With a model for 2024, Huawei's MateBook X Pro range is back, but this time, the name isn't following convention; officially, it's the MateBook X Pro Core Ultra Premium Edition. If it's okay with you, we'll call it by its obvious name: the MateBook X Pro 2024.

The only two CPU options on this system are the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H and the Core Ultra 7 155H, as shown by the moniker Huawei insists on using. There are no other processor alternatives available, including nothing from AMD or any new Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus models based on ARM.

The new MateBook X Pro maintains the original design of the series: it is light, thin, and exquisitely made. It also represents a significant cooling, display technology, and computing power advancement.

We have the fully equipped, around €2,200/£2,100 Morandi Blue machine, with a 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. Along with a 90W charger, an additional USB-C cable, a USB-C to USB-A converter, and USB-C headphones—something that wasn't present in previous MateBook X Pro iterations—it comes with a full retail package.

Design and build quality

We've evaluated most of the Huawei MateBook X Pro variants since 2018 and are big fans of the series. We can see how that machine is responsible for the general feel and design. In 2018, people who were unaware of the design made the MacBook Air appear more like a practical, large-bezelled notebook from Dell or HP from the mid-naughties, and it still looks better than the current model from Apple.

A technical marvel is the MateBook X Pro, which debuted in 2004. Huawei has demonstrated a remarkable skill in making ultra-thin and lightweight computers.

With 1.5mm of travel and no Numpad, the MateBook X Pro 2024's deck has the now-iconic full-sized backlit chiclet keyboard. Razor-thin speaker grilles surround it. A massive trackpad that juts over the edge like an infinite pool rests beneath it. Its vibrating motors, which Huawei refers it as the Free Touch, generate push feedback, and they function well.

Huawei was able to keep the weight of the MateBook X Pro 2024 under 1 kilogram at 980g, which is over 30% less than the previous generation even with the addition of a 15% larger 70Wh battery. Huawei modified the chassis to do this.

Additionally, they added a soft-touch surface to the laptop. Though softer, it resembles the "skin-smoothing metallic body" of the preceding generation.

All that is visible on the lid is the standard Huawei branding. When closed, the MateBook X Pro 2024 is a very small notebook. Its exceptional weight also makes it easy to forget it's in your backpack.

Keyboard, trackpad, display, audio

The MateBook X Pro 2024's deck has perfect symmetry. It makes sense that the keyboard and trackpad take up the greatest room. The narrow speaker grilles sit beneath the keyboard, which extends almost to the edge.

This is the amazing MateBook X Pro keyboard as usual. Its layout is superb and its keystrokes feel solid and nice. The keyboards of the majority of Huawei laptops in the market seem comparable, but you'll quickly notice that the MateBook X Pro has better, more positive keyboard clicking than the less expensive MateBook 14.

Three USB-C ports are available on the 2024 MateBook X Pro: a basic USB 3.2 Gen 2 port (10Gbps, DisplayPort, Power Delivery) on the right, and two Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps, DisplayPort, and Power Delivery) connectors on the left. The new model replaces the one USB-C that was on the prior model with a button to deactivate the camera drivers since the camera is now located above the display rather than beneath a keyboard key.

With infrared sensors on either side for Windows Hello, the 1080p camera is situated in the upper bezel above the screen.

As an alternative, a capacitive fingerprint reader is included inside the standard power button. Because it supports fingerprint caching, all you have to do is push the power button to turn on the computer and have Windows log you in automatically when it reaches the login page.

The FreeTouch trackpad is a really good piece of hardware. With a smooth glass surface for gesture work, it's surprisingly large for a 14-inch chassis. Since it is a solid-state device, it simulates clicks by vibrating the motor instead of depressing. It functions well and allows you to click anywhere on the surface.

Although the vibration is carefully calibrated, you may use Huawei's PC Manager program to change the vibration's sensitivity and strength. It makes it possible to use simple motions like dragging a finger down the trackpad's left edge to adjust display brightness or knocking twice to snap a screenshot.

Like its predecessor, the MateBook X Pro 2024 has six speakers and four microphones. The music from these speakers is really clean with sufficient bass to highlight it and give it some depth. However, the loudness isn't all that great—we've seen laptops with comparable sizes have stronger speaker arrangements.

The MateBook X Pro 2024's display is both its greatest feature and the main advancement over the previous model. Here, we have a 120Hz OLED that doubles the peak brightness, compared to the previous model's 500 nits from a 90Hz LTPS LCD. It's still a touchscreen panel, of course.

The 14.2-inch 3:2 aspect diagonal display maintains its 264 ppi density, and 3210 x 2080 px resolution, and OLED technology is a fantastic upgrade over LCD.

This display has really good visuals. The contrast is endless, the colors are vibrant, the shadows are profound, and the viewing angles are astoundingly broad. The edges of the narrow, somewhat rounded screen bezels are rounded.

On this display, HDR content just functions, regardless of whether you're watching Netflix or YouTube.

The display has excellent, consistent brightness. The center was measured at 535 nits, the left and right corners at 560 nits and 570 nits, respectively. A high brightness of 952 nits was also recorded when displaying HDR material.

