Construction
We can only salute the efforts of Huawei on the care given to his computer. We have nothing to complain about the quality of the finishes or this blue that changes from the classic metallic gray. The matte finish of the magnesium ultimately retains relatively few fingerprints, unlike many dark PCs. The ultrathin borders are still present on the screen, which is also very appreciable, and which brings its occupancy rate to 91%; one of the best on the market.
The finishes are neat. © The Digital
An original touchpad
The keys on the keyboard have been raised slightly and the typing is pleasant. The backlight is otherwise adjustable on 3 levels, but it is above all the “Free Touch” touchpad which benefits from many new features. Huawei has indeed assigned a whole bunch of features to it: sliding a finger on its left edge allows you to increase the brightness, on the right to increase the volume and at the top to browse a video. The haptic feedback simulating a toothed wheel when the finger performs these movements is quite impressive – these classic functions remain available on the F1 to F6 keys of the keyboard. Tapping twice with a knuckle allows otherwise to take a screenshot, which is very practical; and doing it with two knuckles starts the video recording of the screen. Finally, pressing in the upper left corner minimizes the active window; doing the same on the right will close it. In the end, some of these shortcuts are interesting (like screen capture or window management), even if they are not essential. It will above all be necessary to get used to using them rather than going through the keyboard or the mouse pointer.
The touchpad is nice and has many features. © The Digital
The on/off button is equipped with a fingerprint sensor and the webcam also offers quick unlocking via Windows Hello. It is no longer located at the keyboard – finally! —, but it only films in 720p, which is really disappointing for a high-end laptop, especially since Huawei is promoting videoconferencing with the presence of 4 microphones and new speakers. The image is noisy, even in good light conditions, and even more in the shade.
The borders are very thin and the webcam has returned to the top of the screen.
On the connector side, there are two USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports on the left side and 2 USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports on the right side. This allows you to connect many peripherals, of course, but only in USB-C. Fortunately, the manufacturer provides a USB-A adapter, but we preferred the MateDock included in 2021 which notably offered an HDMI port. The wireless connection is provided by Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
The connection is made up only of USB-C ports. © The Digital
To access the components, you have to remove 8 screws, but Huawei hasn’t made it easy: 6 are Torx screws and 2 are Phillips screws hidden under the rubber feet firmly glued under the chassis. Not so easy to disassemble the frame then. Once this is done, the M.2 SSD or the battery can be replaced if necessary, the RAM being soldered on.
The SSD and battery can be replaced, but not the RAM. © The Digital
Despite its finesse, the PC does not heat up much. We thus noted a temperature peak of 41 ° C in the center of the keyboard. For noise, the ventilation never starts in office automation, but demanding software makes it reach 34 dB, which is audible, but quite contained.
Performances
The Intel Core i7-1165G7 with the limited TDP which equipped the MateBook X Pro of 2021 gives way here to a Core i7-1260P equipped with 12 cores (4 performance cores and 8 efficient cores) clocked at 4.7 GHz maximum in turbomode. Its thermal envelope increases to 28 W and it is now accompanied by 16 GB of DDR5 RAM, but still 1 TB of SSD.
This Core i7-1260P did very well in our synthetic and application tests. With a CPU rating of 124, it was found to be faster than most other PCs tested and equipped with a processor equivalent to a Core i7-1280P or a MacBook Pro M2. It easily exceeds the MacBook Air M2 and the Ryzen 7 6800U of the Zenbook S13 Oledfrom Asus and can tackle any demanding task.
Note that here we have activated the Performance mode thanks to the “Fn + P” combination. On the brand’s other PCs, we hadn’t previously seen a big difference once this mode was activated, but this time the gain is noticeable in certain applications and it offers around 14% more performance overall! This mode only works, however, when the PC is plugged into the mains; remember that AMD and Intel processors are much less efficient anyway when a PC is running on battery power; only Apple is doing well in this area. Unless you want to limit the noise generated by the ventilation, we see no reason to deactivate this function.
To play, you will have to limit yourself to less greedy or old titles since the computer does not have a dedicated graphics card and the integrated Intel Iris Xe is not very effective in this area. Finally, the SSD delivers decent speeds (3.4 GB/s in reading and 2.6 GB/s in writing), but it remains far from the best models (twice as fast).
Screen
Huawei has not skimped on its 14.2-inch touch screen which now displays high definition (3120 x 2080 px), refresh at 90 Hz and a 3:2 format which allows a greater working height. The default monitor setting is fine, but if you want higher color fidelity, you’ll have to choose the hidden sRGB profile in the display manager by right-clicking on the desktop.
The characteristics of the panel are then excellent, with high maximum brightness (561 cd / m²) and exemplary color accuracy. The average color temperature is thus measured at 6600 K and the delta E at 1.8. The big defect of the touch screens has here been corrected by Huawei thanks to an effective anti-reflective treatment. Its reflectance is thus only 28.6%, therefore very good, but still higher than that of matt tiles. The screen only sins with its contrast ratio of 1350:1, which remains average, but far from Oled panels. Its remanence of 23 ms is also high, even if it will have no impact in office automation.
Mobility / Autonomy
Light (1.2 kg) and thin (15 mm), the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2022 is easy to transport. The 90W block charger is relatively compact and weighs only 237g. It therefore allows you to charge the laptop quickly through its USB-C cable.
The 90 W block charger is rather compact. © The Digital
And this charger is likely to be used quite often. Indeed, during our autonomy test (video playback on Netflix, brightness at 200 cd / m², headphones plugged in, volume at 50% and Bluetooth off), Huawei’s laptop only lasted 6 h 32 min. This is probably due to the battery of only 60 Wh and the high definition of the screen, which also operates at a refresh rate of 90 Hz. Still, the result is disappointing, especially for a high-end model. It therefore ranks far behind its most efficient competitors, which exceed 10 hours of autonomy, not to mention the MacBook Air and Pro M1 and M2 (more than 13 hours).
