Huawei MateBook X Pro Signature Edition Thin & Light Laptop, 13.9" 3K Touch, 8th Gen i5-8250U, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 3:2 Aspect ratio, Office 365 Personal Included, Mystic Silver - Mach-W19B

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To preface this review, Ive been using this laptop for about a week now. I bought it from the Microsoft Store not Amazon, in case youre wondering why it doesnt say "verified purchase". GOOD: - Design: This is a very good looking laptop. The dark grey color is pretty much identical to the "space gray" that Apple uses on their MacBooks. - Battery life: excellent. Watching youtube, editing documents, and other light productivity work yields about 8-10 hours of use. - Display: Very bright and easy to use outdoors. Not quite as bright as the new MacBook Pros, but close. Color accuracy is skewed towards the reds, but that can be fixed with calibration. - Keyboard: MUCH better than Apples new keyboards. Very quiet comfy to type on. It feels very similar to the Surface keyboards (which is a good thing) - Speakers: Excellent sound. The bass could be better, but the sound is very clear and can get fairly loud. - The SSD is upgradable. Not easily upgradable, but its not soldered in, which is a plus. If anyone is wondering, my unit has a Toshiba SSD. Write speeds are poor, around 300MB/s, read speeds are decent at around 1800MB/s. NOT SO GOOD: - Build Quality: After a few days of use, the laptop started to creak when I pick it up. I tried tightening the screws, but that didnt fix it. Very irritating. The USB C ports are also VERY tight. It feels like Im going to break something when I remove the charging connector. - Port arrangement: This is a minor one, but I wish they put one USB C port on either side instead of putting both on the same side. This would make it possible to charge the laptop from either side. - Price: I think $1499 (for the 512gb model) is too much. At the time of writing this review, Amazon is including a $300 gift card, and that makes it easier to swallow. THE TRULY AWFUL: - Webcam: I cant think of a single scenario where using this webcam would be acceptable. Even for just casual video chatting, its awful. I like that it can be hidden, but the positioning makes it impossible to get a "normal" view of your face. Not to mention the actual camera quality is poor as well. Its a 1MP camera. - Touchpad: Its a Precision touchpad, but it sure doesnt feel like it. It doesnt even compare to the Surface touchpads. Even the "click" is very cheap feeling. Not to mention, the touchpad rattles quite a bit. Not what I expected for a $1500 device. - Coil Whine: Similar to the older Dell XPS 13, this unit has quite a bit of coil whine. Its amplified when plugged in. This is pretty unfortunate, but some people wont notice it. - Fan Noise: Its pretty much always on. Its not obnoxious, but its loud enough to hear it in a very quiet room. If the laptop isnt plugged in and is on power saver mode, the fans do quiet down. On (almost) every other laptop, the fan is actually connected to a metal heatsink. On this laptop, theres about 0.5cm of space between the fan and the heatsink. This is just bad design and incredibly inefficient. As for what comes in the box, you get: - The laptop - Power brick - 2m long USB C cable - A USB C dongle with VGA, USB A, HDMI, and charging passthrough. This DOES NOT support 4k@60hz, but hey, its included. TL;DR: This machine is 90% of a MacBook Pro for ~70% of the price. Its a great value compared to a Mac, but compared to other Windows laptops, I think its priced too high, especially for a "new" brand like Huawei. Leave a comment if you have any questions and Ill do my best to answer them.

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I purchased this laptop a few months ago when there was a promotional deal. It came with a $300 dollar gift card at the time so I picked it up. I didnt use the laptop for a few months as I was still using my Macbook Air. Boy do I regret waiting. I thought there was something wrong with the trackpad as it would keep going crazy. Turns out it wasnt the track pad but was the touch screen. There was a hairline crack in it that I couldnt see while using it. It mustve been damaged in shipping as it seems other people have had this problem... On top of that it whines, gets hot, the track pad feels cheap and loose. The final nail in the coffin is that the webcam/ microphone dont work in applications like Google Chrome or Opera. I cant video chat via Facebook or Gmail which renders the laptop basically useless for me. I have contacted Huawei about this. They want $400 to replace the screen... I asked them also about the camera/mic problem. They told me to just reset the laptop to factory settings, even though I have barely used the thing. At this point I just want to return it but I am outside of Amazons return window. I highly regret purchasing this laptop. Dont make the same mistake.

