24 JANUARY2021|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE395
HONOR’SLAPTOPSHAVEproven tobe
an importantoutlet forthe Chinesefirm in
2020 and, with the release of the new
HonorMagicBook Pro,it’s pushing on
intothe premium laptop space.
Launched at avirtualpress conference at
IFA2020alongside aseriesofnew wearables
andanupdated MagicBook 14 and15, the new
laptop usesAMD’slatest Ryzen 4000-series
mobile chips. Combined with decent build
quality,alarge16.1indisplayand an extremely
reasonable price,it’s shaping up to be the best
laptop we’ve seen at under£1,000.
GONEWIDE
Honor has close ties with Huawei, so it should
come as little surprise to discover the
MagicBook Probears some similaritiestothe
MateBook line of laptops. The16.1in non-
touchscreenmeansthe machine is larger than
any of Huawei’s offerings to date, but its dark
grey, ‘frostedmatt’finish, pop-upkeyboard
webcam and circular fingerprint powerbutton
give the game away.
That’s notnecessarily abad thing. Huawei’s
laptops have been consistentlyexcellent since
it entered the market acouple of years ago,
and Honor’s MagicBook Proisnodifferent.It
has astiff, unyielding aluminium chassis that
feels well made,itlooks smart, and although
the keyboard and touchpad aren’t thebest
around –the spacebar feels atouch rattly and
we’d prefer alarger touch surface –there’s
nothi b titth t’ bj ti bl b d
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HONOR MagicBook
Pro
★★★★★
£850•Fromwww.hihonor.c
VERDICT
Slickly designed and immensely powerful,t
MagicBookProisanunbelievablebargain
WINDOWS 10 LAPTOP
Andthere’sjustenoughportabilityhere–
it’sahairunder 17mm thickand weighsa
mere 1.7kg –tomake carryingthe laptop
aroundinabag nottoo much of achore.
The Honor MagicBook Proisn’t, perhaps, as
impressively svelteasthe LG Gram 17
(Shopper388)–theLGweighs less at 1.35kg,
and also hasalarger,higher-resolution
display–but the MagicBook Pro hits back
withmuchmorepowerfulinternals.
SUPER POWERED
Youget oneofAMD’slatesthigh-performance
CPUs: ahexa-core,12-thread Ryzen 54600H
CPU, to be specific, backed up by 16GB of
RAM and 512GBofNVMe SSDstorage.
As our benchmarksreveal, this makes the
MagicBook Pronot just afraction faster than
the Gram 17; it’s quicker by an absolutemile,
scoringanincredible 221 overall in our4K
benchmarks to the Gram 17’s 72.Even
premium heavy-hitters such as the latest
Dell XPS 15 and RazerBlade 15 can’tkeep up,
ith f191 and
ely.
stof
xpensive
MagicBook
icated
twon’t be
mes or
ware,
ethis is
epeat
l
4 :
Upower
money.
one-hit-
ts512GB
ugh to go
stest
ast year,
speed
eed.
Batterylifeisrespectable,too,lasting
9h15minourvideorundowntestwiththe
screensettoabrightnessof170cd/m^2 and
flightmodeengaged.For alaptop witha16in
display, arelatively small 56Wh battery and all
that power,thisisaveryimpressive result.
MAGIC SELL
Looking at thoseperformance results, you
couldbeforgiven forwondering what allthe
othermanufacturers aredoing.The Honor
MagicBook Properforms so well and at sucha
reasonable price that it embarrasses laptops
costing hundreds of pounds more.
It’snot entirely devoidofshortcomings;
again, we’d like to have seen ahigher-
resolution display with atalleraspectratio, for
instance,the keyboard and touchpadaren’t
quiteupto the standards of thebest laptops
on themarket (although they’refar from
awful), and the webcam positioning isn’tideal.
However,at£850,the HonorMagicBook
Pro is preposterouslygood value.It’s
incredibly fast, surprisingly slim and light for
a16.1in machine,itlookssmart andfeels well
made.Ifyou need apowerful machinefor
use at home as well as on the road but don’t
have big buckstospend, this is the laptop
you should be savingupfor.
JonathanBray
SPECIFICATIONS
Windowsoverall
Multitasking
Battery life
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage62for performancedetails
PROCESSORHexa-core3GHzAMDRyzen54600H•
RAM16GB•DIMENSIONS369x234x16.9mm•WEIGHT
1.7kg•SCREEN SIZE16.1in•SCREEN RESOLUTION
1,920x1,080•GRAPHICSADAPTORAMDRadeonRXVega6
9h 15m
221
241
hingaboutitthat’sobjectionablybad.
Eventhe speakers,flankingthekeyboard
heleft and right,are decent, delivering
prisingly rich,full-bodied audio that puts
nyrivals to shame.
Oneraregiveawayofcost-cutting is the
playresolution, whichatabog-standard
0x1,080 is alittle lowfor such abig
een: finedetails,liketext, can appear
ellated. That said, it’s agreat displayin
stother ways: sRGB coverage is a
erb 97.8%, and combined with alow
a-E of 0.48,ahigh contrastratioof
9:1and apeakbrightness of 345cd/m^2 ,
MagicBook Pro delivers plenty of
ancy without oversaturation.
Thereare lots of ports, too: one USB
e-C, HDMI andUSB3 port
ece on the leftand two
B3ports on theright,
ngwitha
dphone jack.
withscoresof
183 respective
Unlike mos
these moreex
laptops, theM
Prolacks dedi
graphics, so it
as fast in gam
other 3D softw
but otherwise
verymuch ar
of theoriginal
MagicBook 1 4
enormous CPU
formuch less
This is noo
wonder, either.It
SSD is also quick eno
toetotoe withthe very fas
laptops we’ve tested over thepa
landing a2,765MB/s sequential read
anda2,144MB/ssequential write spe
k
com
the
TheMagicBookProperformssowellandatsuchagood
pricethatitembarrasseslaptopscostinglotsmore
