Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 Review

Chinese manufacturing giant, Huawei, is known for its top-notch smartphone products. However, this company releases laptops that are as good as its smartphones. Recently, the company officially released the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 and we are lucky to have one unit in for review. The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 incorporates many innovative technologies. It is Huawei’s most important notebook product in recent years, and it is also a demonstration of Huawei’s technological and ambitions in the notebook field. The improvements on this notebook cut across multiple areas from its display to its chips. It comes with the latest chips that are available in the industry.

The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 is equipped with Intel’s 11th Gen Core i7-1195G7 Processor. This device also comes with Intel’s Iris® X^e Graphics GPU. This hardcore CPU and GPU combination coupled with its good 3K LTPS screen as well as its 9,499 yuan ($1,491) starting price makes this device very attractive.

Specifications

Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 Design & Appearance

Huawei is quite good with the design of its notebook and the MateBook X series has a specific design which Huawei have retained for years now. Just like other devices in the MateBook series, the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 comes with a ceramic design. The entire body of this device is made of ceramic and even the bottom plate is metal. The back cover of this notebook is very simple and plain. However, the feel is not entirely smooth as it has a little gritty feel which gives this notebook a good grip. With this design, it will not be easy for this notebook to slide off your hand. In addition to the gritty ceramic build, the top surface of the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 comes with a CNC engraved “Huawei” LOGO which is quite conspicuous. This is the only design on the top-surface of this device.

The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 adopts a No. 150 precision sandblasting process, and selects ceramic sand molds that are closer to the diamond face. It ensures a warm and comfortable touch while also taking into account the introverted gloss.

The bottom of this notebook is very clean and without any heat dissipation grids.  Somehow, Huawei found a way such that the metal bottom plate design does not affect heat dissipation. On the bottom, Huawei includes four plastic anti-skid knobs (foot pads) as usual. If you want to disassemble the machine, you need to pay attention to the fact that there are two screws under the foot pads, and the foot pads must be removed first. When the notebook is placed on a desk, these foot pads slightly elevates the device so it does not sit directly on the desk.

Nevertheless, there is no heat dissipation outlet at the bottom plate or sides of this notebooks. These are the usual position for heat dissipation outlets for most notebooks in the market. The bottom plate of the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 is curved on all sides. On the side edge, at the contact between the curved bottom plate and the side of this notebook, there is a thin, long and slender opening through which heat is let out.

This design is premium because at first glance, a novice will be tempted to think that this notebook does not have a heat dissipation outlet. Considering that there are notebooks in the market that weighs 1.5kg, this notebook is a thin and light notebook. It comes with a weight of 1.38kg which is quite acceptable considering the hardware that it carries. The dimension of this notebook is 310 x 221 x 15.50 mm. We can see from the dimension that the MateBook X Pro 2022 is absolutely thin.

The model we reviewed is the sliver colour option, however, this notebook also has a space grey colour option. Inside the box, the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 comes with a 65 W USB-C Power Adapter, USB-C Charger Cable, USB-C OTG Cable, Quick Start Guide and a Warranty Card

Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 Display

For starters, it is important to note that the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 comes with a professional 3.1K display. This device is the world’s first notebook display that has passed the TüV Rheinland professional-grade two-color gamut standard certification. This screen has 100% sRGB color gamut, 98% DCI-P3 color gamut, and a two-color gamut average ΔE<1, reaching the standard of professional-level monitors.

The screen size has also been upgraded from the previous generation 13.9 inches to 14.2 inches, with a resolution of 3120 x 2080, a refresh rate of 90Hz. Furthermore, the brightness of this display hits 500nit, and it has a contrast ratio of 1500:1. Furthermore, due to the thinness of the bezels on all four sides of the display, the screen to body ratio exceeds 92%.

With Huawei’s years of technology accumulation and engineers’ ultimate pursuit of products, the screen camera has been moved from the bottom bezel in the previous generation to the top very narrow frame. In order to ensure that the bezels has a narrow frame on all sides to ensure a screen-to-body ratio of more than 90%, Huawei had to reduce the size of the camera hole. Huawei has developed an exclusive fully automatic laser precision welding technology, innovatively adopting a 0.15mm double-hole welding design for each connection position of the camera module.

Relative to the previous generation, the screen size and the resolution increases. The default screen refresh rate is 60Hz but you can manually increase this refresh rate to 90Hz by pressing Fn + R. By using the same command, you can reduce the screen refresh rate back to 60Hz.

