*Windows 11 is out now so you can upgrade to that if you own this laptop, I haven't tried Windows 11 so I can't comment on the performance* A massive thank you to HUAWEI for sending me this sample out for review! I really do appreciate the opportunity to be reviewing something like this on the channel. If you are interested in the laptop, here are some links: BUY @ CENTRECOM: www.centrecom.com.au/huawei-matebook-14-14-2k-2021-i5-1135g7-laptop Matebook Lineup: www.centrecom.com.au/huawei-laptop Official Site: consumer.huawei.com/au/laptops/matebook-14-2021/ *Those are NOT Affiliate links, I won't earn anything from any clicks so no need to worry* *My opinions in this video are my own, I am not being paid by HUAWEI - they have just sent out the sample for me to review which is what I like to do :) I hope you all enjoyed this review! I worked on this for about 2 weeks here and there trying to piece it together and try some different filming styles. I think I managed to cover everything I could in this video. Let me know if you like this laptop or not! Timestamps: Intro, Disclaimers & Links: 0:00 Current Pricing: 1:06 Full Specifications & Upgrade Options: 2:18 The Advertising & Features: 3:43 Unboxing: 7:02 Around The Laptop - Ports, Keyboard, Touchpad & Webcam: 8:45 Display, Power On & Setup: 10:15 One Touch Fingerprint, Boot Speed & Partitions: 11:56 Webcam Functionality, Keyboard Test etc: 12:56 Charging Test & Battery Life: 13:45 Huawei PC Manager & Screen Mirroring: 15:50 General Usability & Camera Test: 17:16 Browser Test, RU-vid/Display Test & Speaker Test: 18:29 SSD Benchmark: 20:20 Cinebench Benchmark & Temperatures: 21:19 Gaming Tests - F.E.A.R: 22:25 Gaming Tests - DOOM (2016): 23:21 Gaming Tests - Crysis Remastered: 24:48 Gaming Tests - GTA Vice City Definitive Edition: 25:49 The Lengthy Conclusion: 27:18 Really Quick Teardown: 30:17 Thank You to everyone, Disclaimers & Links: 31:33 Outro: 32:21 Any questions let me know! Be good people!
Why wouldn't mind seeing you expand some of your content into slightly more mainstream devices. I think there's an incredible value in used Android phones. You can get 2020 flagships for like 200 bucks these days. People are so willing to go through postpaid carriers and pay absurd amounts of money when you can get 95% of the same experience for $1,000 less. Hell, arguably a better experience if you account for the headphone jack, expandable storage, less intrusive camera bumps, capacitive fingerprint sensors etc...
What a great idea Michael, and it looks like you have a great idea for your own videos. I'm looking forward to see the more mainstream devices you will review on your own channel.
My dude got sponsored and then in the end basically just said “might as well get a MacBook” my god I love when people are actually honest and unbiased in reviews even if the product was free
Companies often have Windows and Office licenses bought in bulk and this is the reason they avoid iCrap. As for being expensive, yet it is, as any "executive" laptop on the market. Company expense after all.
@@ShockingPikachu Yes, but this does not go like that. Company usually buys lets say 1000 Windows licenses and 1000 Office licenses in bulk, to be used on all computers from lowly desk worker to CEO . IT division then goes and installs all of that (sometimes over network outside of office hours) and usually does not like to mess around with different OS . Some companies of course do allow MacOS or Linux but these are more of exceptions than a rule. Overall, Microsoft holds corporate world in a tight grip.
I've owned the Matebook D14 2020 (R5 3500u/8GB/512GB) for nearly two years, overall it's been a solid machine with a generally smooth Windows 11 experience. Best parts of the laptop are the keyboard, weight and battery life. Downsides are the dim screen, dim keyboard backlight and quiet speakers. However, I am thinking about switching to a MacBook in the next year or two. As a student, the 8GB RAM is a bottleneck when you start opening a bunch of tabs and documents.