The panel can handle the RGB, P3, and sRGB color gamuts. You can select the gamut you wish to use with Huawei's handy Display Manager, which you can open by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting More from the old context menu. It's a fantastic method to adjust the display to suit the material you plan to watch.

Features, performance and battery life

The MateBook X Pro 2024, being a Huawei laptop, is pre-installed with Huawei's superior PC Manager application. It manages the laptop's customized features, such as the FreeTouch trackpad, and features an extensive Huawei Sound menu with speaker and microphone adjustments. It also includes the AI Camera menu, which lets you adjust the camera's overall settings to provide a personalized background, enhance your facial features, or maintain your center of attention.

Super Device allows you to operate your Huawei phone from the laptop's screen if you own one. Additionally, files may be shared between the two.

The Troubleshooting option, however, which enables you to identify issues with audio, connectivity, delays and crashes, system software, and other issues, is what sets PC Manager apart. The PC Manager also has control over all of the system's drivers. Throughout our time with the MateBook X Pro 2024, Huawei released a few BIOS upgrades. Based on our years of experience with Huawei laptops, we can state that long-term software support is outstanding.

With this iteration of MateBook X Pro, Huawei pushed the hardware. Previously, thin-and-light-targeting 28W TDP Intel CPUs were employed in the MateBook X Pro. This year's most potent mobile CPU from Intel, the 45W (40W in this particular computer) Core Ultra 9 185H, is used in the series. A total of 22 threads and a 16-core CPU (6 performance, 8 efficiency, and 2 low-power efficient cores) are featured in this 7nm SoC. Though you won't notice anything above 3.0GHz, the CPU's P-cores have a maximum theoretical speed of 5.1GHz.

The Intel Arc GPU, which supports Ray Tracing, with eight Xe cores and a maximum clock speed of 2.35GHz, is in charge of graphics. Compared to the 2.3 TFLOPS of the Xe graphics in the outdated i7-1360P CPU, it is rated at 4.81 TFLOPS.

Lastly, a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM are included in this Core Ultra Premium Edition.

To put everything into perspective, the MateBook X Pro 2024 is marginally more efficient than its predecessor while offering roughly a 50% increase in graphics performance and a 20% rise in processing speed.

The new machine excels in cooling the most. Huawei promises 22% more airflow overall and a 50% increase in air pressure.

We used the MateBook X Pro 2024 for office work, light gaming (mostly Age of Empires Definitive Edition, which scaled to the machine's 3000x2000px resolution and pushed at 100fps), and some picture editing with Photoshop and Lightroom. The PCIe 4.0 SSD performed quite quickly and steadily.

The performance was outstanding. You may counter that the MateBook X Pro 2024's small and light design would be compromised by a powerful CPU with specialized discrete graphics. However, due to sanctions imposed by the West, it is doubtful that a version using Qualcomm's latest ARM chips will be released.

Huawei aspires for its high-end tiny laptops to be elegant, silent, and not overheat when in use. Like every other model we've evaluated before, the MateBook X Pro 2024 is calibrated to strike a compromise between comfort and performance. Furthermore, you have a choice between two performance modes: Performance and Balanced.

We tested the MateBook X Pro 2024's self-sufficiency with a one-hour CPU stress test in Performance mode.

We tested the MateBook X Pro 2024's self-sufficiency with a one-hour CPU stress test in Performance mode.We tested the MateBook X Pro 2024's self-sufficiency with a one-hour CPU stress test in Performance mode.For a short while, the CPU reached 3.2GHz, but it quickly plummeted to 2.66GHz, where it remained throughout the test, fluctuating in frequency by 100 MHz. The laptop's fans were running nonstop at their maximum speed, creating a 50dB noise level at arm's length which is very reasonable in an office setting.

The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024 this year has a battery that is 15% larger, at 70Wh. We conducted the standard YouTube streaming test as well as a browser test, with the video test conducted at 80 dB and the balanced mode set to 400 nits. That has both powerful speakers and a vivid display.

The laptop was able to broadcast for seven hours and browse continuously for eight hours. Those are excellent outcomes. When using the included 90W SuperCharge Turbo converter, charging is also very well. In less than two hours, the machine goes from 0% to full.

Conclusion

The MateBook X Pro 2024 costs €2,200/£2,100 in its configured state. That refers to the top-tier Core 9 Ultra 185H model, which comes with a 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. In terms of performance, it leaves little to be desired, and we believe the ergonomics, display, and general feel are unmatched.

The saying "You get what you pay for" applies here; the 2024 MateBook X Pro is the greatest ultraportable notebook. It is lighter than the 1.24 kg 13.6-inch MacBook Air and offers a wider range of ports than both the Apple device and its rival, the Dell XPS 13, which is priced similarly.

We would have liked to have had more options when it came to CPUs. Don't get us wrong, we think Intel's Core 9 Ultra is fantastic, but Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite would work much better in this kind of device. Additionally, it would maximize the 70Wh battery's potential in a manner that Intel's silicon just cannot. However, it appears that Huawei is not considering switching to ARM at this time.

The MateBook X Pro 2024 is a really good laptop that doesn't appear to have any flaws. It can handle any work you throw at it, is incredibly light and strong, and has a stunning OLED display. You can carry it anywhere. Huawei, you've done an outstanding job—you hit the mark!