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I bought the high-end model of this ultrabook a few weeks ago and I am amazed by the mere speed this thing produces when doing everyday tasks such as browsing the web or video streaming. My pros and cons: Pros: ● Its stunning display. Since the refresh rate isnt listed by Amazon, this ultrabooks display runs at 60Hz. Id wish for a higher refresh rate, but if that is to keep the price down then it is what it is. ● Excellent build quality (albeit nearly identical to the Macbook but thats a good thing if you are into a minimalist style). ● The keyboard is excellent. It travels well, and coming from a desktop keyboard, I got used to it rather quickly. ● The price. The initial price you can get this for is such a steal with what comes included and the specs. You would be spending an upwards of $2k for numerous brands with similar specs as the high-end X Pro. (At the time of this writing, I would advise visiting Microsofts or Neweggs store and purchasing it at a more retail price compared to what sellers on here may offer). ● Best speakers I have ever listened to on an ultrabook. ● The hidden webcam is a perfect idea for the majority of users who rarely use a webcam and take privacy as a big deal (you can even disable the webcam from being recognized by POST via disabling it within the BIOS settings). Cons: ● The web cam is in an awkward place but since I hardly use a webcam, I dont see it as a big deal. (Just buy a Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920, Widescreen Video Calling and Recording, 1080p Camera, Desktop or Laptop Webcam and use that USB A port this ultrabook has included to your advantage). ● The keyboards backlight has three modes that can be set with its dedicated function key: off, low brightness, and high brightness. I would rather have a plain and simple on and off function but thats not the main complaint. The complaint is after nearly 15 seconds of not typing anything, the backlight turns itself off. This is troublesome at night when youre reading an article or watching a video and you can barely see the keyboard when you want to type again because the keyboard light turns itself off. ● If you hold down on the trackpad to - lets say when you drag something and you move your finger to the edge of the trackpad, the cursor starts to move in the same direction on its own until you either lift your finger or move your finger away from one of the edges. This could possibly be a hardware defect in with my specific purchase but I would like to bring this out there. ● The heat dissipation on this ultrabook is horrible. You will find that just mere web browsing will make the machine quite warm (I normally see the processor float in the range of 40-50 C when doing everyday tasks and reaching 70 degrees when gaming). I tried to undervolt the CPU some and while it did help a tad bit, it wasnt enough to keep the whole bottom of the chassis from getting awkwardly warm every now and then. So if you can get past the few caveats the Matebook X Pro has, you will find yourself loving this product at first sight.

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One of the two devices I bought via Amazon started crashing a week after activation. I tried all possible solutions, nothing worked. There is definitely a factory defect. The worst thing is that Huawei tech support is completely failing to help me solve the situation so far. The Matebook X Pro is device with a great potential. It earned top reveiws in IT press that praises its build quality, screen and other features. Unfortunately it suffers from drawbacks that completely overweight it’s strengths. These to me are: 1. Poor quality control: It is a first laptop I ever owned that malfunctioned so quickly 2. Weak warranty support: I am spending hours truing to figure out with Huawei team how to fix the problem. I already reset the system twice, updated drivers, run all possible types of maintenance, nothing works. With my Surface or MacBook I would have been offered replacement or repair a while ago. I am not giving up on my Matebook yet, but the experience owning it was so far disappointing.... UPDATE: it is December and Huawei is completely failing to provide any meaningful support to have it fixed. I regret the purchase