I mean its all about the Price. In Germany the Matebook 14 16gb ram is about 650 Euro right now, while the Macbook Air with 8gb ram starts at about 950 Euro
I have a hard time understanding why these laptops have a reason to exist. As you pointed out in the video for office work you can get much cheaper options for that, for harder rendering and engineering work you should buy a mac, for gaming a gaming laptop and for media there is cheaper and better screens. I’m currently typing this on an IPad Pro that has better specs than this in every way plus it was cheaper and the only downside is the OS. These laptops seem to me like having a product for products sake to fill out Huawei’s ecosystem which i think is a bad trend we’re starting to see more and more of. Great review never the less and i would like to see more laptop reviews! You aren’t letting us down my doing this so you needn’t worry about that, perhaps think about doing scam laptop reviews like a fake MacBook or something. Thanks for another great video
Thanks for the review. I have a MateBook X Pro 2018. And honestly I love it. I'm thinking of buying it for my daughter as well. Screen ratio 3:2 I prefer better than 16:9. The best part for me is that the camera is under the keyboard. Webcam used once. The speakers sound is excellent.
8GB of non-upgradeable ram is a dealbreaker. I have the Matebook D14 and it also has 8GB of ram but it runs at 2400mhz which combined with a Ryzen 5 and the fact a gig is reserved for onboard graphics really hampers performance and means this thing will become e-waste much quicker than it should.
True. But people using these do not use apps with high RAM usage :D Plus side, value would decline rapidly and typically in a few years used laptops like this cost 30-40% of the original price.
I have a Asus Vivobook Pro OLED 15, also with 8GB, but with 3600 mHz dual channel RAM. Does perfectly fine for me, although it would have been nice to get the 16 GB version, but it would've been much more expensive as it also had an RTX 3050 instead of just the Vega 6
overall, I would consider this laptop if it was maybe 10-20% cheaper and had more ports, but even I'm not a huge fan of shiny displays on laptops, and I'd be looking for a matte screen protector so I can actually read it outside.
I have a similar spec HP that has a 16x9 touchscreen that cost $750 US... It's mostly plastic, but does the job and can game at a fair level. Let's do more laptops, I can see it now "Coming soon to a Wish site near you: the Pipi 14 Pwnbook... With it's blistering Core2Duo T6500, 2GB ram and 160GB HDD" Which will report as a 15th Gen I9 with 64GB RAM, a 2TB SSD and an RTX3090ti
I own the Matebook D 15 2020, Ryzen 5 3500U, 8GB of RAM (SOLDERED AGH), and 256GB of storage, I got it for £300, pretty much half price, and honestly it's been a great productivity machine. Especially slapping a linux distro on there, it's been responsive, snappy and probably one of the better laptops I've used. The problems that the RAM is soldered, like I mentioned, make it hard for upgradability if the future depends so, and the disappointing amount of disk space needed for this day and age, however, that CAN be upgraded. for £300, not bad, but not worth what it originally priced at in my opinion. I don't know, you tell me.
This one would also decline in price rapidly. This goes for any business laptop - you could buy them cheaply after few years of usage . Original price is high because they are "business expense"
I have the 2020 version of the Matebook X Pro and the battery life is atrocious in my opinion. With just normal web browsing and RU-vid I get only 2 hours of battery life from a full charge, and the laptop gets really warm with no demanding programs. I really hope they fixed these issues with the new models.
The thing with the phone mirroring isn't insanely special, other than the fact that it is native & with a proper GUI. Scrcpy has been around for a while now, available on Windows, MacOS and many linux distros and basically does the same thing but is compatible with many more devices, it isn't restricted to just newer Huawei devices.
It's a nice looking laptop. Could do with a bit more ram for the price though. Hope it is at least dual channel. With that charger, I would hope it shipped from overseas or it may fall fowl of the rules. I'm not convinced with the Web cam. Only 720p and in the keyboard. If it was a multimedia laptop for occasional webcam use would be great, but business focused with the aspect ratio and specs, a good Web cam not up the noise in the covid and post covid world is a must for most people. Screen has a nice colour coverage and looks great. Nice and thin overall as well. If you were in the ecosystem, that screen sharing with nfc is a great idea.
