Huawei MateBook X Pro (2023) review: chipping in

There’s a strong whiff of deja vu about Huawei’s latest premium laptop. The 2023 edition of the MateBook X Pro ultraportable looks like a mirror image of last year’s version – which itself was a quick turnaround of the generation before. A switch to Intel’s latest-gen silicon should help it keep pace with rivals, though.

It falls in the sweet spot between smaller, less powerful 13in machines and beefier 15in models with discrete graphics, with a price to match: by the time you equip a MacBook Air 15in with similar amounts of memory and storage, the Apple will drain your wallet a fair bit more. But is some extra desktop grunt enough to keep it competitive?

• Buy the Huawei Matebook X Pro from Huawei here

Design & connectivity: feels familiar

With an unchanged chassis from last year, the new Matebook X Pro is still a satisfyingly svelte laptop. It tips the scales at a scant 1.26kg if you go for the Ink Blue or White version tested here, or slightly more on the Space Gray aluminium model available in certain territories. The white machine stood up well to fingerprint smudges and dirt marks during our testing, helped by a smooth, ceramic-like coating on every panel.

It’s just 15.6mm at its portliest point, which limits connectivity to just four USB-C ports and a 3.5mm combination audio port. Two of the four are also Thunderbolt 4 ports, which promise even faster data transfers on compatible hardware. We’d still like to see an SD card slot, though – Apple learned that lesson for the latest 14in MacBook Pro, which isn’t a whole lot more cash.

Screen & sound: still sharp

The 14.2in, 3:2 aspect LCD should seem familiar to anyone that tried last year’s Matebook X Pro – Huawei has reused it wholesale for the newest model. Slim bezels mean that screen fits in a chassis no bigger than most 13in rivals, while still leaving room for a 720p webcam at the top edge. It fares just fine for video calls, and supports Windows Hello facial recognition, but feels a little behind the times now that rivals are making the jump to 1080p.

At 3120×2080 the screen really packs in the pixels, and the 90Hz refresh rate is a pleasant step up from the 60Hz panels you’ll find on other ultraportables. It’s not as smooth as a gaming-grade panel, but does stop web pages from feeling at all stuttery when you scroll though them. Images and videos look wonderfully detailed, and sensible display scaling out of the box means text is easy to read. The 3:2 aspect ratio is great for side-by-side working on two documents at once, too.

Peak brightness remains at 500 nits, which is decent if not class-leading, and enough to give HDR videos plenty of depth. LCD tech means shadows aren’t as deep or dark as they would be on an OLED screen, but colours are still wonderfully vibrant. Accuracy is very good, covering almost all of the sRGB gamut, and the glossy panel lends a helping hand too. Viewing angles are great, although reflections from bright light sources can still prove distracting.

The keyboard tray is still flanked by six speakers, which are satisfyingly loud when you crank the volume. They’ll do a fine job for YouTube catch-ups or background tunes while you’re working, with a clean mid-range and well-moderated high end. Just don’t expect booming bass – if you want low-end oomph you’ll need a pair of headphones.

Keyboard & touchpad: the art of glass

We loved typing on the outgoing Matebook X Pro’s island-style keys, and that’s also true of the new model. Apart from the half-height function and arrow keys everything is full-size, with a decent amount of travel given the machine’s slim dimensions. Each key is satisfyingly bouncy, and while they’ll still bottom out if you bash ’em like you’re hammering nails, they still bounce back rapidly. Use a bit more restraint and emails can be tapped out with almost no sound. The white LED backlighting is consistent, with little leakage around the edges of each key.

Sticking the power button/fingerprint reader on its own above the keyboard tray ensures you don’t knock it accidentally when reaching for the delete key. It’s quick to skip the Windows lock screen, too.

The expansive glass touchpad sits right up against the edge of the laptop, and has a wide selection of haptic gestures to save you time, like scrolling up and down the far sides to raise or lower speaker volume and screen brightness. Force feedback feels like you’re scrolling a mouse wheel while you do it, which is particularly slick. A one-knuckle double tap also saves a lossless bitmap screenshot, while two knuckles records your screen.

Performance & battery life: small gains

Huawei has streamlined its lineup for 2023, with just one Matebook X Pro model on offer. It swaps out the old version’s 12th-gen Intel Core i7 CPU for a newer 13th-gen i7-1360P, pairing it to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of whip-crack quick NVMe storage.

The twelve-core, sixteen-thread CPU has a slightly higher base clock speed, and can turbo further, to a heady 5GHz on its performance cores when thermal limits allow. The 12th-gen chip topped out at 4.7GHz. That translates to a modest power boost across the board, whether you’re in the basic “Optimised” power mode or are running on mains power and using the “Performance” profile.

This thin-and-light will happily eat up basic tasks like document editing, web browsing and the like, and copes reasonably well when editing single images. It’s on par with other recent ultraportables out of the box; push it harder and the internal fan kicks into gear, though never to ear-thrashing levels. The P-class CPU can manage trickier jobs like video editing, just not at the same pace as rivals with higher wattage H-class silicon.

Intel’s Iris Xe integrated GPU is still in charge of graphics, so this isn’t a machine for gaming on the go. Think simply 2D titles, or older 3D ones, rather than anything modern, especially if you plan on playing at the Matebook’s native resolution. We stuck to card battler Hearthstone; loot-em-up Diablo 4 barely broke 30fps at 1080p with everything set to low.

Huawei’s Windows 11 tweaks largely focus on quick connectivity for the firm’s other gadgets. Handy if you’ve got a Huawei smartphone or tablet, but not a big deal for the rest of us. Otherwise the OS is pretty vanilla, with little in the way of pre-intalled bloat.

Battery capacity stays the same as last year, at 60Wh. With so few changes everywhere else, it’s no surprise the new Matebook X Pro isn’t any more of a longevity star than the outgoing model. Even with the screen set to 50% brightness and the power profile set to optimised, we saw about eight hours of web browsing, word processing and video streaming. That falls short of the M2-powered MacBook Air, which is still our top choice for remote working.

Huawei does bundle in a powerful 90W USB-C adaptor, at least, needing just half an hour to bring the battery back up to 50%. It’ll rapid charge your other tech too, which is neat.

Huawei Matebook X Pro (2023) verdict

With its upgrades being entirely under the hood, this year’s Matebook X Pro is a modest refresh over the previous generation. But that’s no bad thing, given it was already a very capable ultraportable. The keyboard and touchpad are as slick as ever, the 3:2 aspect ratio touchscreen is work-friendly as well as pixel-packed. HDR support and some decent stereo speakers are great for slacking off, too.

The 13th-gen Intel CPU only brings a minor performance boost, and dedicated GPUs remain off the table, so creatives and pros will still want to keep the Dell XPS 15 in mind. Battery life hasn’t really improved either, so sn M2-powered MacBook Air remains the best choice for all-day working away from the mains.

We’re still fans of the Matebook’s styling, though, and can’t deny you’re getting a lot of machine for your money.

Huawei Matebook X Pro (2023) technical specifications

Screen	14.2in 3120×2080 LCD w/ 90Hz
CPU	Intel Core i7-1360p 12-core
Memory	16GB RAM
Storage	1TB SSD
Graphics	Intel Iris Xe
Operating system	Windows 11
Connectivity	2x Thunderbolt 4/USB-C, 2x USB-C, 3.5mm combi port
Battery	60Wh
Dimensions	310x221x15.5mm, 1.26kg

• Buy the Huawei Matebook X Pro from Huawei here