Introduction
Huawei and its subsidiary Honor have been increasing their presence within the laptop computer world for years now however have actually hit their stride within the final 12 months. We have now coated the extremely premium Huawei MateBook X Professional 2020, the extremely highly effective Huawei MateBook 14 2020 AMD, the reasonably priced 16.1-inch Honor MagicBook Professional, and its extra transportable sibling – the Honor MagicBook 14 with the 12nm quad-core Ryzen 5 3500U that was initially out there.
Now we’ve got our fingers on the upgraded model of the final one with the brand new Ryzen 5 4500U processor, primarily based on AMD’s newer Zen 2 structure and constructed on the extra environment friendly 7nm course of. It is a six-core chip that runs cooler and is friendlier to the battery.
Past the CPU change the brand new MagicBook 14 is essentially equivalent to its predecessor so that you would possibly wish to learn the evaluation of that one. Right here we’ll principally deal with what’s new.
Show and keyboard
Like its title suggests, the MagicBook 14 has a 14-inch show. It is an IPS LCD with a matte end and a traditional 1920x1080px decision. Honor advertises a brightness of 250 nits and 800:1 distinction.
In our evaluation of the primary MagicBook 14 we measured a display brightness of 277 nits, fairly respectable. This mannequin we’ve got here’s a brighter nonetheless at 294 nits, higher than Honor’s claims. The panel has slim bezels, which assist it to realize an 84% display to physique ratio.
The display is ideal for indoor use and we recognize the no reflections matte end. Colours are good and punchy and brightness is okay for all however the sunniest environments.
The total-sized keyboard is simply as good to sort on as on the unique MagicBook 14. Keys are large and properly spaced out and so they have good journey, with out being mushy. The touchpad is an effective measurement, a bit wider than most different machines on this measurement. It has a plastic floor however is easy and responsive. Multi contact gestures work flawlessly.
The facility button doubles as a fingerprint scanner with help for caching – you press it as soon as and it’ll boot up Home windows and log you in along with your fingerprint with out the necessity to authenticate.
Efficiency and battery life
That is essentially the most thrilling bit. The unique MagicBook 14 we examined had a Ryzen 5 3500U processor with 4 bodily cores and eight threads, constructed on AMD’s 12nm node and operating on a 15W TDP. The mannequin we’ve got right here is the Ryzen 5 4500U with 6 bodily cores and 6 threads, constructed on AMD’s new 7nm node. The Ryzen 5 4500U has twice the L3 Cache at 8MB and retains the 15W TDP.
In Geekbench 5 the Ryzen 5 4500U CPU scored round 20% greater in single core and 30% greater in multi-core than the Ryzen 5 3500U.
And this is Cinebench R20.
We examined the 512GB M2 NVMe SSD by SSSTC and acquired a great 1,947MBs sequential learn and 1,381MBs write. That is stable efficiency, though you would discover quicker drives, specifically the 512GB Western Digital drive on the 16.1-inch MagicBook Professional, which posted 3,400MBs and a pair of,700MBs, respectively.
We carried out a stress take a look at on each CPU and the Vega GPU to guage the thermal efficiency. The CPU, which idled at round 27 levels Celsius at 1397Mhz ramped up 75 levels and 3443Mhz, earlier than throttling down and selecting 65 levels and 3143MHz. We did not discover a distinction in conduct between Regular and Efficiency mode. The GPU solely reached 62 levels.
Through the stress take a look at the one fan labored always to maintain temperatures down, however we did not a lot as hear a tiny whistle from it. The MagicBook 14 is a really quiet machine, virtually silent below regular load. And what’s even higher is that the chassis did not really feel heat anyplace however on the very prime proper, slightly below the display. That is wonderful thermal efficiency.
Battery life was excellent from the 56Wh cell contained in the MagicBook 14.
We ran a YouTube video take a look at and a shopping take a look at, each at 100% brightness and 100% quantity (round 70dB) within the video take a look at. The MagicBook 14 scored 11 hours and 20 minutes of fixed YouTube video playback and 12 hours and half-hour of continuous shopping.
Verdict
On the time of writing, the Honor MagicBook 14 prices €530 for the configuration with a 12nm Ryzen 5 3500U with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The mannequin we’ve got right here with the 7nm Ryzen 5 4500U is €750, however you get double the storage at 512GB. We might say that is an affordable markup for twice the storage, 20%-30% quicker CPU efficiency, to not point out the higher effectivity because of the newer manufacturing course of.
The Honor MagicBook 14 is an ideal proposition for the present keep at house work tradition. It will possibly go all day on a single cost, may be very light-weight and transportable and is ideal for typing and productiveness work. It will possibly even deal with some quantities of picture modifying or coding simply.
You may avoid wasting cash and go together with the cheaper 12nm MagicBook 14, however investing in a 7nm laptop computer now could be the smart factor as it is going to be rather more future-proof. One other simple advice. Nice job, Honor!
