Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon evaluation

If you are searching for a thin-and-light Home windows pc with a top rate construct, robust CPU and an OLED show, you will have to certainly take note of Honor’s lineup. The corporate’s MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon is a notch above the established fashions in its elegance – the Dell XPS 13, the Asus Zenbook 14, the Lenovo Yoga Slender 7x, and naturally, the Apple MacBook Air.

We will inform you what makes the MagicBook Artwork higher however you have to get started off with the cost – at €1,699, it is less expensive than virtually all of the ones opponents, and Honor is operating a killer promo that will get you the 1TB/32GB pc with a present haul that incorporates the Honor Pad 9 pill, and the Honor Earbuds X6 for €200 off at €1,499. Most effective the Lenovo Yoga Slender 7X can fit that value (it is €1,499 on the time of this newsletter on Amazon).

The Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon is available in a unmarried configuration with 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. You’ll be able to get it most effective within the silky easy Starry Gray colour – Honor is apparently preserving the textured Emerald Inexperienced we loved at the Intel-powered model of this pc off Ecu shores. The pc ships with a 65W charger and USB-C cable.

A phrase at the Intel-powered MagicBook Artwork 14. It kind of feels Honor is not making plans on promoting it out of doors of China, pushing the ARM-powered pc the world over as a substitute. However despite the fact that you will not have to make a choice from the 2 it is sensible to match them as they’re so carefully comparable.

Design and construct high quality

The Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon is impressively made. The device weighs roughly 1.02kg, which is slightly the feat given the pc’s just about 15-inch show. The pc may be simply 1 cm thick (no longer counting the rubber toes) at its thinnest level – 1.15cm at its thickest.

Honor controlled to reach such an outstanding weight with a mix of light-weight fabrics. The chassis is made from magnesium alloy. The keyboard is a titanium alloy. The 2 fanatics are product of aluminum. The antenna and vapor chamber cooling gadget are built-in. The result’s a 14.6-inch pc that weighs 490g (33%) not up to the 15.3-inch MacBook Air, 160g (14%) not up to the Dell XPS 13, 260g (21%) not up to the Lenovo Yoga Slender 7X, and 370g (27%) not up to the high-end Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Air of secrecy Version. It’s really spectacular. Only a few gadgets weigh much less and set up to stick with the MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon specs-wise – the Huawei MateBook X Professional 2024 and the brand new Asus A14.

However it isn’t all concerning the weight. The show has a good 2.2mm bezel throughout. Honor controlled it by way of displacing the digital camera to its personal magnetic module. The tuck-away digital camera module is without a doubt cutting edge. It sits flush throughout the left nook of the pc and can also be popped in or out by way of a finger press. The module attaches very securely within the pc frame, and it may be tucked in whichever manner you wish to have – even with the pins outward (regardless that you should not do this).

It is a suave solution to care for the digital camera on a pc however it does push the 2 ports at the left aspect of the MagicBook Artwork 14 a bit of additional down. It is an unbalanced glance that can irk some.

Tuck-away magnetic digital camera

Honor implemented a vine leaf thought to the design. There is a refined curve to the body, thickening on the level of connection to the magnetic digital camera.

The Starry Sky paint activity could be very easy. Honor calls the skin velvet-like and skin-friendly. The coating is UV cured to reach smoothness after which has been micro-arc oxidized. We will be able to attest that the end feels very delightful to the touch however have someway controlled to scuff it in a couple of puts. This might be negligence on our section or a imaginable weak point of the end, we can’t be completely positive.

Show, keyboard, audio system, digital camera

The MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon ships with a 14.6-inch OLED panel with a squarer-than-average 3:2 facet, as much as 120Hz refresh charge, and a promised brightness of 700 nits.

The FullView 10-bit show is 3120x2080px and has 10-point contact. The panel covers 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut, in addition to a DeltaE (ΔE) score of under 0.5. The panel does 4320Mh PWM flicker-free dimming or even were given TUV Rheinland to certify for low blue mild emissions.

The show is shiny however does have an anti-reflective coating implemented. It does alleviate one of the reflections however that is nonetheless a moderately reflective panel. The display floor may be weirdly wavy – having a look at reflections at the show at an perspective produces wavy strains. The Huawei MateBook X Professional 2024 has a straighter show floor, as an example. it isn’t an issue, simply one thing we spotted.