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I bought this from the online microsoft store after only seeing 3rd party sellers having it on amazon for almost $2200!!! It arrived in a few weeks and I have put it through the ringer Display: Display like the surface is 3:2 3000x2000 pixles. While this doesnt really affect my everyday life this aspect ratio does get in the way of certain programs like RoyalTS or Outlook. I am used to viewing things on widescreen monitors and this screen is more about height so thats understandable. In these events columns preview panes etc are just a bit more slender. Overall its a different experience but not one that is so drastically different from my Desktop that I cant get used to it. Speaking of the display itself, breathtaking. The colors brightness viewing angle are amazing, I use 3x 2k IPS panels on my desktop so I know I can be a hard judge. I work in the tech industry so I am constantly using PCs. for the traveler the glossy display can get a bit bright but fear not, they have matte screen protectors you can put on. This doesnt take away anymore purity then you might think it still looks great and regardless if you own this you should get a protector for it. The keyboard keys touch the display which will erode the glass much like Macbook displays. Chassis: The actual building blocks of the machine give it a Macbook look and feel that really isnt that different from the real thing coming from owning one in the past. The machine itself is a gorgeous color,but does take finger prints VERY easily. The flex of the LCD panel is next to nothing given that its milled aluminium which is great to know since spare parts cant be found and a cracked or broken screen or digitizer would spell the end. I would still open it from the center but its nice to know it can be opened a bit forcefully. The bezel-less display is not truly bezel-less. the bezel itself is probably only 1mm thick but the screen stops around 10mm on all sides except the bottom at about 15. Still this is much closer then all conventional laptops and even closer still then other ultrabooks iv touched like the dell XPS or HP spectre. With that said care should be taken moving this around since given how thin the bezel is this machine is much like a phone in that any side damage will probably crack the screen. The back panel when pressed in the closed position does give some flex but is sturdy enough to take some pressure without hurting the display that and occasional cats landing on it. The rest of the chassis is thin Very thin, only few mm thicker than a normal USB port excluding the top panel which can be seen by viewing the machine at an angle. The machine has little to no flex and is incredibly light. the keyboard is very responsive and gives definitive feedback. Other then using a keyboard that maybe smaller than you are used too from 108 desktop style boards or wider laptops, it doesnt take long at all to get used to and its satisfying to learn. The touchpad mimics that of the macbook it is wide but not too wide and the border between the edge of the keyboard and the edge of the chassis are only a few mm. So far, the unit tolerates hot hands without triggering the mouse when typing, infact with the correct software installed the touchpad disables during typing sessions and wont move the mouse unless there is a longer than avg delay between keystrokes or you find yourself resting your palm on it because you type close to center. I can see this maybe being an issue with chicken typers, but anyone with a decent WPM count wont really find issue with the configuration. That said physically the touchpad is inlaid with beveled edges surrounding it. if you veer off the pad it doesnt feel like hitting a cliff. the responsiveness is great and the stock DPI works well. The responsiveness of the pad is good and gives enough for you to not be confused when you have done something. It has a bit of tactile feedback so the left and right click do not seem invisible. The various ports on the machine are milled into the body and dont give very much. Seeing as it uses USB-C to charge I cant imagine any impending DC jack failures but time will tell. Performance: The machine I have is the I7 16gb 512gb unit. This CPU has 4 cores and hyper threading for a total of 8 threads. The RAM is low power ddr3 but gets the job done. The drive is proper nvme pci-e (b key only) the Mx150 in this unit is 10w there are two variants 25w and 10w. This unit has the lower power of the two versions which comes down to power design and clock rate. However te rest of the physical specifications are the same. The machine does a fantastic job at feeling snappy in just about everything. The Mx150 is about the same performance of a desktop GT1030 if you are trying to game I probably wouldnt unless its casual, s for quick video photo editing or the occasional high res video stream this machine will tear through it without issue. Performance will suffer during prolonged testing as things start to throttle down to starve off heat, but nothing brutal enough for you to wish you didnt own it and lets face it its an ultra book. What are the insides like: The fan vent is on the top left rear if you had the laptop open in front of you. its thin, only a few inches across but even at full bore the fan while heard, its not very disruptive and more quiet then off the shelf 15 inch laptops. Interestingly I think it might even be quiter than my macbook pro. in either case when taken apart everything is held to a close tolerance. Hinges are screwed to anchor points milled out of the body, So I dont foresee any pre-failing hinges with this unit unless an excessive amount of force is applied. All cooling for the CPU, GPU and nvme drive is done with a universal full cover cooler that runs across the entire backside of the motherboard. however. Thermal tests on this unit pass 15min of OCCT on the "power supply test" which loads both CPU and GPU. After a full disassembly the thermal paste application is actually not terrible and its clear they use a decent quality silver based paste much like arctic silver 5. After changing out the paste and re-applying with thermal grizzly kryonought temperatures only dropped a few C which isnt bad considering this machines air flow. A likely but dangerous improvement may be liquid metal based TIMs but the CPU and GPU do not have heat spreaders and instead have exposed resistors and transistors, as such I dont think its necessary advisable nor do I think the gains would be something to write home about given this machines thermal envelope. With that said, other then the impossible task of actually finding spare parts the repair ability of the unit does not seem bad at all, however it is important to note that if you disassemble the cooler has a ribbon cable that connects the motherboard to a daughter board and it is bonded with epoxy to the underside of the cooler. So use care. Honorable mentions: I did a full format on the unit because I need to run windows 10 Pro. The drivers for the finger print reader touchpad etc can be a tad wonky to find but all of it is available and it is very very very easy to get everything setback up. With that said like most manufacturers Huawei comes with a suite type of program that will install drivers and software for you. While most of this is garbage pre-loaded onto your machine before you open the box I must say I am very impressed. I installed the suite so I could experience it and it was nothing short of refreshing. It only offers the drivers required for your device. No extra software and the suite itself uses very little resources. Additionally the keyboard has no option to stay on, though if I had to mark it as a con this would probably be the only one. The screen also has a light sensor and the dimming and brightening of the screen is almost immediate and very responsive to conditions. I have yet to need to adjust it manually. The battery lasts about all day before needing to be charged, but I have ran it out at around 4 hours with more intensive usage. If you want to get more out of it, I can suggest properly training it by running it all the way down before charging it, but more importantly turning brightness down when you are in florescent environments. For the record: Bios key is F2 boot key is F12

