Huawei has revealed its latest laptop: the Huawei MateBook 14s. Slimline and high-powered, the MateBook 14s looks to service users through office and creative tasks, as well as recreational pastimes.
The Huawei MateBook 14s launches on October 27, 2021, and is available in Space Grey or Spruce Green. Prices start at £1,199.99. Preorders are now open.
Pricing:
Huawei MateBook 14s - i7, 16GB RAM, 512TB SSD - £1,199.99
Huawei MateBook 14s - i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Intel Evo - £1,299.99
There are several key features of the Huawei MateBook 14s that are sure to turn some heads. Read on to find out more.
Screen - 14.2-inches, 3:2, 90Hz, 2.5K resolution, touchscreen
Huawei has never struggled to impress with its screens, and the MateBook 14s certainly looks to deliver again with its 14.2-inch screen. It has the ubiquitous Huawei ratio of 3:2, rather than the 16:9 ratio found on most laptops. In practice, this means that the screen is taller than the standard, which provides more space for increased productivity.
The resolution sits at 2520 x 1680 with 213 PPI, sRGB support hits 100%, and brightness reaches 400 nits. The refresh rate can switch between 60Hz or 90Hz at the touch of a button - this gives movies and games the extra speed they need for smoothness (some creatives might like it, too).
The screen also has a 10-point multi-touch sensitive screen. As Winston Eavis, the Marketing Director for Huawei UK & Ireland, noted during his keynote speech at the UK launch of the Matebook 14s, “you can play it like a piano”.
Power - Intel i7, 16GB RAM, Intel EVO certification
The Huawei MateBook 14s carries the latest Intel chipset, the Intel® Core™ i7-11370H Processor, which can reach frequency speeds of up to 4.8GHz. Coupled with the 16GB of LPDDR4x, advanced cooling and lightning-quick NVMe SSD storage, the MateBook 14s has the makings of a powerful device.
Users have the option to pick up a specification of the MateBook 14s that meets Intel Evo certification. That means, at the very least, the laptop has: an 11th gen Intel chip, Intel Iris X graphics, a one-second wake time, nine-hour battery life, Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt 4 connectivity.
Huawei Share
The MateBook 14s is designed as an integral part of the Huawei Share ecosystem. It’s a wireless sharing technology that “allows you to quickly transfer images, videos, documents, and other types of files between devices. This technology uses Bluetooth to discover nearby devices that support Huawei Share and Wi-Fi Direct to transfer files without using mobile data.”
Huawei Share can also project a virtual version of your Huawei smartphone onto the desktop of a laptop, as well as allowing control over its apps and files. Files can be transferred between the two devices, too.
The other stuff - OS, lightweight, webcam, speakers, charging
The MateBook 14s runs on Windows 11, Microsofts latest operating system. Notable features of this OS include screen optimisation tools, Microsoft Teams (free), multitasking tools, gaming enhancements. Read more on the Microsoft site.
Though the power carried by the MateBook 14s is impressive, physically its a lightweight. At just under 15mm deep and weighing only around 1,400g, it looks like an easy device to carry around. As a comparison, the Apple MacBook Air weighs 1,270g.
The webcam has moved. For a while, Huawei clung to its unusual webcam placement - the bottom of the screen. The MateBook 14s sees it gone, now sitting at the top of the screen. No more double chins on video calls - so, it’s good news. Video chatting should be nice and clear too, with Noise Cancelling AI working to keep background noise to an absolute minimum.
The MateBook 14s will ship with a 90W USB-C charger. This charger can provide enough power to the laptop for three hours of office-based tasks in just 15 minutes, with the battery fully charging in just over an hour.
There’s more besides, which you can learn about over on the Huawei website.
Related: The best laptops for video editing | The best gaming laptops 2021
Our hands-on first impressions
We were lucky enough to attend the UK launch of the Huawei MateBook 14s, and though we don’t have enough information or experience to offer up an in-depth review, we do have a few first impressions to share.
• The keyboard is mechanical with a 1.5mm travel - typing feels nice.
• The 3:2 screen feels massive. There's plenty of space for editing documents and images
• However, watching 16:9 content (which is almost all content) results in an exaggerated letterbox effect
• The screen is nice and bright the resolution is stunning
• Windows 11 runs smoothly - though we did not see it under a heavy load
• There are four speakers - two tweeters and two woofers - and they sound powerful. They can't match dedicated external PC speakers, but they impress nevertheless
• The 10-point touchscreen might be overkill for some, but it offers up potential new ways of working for image and video editors
• Huawei Share is as quick as it claims
• A demonstration showed the MateBook 14s handling power-hungry Adobe Lightroom and After Effects processes well, with real-time photo editing and 1080p footage rendering working well. To caveat, we didn’t get to see how the MateBook 14s deals with a high volume of imagery or long video editing processes. Regardless, these showcases offer promise.
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