Huawei MateBook 14s: an excellent laptop with a 90Hz screen in 3: 2 . format

Small form factor laptops with the powerful H processor were once a niche dominated by Ryzen. The new Huawei MateBook 14s follows the same concept, but uses an Intel processor: the Core i7-11370H comes from the Tiger Lake-H35 series launched at the beginning of the year.

These are drilled into quad-core processors, which alone provide less computing power than AMD’s Ryzen with up to eight cores. The choice is more consistent in the Intel world since there is no additional GPU in the MateBook 14s. 3D performance stands up and down with the integrated graphics unit, the Tiger Lake-H35 is fully equipped with 96 executables (Iris Xe). The Tiger Lake-H45 will have eight CPU cores, but only one graphics unit with only 32 EU (UHD) EUROPEs. This is not even enough for casual games (see also our review of Dell XPS 17 with Core i5-11400H).

3: 2 at 90Hz

The screen is a 14-inch touch screen in a 3: 2 format, which is convenient for working with a high resolution (2520 x 1680 pixels), which, if desired, works not only with the usual 60 Hz, but also with 90 Hz. The mouse pointer then flows more smoothly across the screen, and the same is true when scrolling on websites. There is a webcam in the frame at the top of the screen – that’s worth noting because Huawei previously put the camera in the keyboard, which means you’ll be seen from a low-angle perspective that took a while to get used to in video conferencing.

One USB-C socket talks about Thunderbolt 4. Thanks to a USB-A jack and a full-size HDMI output, you can connect existing peripherals without an adapter. The 1.4kg heavy notebook is said to provide up to 9 hours of playback time when playing 1080p videos on a single charge.

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MateBook 14s costs 1,300 euros with Core i7-11370H, 16 GB of soldered memory (LPDDR4X-3733) and 512 GB SSD; With a 1 TB SSD hard drive with non-volatile gear, the cost is 1,500 euros. The cheaper model is available in a metallic gray (“Space Gray”) or green (“Spruce Green”) case, and the more expensive model is only in gray. Anyone who pre-orders the notebook as of today will get a screen (Huawei Display 23.8″) and a pair of earplugs (Huawei FreeBuds 4i) for free; delivery scheduled to begin October 12. Huawei is preinstalling Windows 10 Home; it’s meant to be A free upgrade to the new Windows 11 is possible this year.

You will find a detailed test of the Huawei MateBook 14s in one of the upcoming c’t issues.

(fall)