The panel is rated at 700 nits in HDR mode. We measured a constant above-540 nits total with just about 600 nits within the backside a part of the display in SDR mode. When viewing HDR content material, the display ramped as much as round 750 nits. The SDR effects are round 50-60 nits higher than what we were given with the Intel MagicBook Artwork 14, whilst the HDR brightness was once equivalent.

We now have at all times recommended Huawei and Honor for transport their machines with proprietary show colour reinforce and the MagicBook Artwork 14 follows that development. Proper-click at the desktop and cross into Show Supervisor, the place you’ll be able to select what colour spectrum the pc adheres to – sRGB, P3, or local. This is a superb function that almost all different PCs lack and is particularly helpful for content material creators. This may be the place you’ll be able to alter the colour tone of the display, put it in eBook mode, and finetune the colour.

Those display modes paintings most effective while you’ve grew to become the worldwide Home windows HDR surroundings off. While you flip HDR on, the display reverts to its Local surroundings, which means brilliant colours, deep blacks, and the utmost imaginable distinction. The problem with that is that saturation is excessive when the display is in Local mode. Footage, whether or not within the browser or throughout the Home windows Footage app are overly saturated to the purpose that they do not glance excellent. Striking the display in sRGB mode fixes the problem.

Honor and Huawei keyboards have lengthy been very good for typing however the MagicBook Artwork 14 is a step above. We will be able to’t actually say we will be able to respect the titanium construct however the keys really feel moderately softer and extra dampened than at the MateBook X Professional 2024.

The keys have the usual 1.5mm key go back and forth and are very well-spaced. Avid players will scoff on the smaller Up and Down arrow keys, however that is the most effective grievance that lets bring to mind.

The trackpad at the Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 is gigantic and really prime quality. The sleek glass floor is superb for gliding your palms and being a solid-state unit, you’ll be able to click on any place you favor with the similar actual really feel. You’ll be able to alter the monitoring sensitivity and the vibration power in your liking.

The trackpad helps as much as 5 palms, regardless that Home windows lately tops out at 4. There are a number of proprietary gestures thru Honor’s pre-installed instrument just like the knock to screenshot. All of them get brief demo movies and you’ll be able to come to a decision whether or not to allow them or no longer.

This pc has a six-speaker spatial audio setup and 3 microphones, and they are doing a very good activity. There is sufficient quantity to fill a room and there are even some hints of bass beneath, making the sound complete.

You get a fingerprint scanner with Home windows Hi reinforce throughout the energy button and it really works with out problems. It helps fingerprint caching so a unmarried press will energy at the device and mechanically log you into Home windows as soon as it boots to the login display.

The magnetic 1080p digital camera does not function IR sensors for Home windows Hi. High quality-wise, it is a excellent sufficient webcam however not anything particular. The picture high quality is ok however there is no HDR, as an example.

The sphere of view of the webcam could be very extensive and you’ll be able to set it to trace your face around the body. You’ll be able to additionally mess around with digital backgrounds.

Doing calls throughout the MagicBook Artwork 14 is a brilliant enjoy. Callers reported that they heard us fantastic throughout the pc’s trio of mics and preferred the energetic noise cancellation.

One space the place the ARM-powered model is not so good as the Intel one is ports. You get the similar bodily ports – two USB-C at the left, one USB-A, an HDMI, and a three.5mm at the proper. At the Intel device, probably the most USB-Cs at the left aspect is a Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 unit with 40 Gbps of throughput. At the Snapdragon style, each USB-C ports are USB 3.2 Gen 2 with 10 Gbps of bandwidth. The USB-A is 3.2 Gen1 with 5 Gbps.

Ports on both sides

Technically, you’ll be able to run into barriers if you wish to rate the device and hook up with a observe the usage of the similar USB-C cable. At the upside, the HDMI is two.1 with 4K@60Hz reinforce, supplying you with an alternative observe connection choice. Alternatively, the loss of true USB 4 connectivity makes a single-cable resolution inconceivable.

