Computer Shopper - UK (2020-07)

ISSUE389|COMPUTERSHOPPER|JULY2020 25

YOU’RE BARRED

IIPPSSttoouucchhddiissppllaayy,,wwhhiicchhhhaassaarreessoolluuttiioonnooff
3,000x2,000andatall-ishaspectratioof3:2.
Thisshapeisidealforaworkmachine,giving
youplentyofheightsoyoucanseemoreofa
documentorwebpagewithoutscrolling.
Theflipsideisthat,whenitcomesto
watching films or TV shows, theblack bars
at the topand bottomofthe screen are a
little taller than witha16:9-or16:10-ratio
display, but that canbeforgiven as this is a
‘Pro’machine first and aleisurelymedia
consumption device second.
Having said that,it’sadisplaythat works
well forall content in terms of itsoverall
qqualityy,,because itpperformed brilliantlyyin
our technical testing.Peak brightness is
great at 533cd/m^2 ,the contrastratio is also
very impressive at 1,579:1 and colour
performanceisexceptionally good.
With acolorimeter,wemeasured96.2%
coverage of thesRGB colourgamut, and
colour accuracy wasnear perfect too.

apsfromthe

ngeaboutthis

ood.

HOTSTUFF

stpowerful

tion, we had high

e.Sure enough,

iittssttaarrtteeddooffffwweelllliinnoouurr 44 KKbenchmarks,

scoring105 in theimage test and 80 in the

video-encoding test,but alower than

expectedmultitaskingscoreof67led to it

producing an overall scoreof78.

In fairness, this is stillhigh foran

ultraportable,thoughit’salsoamere

three points higher than last year’sCore

i7-poweredMateBook XPro,sothe

generation jump in CPUs hasn’t resulted in

major overall performance changes. It’salso

worthnoting that the late 2019versionof

Dell’sXPS 13 –which was refreshed with the

same Core i7-10510U –scored 97.

Aspper usual with lapptopppperformance

discrepancies, this looks like acase of one –

the XPS 13 –having more efficient cooling

thanthe other. Again, though, we wouldn’t say

the MateBook13Pro felt eithersluggish or

overly warm duringnormal use,sothis

shouldn’t be adealbreaker.The MX250is

also aniftyGPU forlower-end gaming; we

SPECIFICATIONS

Winndowsoverall

Multitasking

Batterylife

0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100

Seepage100 forperformancedetails

PROCCESSORQuad-core1.8GHzIntel Core i7-10510U•RAM

16GB•DIMENSIONS304x217x14.6mm•WEIGHT1.3kg•

SCREEENSIZE13.9in•SCREENRESOLUTION3,000x2,000•

GRAPHICSADAPTORNvidia GeForceMX250•TOTAL

STORRAGE1TBSSD•OPERATINGSYSTEMWindows10

Home•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSconsumer.

huawei.com•PARTCODEMACHC-WAE9LP

7h55m

78

67

got Dirt Showdown running at asmooth

79fps, using the High quality preset.

More concerning is battery life. Despitethe

fact that it’susing alow-power Intel chip, the

MateBook XPro lastedonly7h55m in our

video rundown test. That’s actually better

than the XPS13, butalso worse thanboth

its immediatepredecessorand the original

2018 model. The Lenovo Yoga C940 (Shopper

387), another Intel10th-gen laptop,also

managed to go allthe wayto11h 13m.

AMODESTPROPOSAL

This newMateBook XPro is asolid update,

but an unexcitingone.There areworsefates:

this laptop still hasanamazingdisplay, good

all-roundperformance –including amodicum

of gaming ability if you optfor either of the

models withdiscrete graphics –and an

excellentkeyboard/trackpad combo.

However,the lack of bigchanges makesit

hard to fullyrecommend this 2020 model.

That’s especiallyinthe lightofthe prices; you

coulddgeta2 019 modelforless,andwouldn’t

belosinganysignificantfunctionality.

Thhenthere’stheDellXPS 13 and,in

particcular,the Lenovo Yoga C940, bothof

whichhpresent more affordable and generally

betteer-performing choices.

JonathanBray

p-upwebcamandapowerbuttonwithbuilt-infingerprintreader