In addition to the Rheinland professional-grade two-color gamut certification, this notebook also has the German Rheinland hardware-level low-blue light certification. This certification means that viewing this screen is less harmful to the eyes and is more suitable for users who need to work with the computer screen for a long time. Furthermore, the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 also has the German Rheinland TüV non-flicker certification natural color display (Natural Tone) technology. These certifications is a confirmation that this display is as tough and premium as it can be. In addition to the 100% sRGB color gamut and other top specifications, this display also supports 1.07 billion colors.

Still on the screen, Huawei also specifically optimized the gesture operation for the touch screen. You can use a three-finger slide down to quickly take screenshots, quickly identify the text in the screenshots, and quickly share through multi-screen collaboration. The screen touch + multi-screen collaboration brings the best mobile office experience. The addition of the touch screen allows the coordinated combination of touch and multi-screen. This allows users to carry out a lot of functions with just touching the display. The touch screen is more convenient for operations such as dragging and dropping files, sharing, and zooming in or out.

Screen Test: A real professional-level display
Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 has a high cost on the screen. According to Huawei, the P3 color gamut and sRGB dual color gamut of this 3K screen have an average color accuracy of ΔE<1. Let’s test it with Starscream X.

Color gamut coverage
The larger the color gamut value of the monitor, the better. The larger the color gamut, the more colors the screen can display, the richer the colors that pictures and videos can show, the higher the natural reproduction degree, and the more pleasing it will be to the human eye.

In the test, the sRGB color gamut of this screen is 99% while the AdobeRGB color gamut is 89%. In addition, there are 98% P3 color gamut and 87% NTSC color gamut.

As far as the performance of the color gamut is concerned, it has reached the level of a professional display. Also, its color coverage is perfect for human eye recognition.

Brightness & Contrast
The maximum brightness of this screen from the test is 537nit. This is 37nit higher than the official data from Huawei. However, the contrast ratio is about 1400:1, Huawei says it is 1500:1.

Display luminosity
The standard value for luminosity is 2.2. The closer the gamma curve measured in the test report is to 2.2, the better. In the tone response test, the luminosity value measured from the MateBook X Pro 2022 model is 2.2, which is very good.

Color accuracy
The color accuracy Delta-E is used to quantify the color difference between different colors. This regulates the range of color differences that can be tolerated by the human eye. Generally speaking, Delta-E changes between 3 and 6 are acceptable.

The technical standards for Delta-E are as follows:

• 1.6 – 3.2: When viewed from a certain distance, there is basically no difference in color. Here, it is usually regarded as the same color
• 3.2 – 6.5: The difference in color can be seen, but the impression of color is basically the same
• 6.5 – 13: The difference in color can be seen, but it can be regarded as the same hue
• 13 – 25: It is considered as a different color, if it exceeds this value

In terms of color accuracy. The highest Delta E value is 1.28 while the lowest is 0.21. The average Delta E value for the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 is only 0.65. Comparing this value with the technical standards as listed above, the color accuracy of this screen has surpassed the standards of professional graphics monitors.

Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 Keyboard

The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 keys have 1.5 mm comfortable key travel, which is rare in thin and light notebooks. In addition, in order to reduce the finger fatigue caused by long-time keyboard typing, Huawei engineers used the concept of soft-landing on the spacecraft on this keyboard. This idea ensures that when the key is pressed, the speed decelerates first and then brakes. This reduces the pressure on the fingers thereby giving the user a comfortable feel as well as less fatigue.

This notebook also comes with a fingerprint unlocking function which is integrated with the power button. When the fingerprint information is recorded and needs to be unlocked, touch it for 1 second to activate and enter the desktop. At the same time, by identifying fingerprints, you can log in to applications and websites safely without storing passwords on the server. This gives more security to the users personal information.

Inspired by the mobile phone pressure sensor, Huawei introduced the pressure touchpad design to the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022. The company adds 8 independent piezoelectric ceramics, and then integrated them with the software and algorithms developed by Huawei 2012 laboratory. No matter where you click on the touchpad, you get an instant response in real time. The Huawei Mate X Pro 2022 touchpad also has some new gestures, some of these gestures includes

• Tap twice to take a screenshot
• Scroll the left side of the touch pad to adjust the screen brightness
• Scroll the right side of the touch pad to adjust the volume
• The upper side can fast forward and rewind the video.

In addition, in order to increase the heat dissipation capacity of the notebook, Huawei has designed ventilation holes on the keyboard backlight panel. This greatly reduces the temperature of the host under high load. At the same time, in order to ensure the ability to prevent water (spash) issues, a waterproof and breathable membrane is added under the keyboard. If you accidentally spill coffee or other liquids on the keyboard, there is no need to worry.