Snapdragon X Elite processor and battery lifestyles

The Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon ships with an ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite SoC. The processor has 42MB of cache, and 12 Oryon cores with a three.4GHz top clock in multi-core extra and a top single-core pace of four.0GHz. The Adreno GPU is rated for 46 TFLOPS (floating level operations in line with 2nd), whilst the Hexagon NPU has 45 TOPS (tera operations in line with 2nd). When compared, Intel’s newest Core Extremely 7 258V’s NPU brings 47 TOPS, whilst AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 has as much as 50 TOPS.

The Snapdragon X Elite is the X1E-80-100 variation of the chip, with the 4.0GHz top clock pace. There are two extra robust variations of the X Elite – the similar selection of bodily cores, however upper clock pace. The X1E-84-100 and X1E-00-1DE with a multi-core top clock pace of three.8GHz, and a single-core top clock pace of four.2GHz and four.3GHz, respectively. We do not be expecting the as much as 300MHz to ship an enormous get advantages. Whilst we are at the subject – there are two different Snapdragon X chips – the X Plus with 8 or 10 Oryon cores, and the X with 8.

The Snapdragon chip helps the most recent Wi-Fi 7, in addition to Bluetooth 5.4.

Having a look at benchmarks, the Snapdragon X Elite is a fantastic performer. Importantly, it ratings round 30% higher than the Intel Core Extremely 7 155H in single-core and multi-core checks and round 20% higher in graphics checks. Necessarily, you are giving not anything away, performance-wise, by way of going with the Snapdragon MagicBook Artwork 14 moderately than the Intel one (if, for the sake of argument, you had a call of shopping for both).

The SoC posted strong numbers in Cinebench 2024’s unmarried and multi-core checks as properly. The integrated Micron SSD is not the quickest. Additionally it is appearing PCIe 3.0 speeds, no longer current-gen PCIe 4.0 ones which can be double the rate.

Cinebench 2024, Disk Pace

We ran our standard 1-hour pressure check at the MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon and the Snapdragon X Elite confirmed excellent sustained functionality below load. The chip was once in short as much as its top multi-core pace of three.4GHz and, inside of a couple of seconds, throttled down to two.5GHz. After the fanatics ramped up, the processor settled at round 2.95GHz-2.97GHz and stayed there for the rest of the check. The fanatics have been going complete blast for the whole lot of the check, however we would name them inaudible past 1 meter in a regular workplace surroundings.

Thermals

When compared, the Intel Core Extremely 7 155H we examined within the MagicBook Artwork 14 controlled to maintain round 2.1GHz. It was once additionally moderately hotter to touch – the palm leisure space was once 29.4° C in comparison to the 26° C of the Snapdragon style. Some other key level is real-world functionality – the Intel device cannot succeed in its complete attainable on battery, whilst the Snapdragon one can.

If we evaluate the 2 SoCs on potency, in line with Cinebench 2024’s Multi Energy Potency check, the Snapdragon X Elite ratings round 22 Issues In step with Watt, whilst the Intel Core Extremely 7 155H reaches 14 PPW.

A large advantage of the Snapdragon chip is the on the spot operation of this device – open the lid, and the display has lit up ahead of you might have even noticed it totally. It is nice!

As a result of that is an ARM-based pc, you’ll wish to consider your apps. Home windows on ARM has come a ways, and you would be shocked what number of apps now have an ARM-ready model. The preferred apps are most commonly coated – Microsoft’s Place of work suite, LibreOffice, 7-zip, Viber, Sign, Slack, WhatsApp, Dropbox, GIMP, Adobe’s Photoshop, Lightroom, Premiere Professional, Davinci Get to the bottom of, Luminar Neo, VLC, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Avast, TeamViewer, you title it. And in case your explicit app is not but totally ARM-ready, chances are high that it is in construction.

What about emulating X86 apps? Here is the place Prism is available in – it is Home windows 11’s emulation layer that interprets X86 apps to run at the Snapdragon X Elite. It is seamless – you simply set up an app like you possibly can on an Intel or AMD-powered pc, and it really works. There is code translation occurring within the background, however you would not even realize it more often than not. It is in additional challenging apps that the emulation could cause a release prolong or a functionality hiccup, however we infrequently spotted the ones.

