Huawei MateBook review: Can it beat the Surface Pro 4?

Jonathan Bray June 29, 2016

Image 1 of 21

Huawei is a company on the move. Not content with flooding the smartphone market with well-designed, affordable smartphones, the Chinese giant is now making its move into laptops and tablets. Its first attempt, the Huawei MateBook, is a convertible tablet that’s hoping to beat the Microsoft Surface family at its own game.

The MateBook follows a familiar recipe. Just like the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, the MateBook’s core components are all built into in the tablet housing, with an optional snap-on cover doing triple duty as stand, keyboard and touchpad. There’s also an optional pressure-sensitive stylus, used for taking notes, sketching, painting, drawing, and more accurate photo editing. And just like Microsoft’s tablet, this is very much a device designed to run Windows 10.

Huawei MateBook review: The tablet

Ian was very impressed with the MateBook when he saw it back at the Mobile World Congress technology show earlier in the year, and I have to say in large part I agree.

The tablet part of the MateBook is glorious. It’s clad in subtle, anodised gold-tinted metal with a beautifully silky matte finish. It’s extremely slim, measuring 6.9mm from the screen to the rear of the device, and it’s very light indeed, weighing a paltry 640g. That’s as thin as the 12.9in iPad Pro and, impressively enough, 73g lighter.

[gallery:15]

Build quality is exceptional. You’ll get nowhere if you attempt to twist or bend the tablet, and there are no uneven seams or unsightly gaps anywhere in the chassis. The glass front of the tablet is perfectly smooth to the touch, too, which makes every prod and swipe feel slick and effortless.

All of the tablet’s controls are well made and sensibly positioned. The volume rocker is on the right edge of the tablet, and the fingerprint reader nestled between the up and down buttons works as well as those on Huawei’s smartphones – a quick dab of the finger and the tablet is unlocked.

The power button is on the top edge on the right-hand side and easy to reach, and the MateBook’s stereo speakers are on the top edge as well. They’re not a patch on the iPad Pro’s quad-speaker array for body and volume, but they go reasonably loud and don’t distort. They’re good enough for keeping tabs on the cricket on the radio while you work, but you’ll want a pair of headphones or a Bluetooth speaker for music.

Sacrifices have to be made in a Windows tablet this slim, though, and there isn’t much room for luxuries such as full-sized USB and HDMI ports. In fact, the only connection aside from the headphone jack on the left edge is the USB Type-C port in the bottom-right corner. This is used principally to charge the MateBook, but with the help of the optional docking station it can be used to output video, connect to a wired LAN and hook up USB 3 peripherals.

[gallery:8]

Huawei MateBook review: Keyboard case and Mate Pen stylus

So, how about that keyboard case? First, the good news: you can type on it at speed given a little practice. Although there’s barely any space between the keys, they’re large, give plenty of positive feedback and are backlit so you can see them in darkened rooms. The touchpad is large, smooth under the finger, and works brilliantly with Windows 10’s gestures.

The optional stylus also works well. It supports 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity, has effective palm rejection, and the feel of it on the screen is fluid and ever-so-slightly soft and grippy. It’s as comfortable to write and sketch with as the Surface Pen that comes with the Surface Pro 4.

[gallery:16]

It has two buttons on the barrel that fall neatly under your forefinger. One of these enables right-clicking; the other doesn’t appear to do anything yet. Pull off the top, meanwhile, and a micro-USB port is revealed for charging, and if you reverse the pen and press the button near the cap, the Mate Pen doubles up as a laser pointer.

As usual, there’s nowhere to stow the stylus within the body of the tablet itself – that’s the price you pay for such a slim profile – but the pen is provided with a magnetic loop that can be attached to the rear of the case to keep it out of harm’s way.

[gallery:19]

The keyboard case is the big problem here. It offers plenty of protection for the tablet when it’s folded up, wrapping around the back and front of the MateBook. It looks smart, too, the tan-leather finish complementing the tablet’s subtle gold colour rather nicely.

But ergonomically, the case is a disaster. Like the iPad Pro, it has an extra flap that folds around and creates a supporting Toblerone shape for the tablet to lean against. My problem with this is that the angle it creates is simply too steep for anything but watching movies.

And while it is possible to shift the flap up, engaging a set of magnets at the back of the MateBook and tipping the screen back a few degrees in the process, this second position isn’t at all secure. A firm prod on the touchscreen is enough to send the tablet crashing to the desk with a resounding smack; I’d prefer not to think what might occur if this happened while I had the MateBook perched on my lap.

It’s also worth noting that the keyboard doesn’t lie entirely flat and can’t be tilted for more comfortable typing. However, it’s the insecurity of the design that really matters here, and that undermines the Huawei MateBook’s attempt to snatch the Surface Pro 4’s crown as the best 2-in-1 hybrid.

[gallery:10]

Huawei MateBook review: Performance, display quality, battery life

Beneath the MateBook’s pale, golden skin is a potent hardware lineup. Our review sample came equipped with an Intel Core m5-6Y54, 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, which puts it in a similar bracket to the iPad Pro for multi-core CPU performance and the Surface Pro 4 for graphics speed.

You can opt for the Core m3 model if you want to save money, but either of the variants should be able to run Windows 10 responsively. The MateBook only starts to struggle if you task it with a heavy, continuous workload such as video rendering or a heavy-duty Photoshop filter. Most other jobs it breezes through with barely a hitch.

^ Note that in the graphs above, the Surface Pro 4 tested is the Core i5 model, the Elite x2 is a Core m7 and the Samsung is a Core m5

The display is also pretty darned good. It’s a high-DPI 12in IPS panel with a resolution of 2,160 x 1,440 and, although it can’t match the very best tablets on the market, quality is still excellent. Brightness reaches a maximum of 346cd/m2, which is fine for indoor use, contrast is a solid 843:1 and it covers 98.4% of the sRGB colour gamut.

The MateBook’s big weakness is its battery life. In our video-rundown test, it lasted a mere six hours. This places it well behind not only the iPad Pro but also Windows rivals the Surface Pro 4 and the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S.

If you’re lucky, this will be just enough to get you through a day of light web-browsing and emailing. If you want to do anything more demanding than that, be prepared to find a plug socket and hook up to the mains.

Huawei MateBook: Prices and verdict

The Huawei MateBook isn’t yet available to buy in the UK, but with prices for the tablet starting at €799 (£660 at the time of writing) for the Intel Core m3 version, it should be cheaper than both the Surface Pro 4 and Samsung Galaxy TabPro S when it does eventually become available. There’s no Euro price for the pen and keyboard yet, but with the Microsoft Store in the US offering the two in a bundle for $100 when you buy, it looks like they won’t bump the cost up too much.

In fact, those pre-ordering the MateBook in the US will be paying $230 less than for the cheapest Surface Pro 4 package – a significant saving.

At those prices, the MateBook ought to be staking a strong claim for the Surface Pro 4’s crown, but there’s the small matter of the stand, which is an ergonomic misstep, and the battery life, which is seriously disappointing.

That means I can’t in all good conscience recommend the Huawei MateBook, and that’s a shame because in many respects it’s a top-notch product. It’s quick, the screen is good quality, and the price is reasonable. Hopefully, Huawei will stick at it and produce a MateBook 2 – by then it may have ironed out the kinks.