factor as the webcam is hidden under a key in the Function row. “It’s hidden away so you can be completely comfortable with your privacy concerns over cameras – just pop it up when you want to use it.” Though we can’t say it’s the most flattering angle to shoot you from.
Under the hood, the laptop comes with the choice of the latest 8th-gen Intel i5 or i7 processors, with LPDDR3 RAM that goes up to 16GB. The laptop also comes equipped with the Nvidia MX150 GPU. As for the I/O, the MateBook X Pro has a Thunderbolt 3 port, two USB-C ports, a USB-A port, and a 3.5mm jack. All this, inside a frame that is 16.6mm at its thickest and 4.9mm at its thinnest point, while weighing just 1.33kg.
For fans of the Windows Hello feature, the power button on the MateBook Pro X doubles up as a fingerprint sensor as well. According to Huawei, this will start and securely log into Windows from cold in under eight seconds. Additionally, the device will also cater to the sound enthusiasts, considering the device comes with full support for Dolby’s Atmos sound system. The laptop has four speakers – two treble speakers at the back and two bass speakers at the front.
Apart from the new laptop, Huawei also announced three new MediaPad M5 Android tablets. One of these come with an 8.4in screen while the other two feature a 10.8in screen, including a “Pro” model that ships with a stylus. All three tablets are said to have 2K resolution LCD screens, Harman Kardon speakers and at least 10 hours of battery for video playback. They are said to be powered by EMUI 8.0 based on Android Oreo, with the 2 larger variants also capable of attaching to a keyboard case and presenting a desktop-like Android experience for productivity.
The MateBook X Pro will be available in three variants:
- 1899 Euro (~$2234): Core i7, 16GB DRAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, MX 150
- 1699 Euro (~$2088): Core i5, 8 GB DRAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, MX 150
- 1499 Euro (~$1842): Core i5, 8 GB DRAM, 256GB NVMe SSD
The MateBook X Pro is said to be coming in Q2 2018, with the first markets to be China, US, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Nordic countries.