Nope, I forgot to say that it was a Quad Core processor and running Windows 10 at the start so I had to record those lines as I just said "it has an i5 processor" and didn't mention the OS.
Seems completely overpriced. I got a Vivobook Pro 15 OLED for 799€, with a 5600H, 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD, "only" 1080p but the panel is calibrated and looks fantastic. I don't see where the Matebook 14 really warants that price, it seems on-par and sometimes even worse to me, besides the 3:2 1440p panel that's pretty much overkill for the size. PS: I'd rather get this for the same price: Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition UX5401 Wish I could get an AMD version but still, it's cooler, has much better specs and if it's anything like my laptop I can safely say it's a great buy
What could be said about this : usual "business" laptop. They are often quite expensive if you look only hardware specs. Executives value flashy appearance more than raw power (metal body, clicky keyboard, nice display ...) . Also, cost of purchase is often covered by company. Good thing about them - you could often buy these "business" laptops for pennies (fraction of original cost) after few years , hardly being used at all ;)
Will watch the full video soon (I was only able to watch the specs and teardown), but what I will say is that non-upgradeable RAM in a laptop is a bit of a bummer, especially when you only have 8GB of it to begin with. 8GB RAM is not a lot nowadays and I would be expecting to routinely dip into the pagefile on the SSD, limiting its lifespan.
a pretty review imho, good job. it looks like the average laptop with average performance so it's a little to expensive for what it does in reality. but it has a good display and a pretty good battery, maybe used can be a best buy? i don't know i still go for the asus ones lol.
AMD does graphics way better than intel, I am waiting to see how intel's new ARC graphics will be like, apparently they're gonna make actual dedicated graphics, but if they're the same level of performance as their integrated GPUs, it will be a hard flop
I ever so briefly considered a Matebook I think when I was shopping about for a laptop, ended up getting an Acer Swift 3 instead, paaaartly because purple, but not entirely because of that.
always have to remember, at least for the time being, intel graphics may or may not work on some games. some games play fine, but some don't play at all. they can always update the drivers, but still.
Well, it's a premium business book, but actually, their security feature is a bit of lacking if you or your company are into security. Still, it feels nice, in fact, it is quite on par with other premium brand.
Real bad deal considering that for $2400 you can get a 1440p 165hz, RTX 3070, i7 11800, 32GB ram, 2TB nVME or for $1700 you can get a 1080p 240Hz, RTX 3070, i7 11800, 16GB ram, 1TB nVME. Both amazing metal build quality + Windows Hello camera up top where it's meant to be.
Thank you for saying that 30fps is more than playable. I'm so tired of hearing that when a game hits 30fps it isn't even "playable" anymore. People are no longer happy unless games are running at over 60fps. It's so ridiculous!
That laptop looks good and all but I was able to get a $499 Lenovo IdeaPad that has the same build quality, similar design in general, but it had even better specs than this
That camera segment and just the whole video seemed really fake, you never talk so good about devices... still though this is a fantastic laptop I'd love to try one
Crysis remastered should be removed from every device and overall from internet... Beside that... Laptop... I also like that power button and camera screen look also nice. BUT I dont like ports number... 2 more would easily fit there. Price-performance ratio? light media and office work... if it would be 10% cheaper.... maybe....
Like the Smoorez's conclusion at the end of this video, there's many laptops in the $900-1300 price range that offers better specification, like faster Intel i7/AMD Ryzen 7, 16GB of RAM, and even bigger storage space or faster SSD. Lenovo, Asus, and Acer has many of those
Looks like a really nice device and ideal for general on the go portable computing - especially given its long battery life claims and its lightweight and thin design. However, I do think it is a bit pricey (at £799, I would choose something with more functionality for my requirements, get something a bit beefier, or just build a desktop tower PC), and I don't like the idea of being capped at 8GB RAM. 8GB isn't much nowadays; for a premium laptop, 16GB should have been the minimum.