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This thing is amazing. By far the best ultrabook Ive used. I did a lot of research on this, and Ill admit I was apprehensive at first about buying from a brand I had little experience with, but after listening to countless positive reviews on YouTube, and reading a boatload of praise by some pretty tech savvy reviewers, I took the plunge, and boy am I glad I did. I heard one reviewer say that this laptop is everything that a MacBook should be, and he was exactly right.

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This is clearly the Porsche of non-mac notebooks. I needed a notebook that I could (easily) run Linux on. I am a big fan of the Macbook pro, but Apple is a bit of a closed shop, and I wanted it to be straight-forward, no VMs or strange hardware adaptions. And besides, Linux is my main environment (although I run all three, Windows, Mac and Linux). I got the I7/512g version, and immediately installed Ubuntu 18.04 on the machine. Unlike what some others have reported, I have had no issue running Linux on the machine. I have seen several laptops that have sleeping issues with Linux, but either they got fixed or they dont exist on this machine. I gave the machine a 50/50 Windows/Linux split, although I dont really anticipate running it with Windows much, and may shrink the windows partition at some point. The good, the bad, the ugly As some have mentioned, the "all usb-c" thing can be a bit annoying. Not sure how it makes this notebook a "clean" notebook if you have to carry a bunch of adapters in tow. The stock "dock" they provided with the machine does most things I needed with the addition of a pretty simple USB hub. Id be tempted on this machine to "go all bluetooth", and in fact did get a headset and a mouse using straight bluetooth for the machine. However, this was mainly for travel convenience and the ability to work with the machine on my lap from bed. At work I needed to get hardware ethernet, but that was a simple adapter to go from usb-c to ethernet. I got the matedock to go with the machine. This does pretty much what the "stock dock" did but didnt need an extra ethernet adapter. My only issues with this arrangement is the matedock is pretty low on I/O expansion, and *I really dont get* the power feedthrough thing. In short, the matedock is very clever, very portable, and I am looking to find a good and heavy dock that includes power and lots of I/Os for my home desk. For the notebook itself, its hard to find any issues. I dont understand why it has a "dead band" for mouse clicks at the top of the track pad, but other than this, it does the expected thing, with tracking, single finger clicks = button one, two finger clicks = button two, and two finger scrolling. As with all such laptop compressed keyboards, I miss the page up/down and home and end keys. Page up/down is easy to emulate, but home/end is not. I miss those keys, and also the middle mouse button, but I am working on restoring that capability via software cord keys. The notebook is light, I have not got anywhere near running it out of power despite running lots of full kernel builds. It gets quite warm in the rear end, but other that this no big deal. The fan runs, but I have no issue with fan noise. It is quite low even when it is clearly pushing power. It has a touch screen, but the way I like it. There is no attempt to make the machine convert to a tablet or anything like it. I personally find touch screen laptops useless, since a mouse is much more accurate than a finger, and I mostly edit things. You make me do that kind of work with a touch screen, and I am not your friend. The display is amazing at 3000x2000 (not quite 4k resolution). Matching a second monitor to the machine in dual display mode is a problem, but only in Linux/Ubuntu because the scaling there is completely braindead, and there is a large discussion about how to fix it. The issue is that there is such a huge mismatch between the laptop resolution and the external monitor resolution that you need two different sets of scaling for each monitor. And Linux is apparently not good at doing this, not without lots of fiddlery. Running windows is no issue. Apparently Windows programmers stayed awake during that class. In sum, what can I say? Not cheap, but great if you need Windows or Windows/linux. If not I would say get a Macbook Pro. With Windows or Linux, this is about as close to the famous Mac pro as you are going to get, and if you have used a Mac pro for any length of time you will understand what I mean. The pro was a highpoint in laptop design, and even apple seems to have trouble producing good follow-ons to that product. If I had any suggestions for Huawei, it would be to embrace Linux and make a nice all-in-one dock with fixed power for desktop use.

