Honor MagicBook Pro
Here’s the thing about Honor keyboards… at first you don’t think you like them; the keypads on these machines are such a light-touch chicklet design and feel that you almost thing there’s not enough ‘give’ from them.
The thing is, it’s a bit like English wine i.e. there’s something special there if you stick with it and give it some time. Okay that’s probably a bad analogy, but the Honor MagicBook Pro’s keyboard might be the first thing you touch and experience with this machine… but it should only be the surface, this is a decent piece of engineering.
At 16.9mm thick, the MagicBook Pro features an aluminium design that is durable and lightweight at 1.7kg.
When it comes to screen performance, once again, you know this is laptop built by a smartphone specialist i.e. there’s lots of screen ‘real estate’ all the way out to a very thin screen border – could this touchscreen feel like a ‘massive’ smartphone perhaps?
That may never have been part of the design philosophy, but it’s impossible not to think it. The official line is that this is a 90% screen-to-body ratio (achieved with 4.9m, narrow bezels) plus anti-glare features on a 16.1″ full HD FullView Display.
Layout
Honor has (thankfully) not included a numerical number pad (I mean, honestly, who would really need one on a laptop?) and so has devoted the body chassis to the keyboard, a touchpad and two fairly meaty speakers under a paid of housing units.
The HD webcam (like Huawei laptops) pops up from the F5 key and the camera is based on the Omnivision OV9734. In terms of use, that does mean that your Zoom (other video chat platforms are also available) image appears a little differently i.e. you look rather like you’re being ‘shot from below’, but that’s not a major problem.
100% sRGB colour, delivering true-to-life colour accuracy, whilst the TUV Rheinland Flicker Free Certification relieves eye fatigue and eye strain.
Full dimensions are 369 x 234 x 16.9mm, so it’s a large machine, but that’s a large machine (arguably) for people that want a large machine.
In terms of connections, there’s a ‘headphone jack’ audio connector, three full USB ports plus a type-C USB that works as a connector and as the power jack (the thinking being that you only need ONE cable to charge your smartphone and laptop when you travel — and you could ‘hotspot’ your smartphone back off your laptop). There is HDMI 2.0 (full size, obviously).
Battery life is up to 11 hours depending on which apps you’re using and how much other strain your put the machine through.
The company says that the MagicBook Pro provides an ultimate level of performance. The Intel Core i5-10210U processor packs a 4-core 8-thread array using advanced technology.
According to Honor, “Doing more has become easier than ever. Thanks to multi-screen collaboration, you can enable a connection between your HONOR smartphone and MagicBook Pro with a simple tap. This mode let’s you share your smartphone screen and files easily on the MagicBook Pro. Pick up exactly where you left off without having to jump between devices.”
If you look at the webpages Honor has provided for this device, it’s more like this laptop is being marketed as the Christmas present (other holiday periods are also available) that every child has always dreamt of i.e. it’s all whistles, bells and video delights.
Home & business use
The machine is pitched at both home (gaming and casual use) and business applications with intensive multi-tasking. Little touches like the fingerprint sensor power button make it feel special and the overall feel is one that we know we could work on for extended periods of time.
This device shops with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD with a price tag (at the time of writing) of £850.