On the sides of the keyboard, we will notice a grid which we will easily consider to be the speaker outlet. However, this is not just a speaker outlet for this device, it is also an air-inlet to keep the internals cool.

Battery, Charging and Cooling System

The battery has a capacity of 60Wh, which is a relatively large capacity among 14-inch thin and light notebooks. According to official data from Huawei, it can maintain 9 hours of local video battery life.

The charging head supports 5V3A, 9V3A, 12V3A, 15V5A, 20V4.5A output standards, and can output up to 90W power. It is compatible with almost all current mobile phone fast charging specifications, and can be directly used as a super fast charging for Huawei mobile phones.

The internal workmanship of Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 can be described as pleasing to the eye. The ultra-thin pure copper soaking plate covers all the power supply area of ​​the PCB board. Furthermore, the company did some improvements to the fan. This device comes with a brand new shark fin cooling system. The height of the two shark fin fans reached 4.5mm, and the fan volume has increased by 25% compared with the previous generation. With the new 0.8mm ultra-thin VC (Vapor chamber) cooling module, the overall cooling efficiency is better and has a 40% increase.

The noise of the fan under a high load (especially for light and thin laptops) greatly affects the experience of use. This is more disturbing when this device is used in the dead of night when people are still sleeping. However, Huawei optimizes the system and used the following solutions to keep the noise and temperature at bay. Here is what we saw from our review of the fan technology

Increase the fan volume: Like we said earlier, the the fan volume has increased by 25% relative to the previous generation. It also has two shark fin fans with height reaching 4.5mm.

Full-size soaking plate: The heat conduction efficiency of the soaking plate is much higher than that of traditional heat pipes. In addition, Huawei has also designed a super capillary circulation tube inside the soaking plate, which increases the heat dissipation capacity by 40% compared with the previous generation.

Keyboard air inlet: For notebooks, more air inlets and outlets can make the inside of the notebook circulate to the outside of the fuselage faster. Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 can make the cold airflow into the host from above the keyboard by opening holes on the notebook backlight panel. This also helps in reducing the temperature of the keyboard and the motherboard.

In addition, Huawei has added a layer of waterproof and breathable membrane under the keyboard to ensure the splash-proof performance of the notebook keyboard. A more efficient fan can reduce the speed under the same TDP, and a stronger cooling system can reduce the temperature in the notebook. When the temperature and fan speed are reduced, the MateBook X Pro 2022 model has excellent heat dissipation and noise performance.

The MateBook X Pro 2022 model runs at 25W with less noise than the previous generation 15W. In fact, when we bake the machine at 25W, the noise of the MateBook X Pro 2022 fan is also very low.

Connectivity and Speakers

This notebook comes with 1 x Type-C (Raiden 4), 1 x Type-C (full function), and a 3.5mm headset integrated interface on the left side of the fuselage. On the right side of the fuselage, there are two USB Type-C interfaces. The change here is relatively large, the previous generation has only one USB 3.2 Gen1 interface on the right side of the fuselage. The included accessories are a Type-C charging head, a Type-C charging cable, and a Type-C to USB-A adapter cable.

The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 comes with three 6 units speakers (4 woofers and 2 tweeters). In fact, during this review, the bass of this notebook was a shock to the entire crew.  It is hard to imagine that a thin and light notebook could have such sound effects. The reason is that Huawei has developed the industry’s thinnest asymmetrical back-to-back design woofer. Each pair of woofers is only 4.6mm thick. At the same time, the battery is moved up by 2.5mm to obtain a 6cc large sound cavity.

With the support of asymmetrical back-to-back woofers, the MateBook X Pro 2022 has a deeper low-frequency dive, which is 6dB lower than the previous generation, and at the same time doubled the power. Thus, it can achieve the bass effect that was impossible in the past.

The tweeter is not inferior and can support a frequency response of 20KHz. This is also the limit of the high pitch that the human ear can hear. On the whole, the MateBook X Pro 2022 is the thin and light notebook comes with what be can safely call the best sound effects in the industry.

Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 Hardware

In terms of hardware configuration, the MateBook X Pro 2022 model uses the latest generation 10nm Core i7-1195G7 processor with four cores and eight threads. This is currently the strongest low-power processor with an acceleration frequency of 5.0GHz and a full-core frequency of 4.8GHz. A close-up look at the 11th generation Core processor shows that the pure copper radiator has a large soaking plate in the middle part and pure copper fins on the two sides. Furthermore, this notebook has an Iris Xe core graphics card with 96 sets of EU units, and a thermal design power consumption of 28W.

