We have previously detailed how Huawei’s Matebook 13 is a creatives best friend out in the field. But it’s powerful and impressive tech isn’t limited to the Adobe Suite and your video and photo editing desires. From sound to gaming to other inventive advancements, the Matebook 13 hews towards aiding other aspects of our lifestyle too.
Tthe MateBook 13 has either a quad-core Core i5 or i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage under its Space Grey or Mystic SIlver hood. The i7 model we are using for these tests also includes it’s own Nvidia MX150 discrete graphics card.
Sound
The HUAWEI MateBook 13 features Dolby Atmos immersive audio, creating a pretty stellar headphone experience (yep, it has a 3.5mm headphone jack). The laptop beams sound via a pair of two-watt speakers, located on the bottom of the body. An ideal build would have the speakers mounted around the keyboard area so sound resonates directly towards you, but because real estate is tight with a two-chip cooling system, a keyboard that goes from edge to edge and its own discrete graphics card, the speakers face downwards. Despite this, audio reflects off table surfaces and off your lap surprisingly well and isn’t muffled, washed out or distorted. It’s clear, crisp, rich and lively. With the Dolby Atmos enhancement turned on, the midtones and highs become noticeably sharper.
The screen is a 13” touchscreen 3:2 ratio display at 1440p with 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, 1000:1 contrast ratio and 300 nits brightness – its crisp, responsive, vibrant and stunning. Streaming a concert in HD on YouTube on the Matebook 13’s 2160x1440p screen becomes even more immersive when your crystal clear picture is paired with this sound.
Gaming
Don’t get us wrong, the MAtebook 13 doesn’t boast to be a gaming laptop, not did we find it to be one that should labelled one, but thanks to a dedicated graphics card – the NVIDIA GeForce MX150,the intermediate gamer and the user who wants to casually score a few goals on Rocket League on their way to work (or at work, we know you do), the Matebook 13 will adequately fulfill your needs.
Intel’s Core i7-8565U is an eighth-generation “Whiskey Lake” four-core chip that launched during the third quarter of 2018. Its base speed cruises at 1.8GHz and tops out at 4.6GHz. With enough tweaks to the visuals, which is mostly putting frame rate and display settings on the lower options, game run smoothly. Skyrim: Special Edition ran at Full HD on “Low” settings of 30fps and Star Wars Battlefront II runs fine on similar settings and will get your fans spinning (they’re super quiet).
When playing Rocket League plugged into the wall charger and the Matebook 13 on “Best Performance”, at 1080p resolution, we experienced an average of 60.22fps. This slightly lowered to 54.12fps using the next performance preset. When we upped the display to the Matebook’s epic 1440p resolution, we dropped to 46.99fps.
New titles like Final Fantasy XV had us between 24-31fps at 1080p, Far Cry 5 at 1080p saw us running at nearly 23fps and dropping to an impossible-to-play 14fps at native 1440p. Native 1440p might not be the best way to game on the Matebook 13, but its more than enough to give us a fun and entertaining gaming session when we’ve had enough with our more mundane work.
Matebook 13 specs
- Display: 13 inches (2160×1440), IPS, touch
- Processor: Intel Core i5-8265U or Intel Core i7-8565U, both quad-core Whiskey Lake chips
- Graphics: Intel UHD 620 (Core i5) or Nvidia GeForce MX150
- Memory: 8GB of 2,133MHz LPDDR3
- Storage: 256GB NVMe PCIe SSD (Core i5), 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD
- Ports: 2 USB 3.0 Type-C, 3.5mm mic/headphone
- Camera: 1MP
- Battery: 56Wh
- Dimensions: 26 x 8.31 x 0.59 inches
- Colors: Mystic Silver, Space Grey
The Huawei MateBook 13 is available from $1799 now at the Microsoft Store on George Street, Sydney and online HERE. To find out more information about both MateBook 13’s you can head to the official Huawei product site HERE.
Article based on a review unit provided by Huawei. Opinions remain that of the writer’s.