We even put in Steam with a couple of video games they usually labored. Alternatively, functionality was once noticeably worse than at the Intel Core Extremely 7 155H. Age of Empires II Definitive Version is a moderately simple recreation to run on fashionable {hardware} however it hovered under 60fps in our check. It held a gentle 100fps at the Intel-powered Artwork. At the upside, we by no means were given an app or recreation that merely refused to paintings.

You’ve built-in Copilot with a devoted key at the keyboard. Copilot works on-device to offer personalised solutions and is deeply built-in with Microsoft apps corresponding to Outlook and Microsoft 365.

It may possibly generate formulation, create charts and graphs, summarize key issues in emails, and transcribe conferences in genuine time. Reside Caption can generate subtitles to movies in 44 languages in genuine time too.

Honor Attach brings screen-sharing and cross-OS drag-and-drop of app home windows between the pc and an Honor Android pill. With Honor Proportion, you’ll be able to proportion information, pictures, and movies between Honor gadgets cable-free.

In our Intel-based Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 evaluation, we hypothesized that the style with the Snapdragon X Elite would have the ability to squeeze extra battery lifestyles out of the 60Wh battery, and we have been proper. The MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon lasted 8:00 hours in our surfing loop check (at 400 nits) and 10:00 hours in our YouTube video loop check (400 nits, 80dB). That is one hour extra within the surfing check and just about 3 and a part hours extra within the YouTube check than the Intel style. Transferring to ARM really brings the entire advantages and only a few compromises, even at this early degree.

Charging the pc from 0% to complete took round an hour and a part, and it were given to 43% within the first half-hour.

Conclusion

The Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon is a phenomenal pc. It masterfully mixes top rate specifications with nice production high quality to create a device with a real edge over its pageant.

On the time of this newsletter, the 32GB/1TB MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon retails for €1,499 with an Honor Pad 9 and Honor Earbuds X6 thrown in free of charge. At that value, it is particularly less expensive than the Dell XPS 13 MacBook Air and Huawei’s MateBook X Professional 2024. We might argue it additionally packs higher specifications – the 14.6-inch show that is additionally a fit on the subject of tech – 120Hz and 700 nits of brightness – is set as elite as you’ll be able to get at the present time. And except for the Huawei, the MagicBook Artwork 14 is lighter at simply 1.02kg.

There are two head-on opponents the Honor wishes to fret about – Lenovo’s Yoga Slender 7X and Asus’ A14 UX3407. Each have 32GB of RAM and 1TB of garage, OLED shows, and the Snapdragon X Elite SoC. Each laptops also are precisely the similar value – €1,499. Alternatively, you get 70Wh batteries on each and higher ports – the Yoga Slender 7X packs 3 USB4 Gen 3s, whilst the Asus A14 has two. The Yoga is a bit of heavier (regardless that no longer heavy), whilst the Asus is even lighter at just below 1 kilo.

Lenovo and Asus have a greater availability in world markets and extra recognizable logo names with non-tech folks. That would play an element in spite of Honor’s killer tablet-and-buds package deal. Then there is Honor’s personal retail footprint – on the time of this newsletter, you’ll be able to get this device in China, France, Germany, and Italy.

Honor MagicBook Artwork 14 Snapdragon is an incredible pc that does not compromise. It is a ‘have your cake and devour it too’ form of resolution. It is higher than the Intel-powered unit in each manner that issues – higher functionality and longer battery lifestyles, the similar very good show, frame, and worth. Being an ARM-based pc does imply there are some hypothetical problems alongside the best way, however the ones fear non-mainstream customers – they are going to hardly ever realize any problem.

Execs

• ARM style is best than the Intel one in each imaginable manner
• Snapdragon X Elite is quieter, smoother, and prolongs battery lifestyles
• Moves a very good steadiness of dimension and weight
• We adore the silky end
• Colour-accurate OLED show with 500 nits of SDR and 700 nits of HDR brightness
• Excellent port variety – USB-C, USB-A, HDMI
• Leading edge magnetic digital camera design

Cons

• No USB4/Thunderbolt 4 is an actual problem
• Digicam slot pushes USB-C ports to the center of the pc
• SSD no longer slightly as much as PCIe 4.0 requirements
• Restricted availability

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