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Got mine a week ago, the i7 model. I’ll just add a few observations to the mostly positive comments the other reviewers have (rightly so) provided. I extensively researched all laptops with comparable specs, and ended up with a couple of choices outside the Huawei: either the most expensive Apple MacBook Pro that currently sells for $2799.00, or the Dell XPS 15 that sells for $2099.00. Granted, the Mac comes with a 15” screen vs 14” for the Huawei, but the resolution on the Huawei is impressive at 3k. And it is a touch screen for those who find it useful. Even at its steep price the Mac is still equipped with an older 7th generation CPU model while the Huawei’s CPU is a 8th generation i7 CPU. The best alternative would be Dell, but you would have to spend $600.00 over the $1,499.00 Huawei. Typing on the Huawei keyboard is a blessing after having typed for the last two years on a Mac butterfly keyboard, making everyone around me believe I was banging on a calypso drum. My main concern was with the LG 4k Ultrafine monitor I used with my Mac, would it work with the Huawei? I plugged it into the Thunderbolt USB-C port, held my breath, and pronto, plug and play! There was no need to download any Windows drivers or adjust the resolution on the monitor. 4k resolution and it charges the laptop. You also get a fingerprint touch login cleverly placed on top of the power button, Windows 10 without bloatware, a USB-C to HDMI and USB-A dongle dock, Dolby Atmos audio, a discrete video card, among other goodies. The one component from my perspective that still needs to be improved is the trackpad, it clicks too loud and not uniformly depending on where you click in the pad. How could this machine be priced at $1,499.00 (and if bought from a Microsoft Store at times you also get a $300.00 gift card), is a mystery to me. Is Huawei selling at zero margin to break into the market, or are Apple’s margins ridiculous? Maybe both

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I bought the i7 model with the 512 SSD. I read on other websites that this laptop has issues, and I chose to ignore them. This model gets very hot when doing basic functions such as surfing the web. In addition, the wifi cuts out quite regularly and there is no solution to fix it on your own. Unless you want a laptop with issues, I would steer away from this at all costs. Hope this helps someone else down the line.

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Every person has different needs for their laptop. However, this one meets my needs perfectly! - DISPLAY :Amazing display. I am talking about accurate color reproduction , brightness, and real estate. A 14" display in a 3:2 form factor. I also like the scaling factor achievable using this laptop. Its great! - PERFORMANCE : I have the core i7 model with a 512 GB RAM , and have several applications open, and the laptop does a great job. Applications include about 30 - 40 tabs of chrome, MATLAB, EDA softwares. I am not a gamer, so cant comment on the gaming performance. The fans do turn on during heavy use and the laptop gets a bit warm. But thats fine. You cant expect performance and quietness at the same time and that too from a laptop! - WEBCAM : I do not video chat a lot, so the weird positioning of camera does not matter to me. I will take this display over the webcam compromise any day. - KEYBOARD : The keyboard is comfortable to type. To access the function keys you do not have to hold "Fn + desired key Like the capslock the light on the Fn turns on. An the top row is in Fn key mode. I thought this was a very clever implementation. (could be present on other laptops, but Im not aware) - OTHERS: -- Fingerprint reader is a very desired feature i love. Its quick and responsive. -- The added software by Huawei is minimal. Only PC Manager from Huawei, which is not enabled by default ( I havent enabled it yet!) . There are some games pre-installed as part of Windows, which i immediately uninstalled. -- Space Grey color is cool too. -- Laptop has very good build quality and looks very sleek (not a fan of the huawei logo though) If you want a laptop with great display, performance, build quality, audio, form factor and nice addons like fingerprint sensor, you cant go wrong with this laptop. I know this laptop will be invariably compared with the macbook pro. The operating systems cater to 2 different groups but in terms of value and performance, I feel this laptop is way ahead of Macbooks in terms of the value it offers ( and you wont have to look at the touch bar.. uggh!) . I hadnt mentioned that its touchscreen till now ( I dont use it as much, but its there if you need it).

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