Performance Tests 

CPU-Z
On the CPU-Z database tests, the single-thread score is 610, and the multi-thread score is 3166. The overall performance surpasses the desktop version of the seven-generation Core flagship i7-7700K.

CineBench R15
In the CineBench R15 test, the single-threaded score was 223cb, and the multi-threaded score was 1008cb. As far as this result is concerned, it is already the performance of the top quad-core processor.

CineBench R20
In the CineBench R20 test, the single-threaded score is 588cb, and the multi-threaded score is 2265cb. It is interesting to note that the single-thread performance hit the level of the current top mobile processor. The multi-thread performance is not any different, it also hit the level of top quad-core processors in the industry.

CineBench R23
In the CineBench R20 test, the new CPU single-thread score is 1539cb, and the multi-thread score is 5647cb.

GPU
The Iris Xe GPU with 96 EU units is currently the strongest core display. Let’s take a look at how it performs with dual-channel LPDDR4x 3733MHz memory.

3DMark
In the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme test, the graphics score of the Iris Xe GPU is 2485. In contrast, the score of the full blood version of the MX250 is usually about 1800 points.

Temperature, endurance, disk & memepry performance

Temperature
The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 comes with two modes of operation and these modes will emit different temperature. This notebook has the “balanced mode” and “high-energy mode” to choose from. The power consumption of the processor in the “high-energy mode” can reach 30W. Let’s take a look at the heat dissipation capacity of this notebook.

Press Fn+P at the same time to switch the notebook to high-energy mode. We carried out a 30-minute temperature test for this notebook. The power consumption of the processor is stable at 30W, the full core frequency of the notebook is 3.3GHz, and the core temperature is only 86 degrees.

Battery Life
The MateBook X Pro 2022 notebook has a built-in lithium battery with a capacity of 60Wh. We use PCMark 10 to actually test the battery life of the notebook. The selected scene for the test is a modern office with PCMark 10. The power mode is “energy-saving mode” while all other processes are closed during the test. The network connection is inactive while the screen brightness is adjusted to 60%. The endurance test score under the PCMark 10 modern office scene is 9.5 hours. Based on normal daily use intensity, there should be no big problem to support a day of mobile office.

One thing to note here, since the brightness of the MateBook X Pro 2022 model is as high as 550nit, we set the the brightness to 60% during the endurance test. However, this 60% brightness is brighter than the 100% brightness of other notebooks. Thus, the 9.5-hour battery life tested here can actually be higher because 60% brightness may actually be too much for you. For the author, 40% brightness on this notebook was actually enough.

SSD
Our MateBook X Pro 2022 model uses a PCIe 3.0 SSD from Yangtze River Storage with a capacity of 1TB.

The first is the 1GB read and write performance test. The total score of this PCIe 3.0 1TB SSD is 4298, and the sequential read and write speeds are 2950MB/s and 2250MB/s respectively. In addition, the 4K random read and write speeds are 59MB/s and 217MB/s respectively.

In the 10GB capacity test, the sequential write speed will drop to 948MB/s, but don’t be afraid, because it performs very well after the cache is exhausted.

Memory
For the nuclear display, memory performance is very important. The MateBook X Pro 2022 has built-in dual-channel LPDDR4x 3733MHz 16GB memory, which is currently considered a higher frequency. The read, write and copy bandwidths of the measured memory are 52858MB/s, 58626MB/s, 56439MB/s respectively, and the latency is 101.6ns.

Summary: A notebook that is almost perfect

The added value of MateBook X Pro 2022 is far more than a super terminal. Of course, there are multiple features especially in the software that this review does not capture. This notebook supports multiple AI features like smart voice, AI subtitles, AI air gesture operation, AI noise reduction pickup, quiet space calls and so on. In terms of hardware, the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 has the best screen quality and the best sound quality among the current 14-inch thin and light notebooks. The noise control under full load is also excellent, which can make you have a very comfortable experience.

However, we recommend that the notebook is usually set to “balanced mode”. At this mode, the power consumption can be stabilized at 25W, and the noise is almost inaudible. Furthermore, a relatively perfect balance is achieved between performance, temperature and noise.

The 11th-generation Core 17-1195G7 processor of the MateBook X Pro 2022 has the strongest performance in the single-core thread. Also, the performance of the Iris Xe GPU not only surpasses the Vega 8-core display, but also far stronger than the GeForce MX250 by about 30%.

If you have to pick a problem with the MateBook X Pro 2022 model, it may be that it does not use the PCIe 4.0 SSD is not used. However, according to the information we have received, the PCIe 4.0 SSD is ready but Huawei can only use it in the future.