I don't usually comment as you know, but this is more in my wheelhouse. I disagree with a couple of the conclusions you drew in this video. First, Huawei's worldwide reputation for engineering and build quality even in PCs is rivaled only by HP, and Lenovo, but when you take into account that an enterprise can standardize on all Huawei products, they stand alone in the mainstream, as most IT people at the enterprise level prefer Android/ Windows, to IOS, MacOS. Perhaps someday their relationship with the US government will smooth out and they can again rise back to the level I believe they deserve to be. I have owned a couple Huawei laptops and am happy to report that over a long period, performance and quality was on a par with MacBooks. At the Enterprise level AMD does not exist, so sadly PC manufacturers are limited to what Intel has to offer. And they offer shitty 45w and shittier 15w CPUs, the later is what this has. They also are the ones who started this stupid 8GB soldered design, which forces corporate users to pay twice as much as consumers. If the machine offered desktop CPU performance, and a RAM upgrade, it would be big power brick and slow charging. HP addresses this by having an Elitebook line, like this one, and a Z Book line which is faster and upgradable. My biggest issue with the review, which I liked and why I am burying this part where no one will read it, is that you offered MSI as an alternative which is HORRIBLE advice. Most people who would buy this would end up breaking the MSI within several weeks, and/or lose the $100 plus power brick. They are very fragile, run super hot, and creak due to poor build quality. In my experience the average notebook buyer would not want to wait two to three months for a repair, and would just throw it away.
Hey there, I know the review isn't perfect by any means but I tried to give it my best in the areas I could. Huawei laptops here in Australia aren't very big as far as I know. I know you could buy them but it's only recently that they are being marketed around. The build quality of this is great and I agree that the build quality on other Huawei products is very premium. The pick of the MSI laptop was more of a "you could get these specs for the same price", not a recommendation but an example if that makes sense? Sorry to disappoint though, this was a tough video to try and get through at certain points unlike regular phone reviews. I don't think laptop reviews are my area - as well as actual new tech. My area is cheap stuff and that's where I need to stay I think. Thanks for the comment and the support with the channel over this journey :)
@@SMOOREZ Quite the contrary. I am an Enterprise IT person, so my perspective is different from yours. I enjoyed seeing your perspective, and thought you did a great job.
@@dintyshideaway9505 I wish AMD was more popular in the enterprise space, their offerrings are most of the time better than intel's, and about people preferring windows, not all of them do, there are some enterprise people that prefer linux or mac on the desktop, I prefer a unix environment myself, any day over windows. If i were to get a laptop that's not a mac, I'd look into maybe a thinkpad or one of those linux laptop companies(system76, etc), since I prefer the way unix-like/ unix based oses work, also, I really enjoy your videos!
If you really need a 3:2 screen ratio, there are way better laptops than this. Heck, I had a chuwi laptop that does the exact same thing as this laptop. 900€ for a windows laptop with 8GB of RAM and an underpowered Intel processor is not a good idea.
Bro please, when you do a gaming test, do a test on video games that are not made the year my grandpa was born, why dont you play some shit like fortnite, minecraft or rocket league???
My Matebook 14 2021 has much worse battery than in all reviews i watched or read. 5 hours of watching netflix on 50% brightness drain battery grom 100 to 0 %
Companies takes notes, just look at samsung, they were first trying to mock apple for their design choices and now they've completely turned 180 on those same design choices. No SD Card, No HeadPhone Jack, Locked Software, Even tried pairing Hardware with software locks on a model or two. This is just going to get worse.
the mac is slighly better though, better screen, better speakers, the m1's faster too, Windows doesn't make it any better either, they tried to copy macbooks, but came up with a device i'd best describe as "meh"
I think MacBooks are for folks who don't have computer skills truthfully. All Apple's products are overpriced underwhelming devices. Truly the Tesla of tech, but without the innovation.
