HUAWEI MATEBOOK D 14

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MateBook D 14 is Huawei’s latest laptop product of the MateBook D series that has just been launched. The device continues to inherit the highlights on the previous D 15, such as a thin-bezel screen, a “jumping” webcam, a metal shell, a fingerprint that is always integrated into the power button.

Facing difficulties in the smartphone segment due to the ban from the US government, Huawei is looking for new directions. From last year until now, Huawei has continuously explored more product areas such as smartwatches and headphones.

The MateBook D 14 can be considered a tweaked version from the MateBook D 15, focusing even more on portability thanks to the smaller screen. From there, Huawei can reduce weight and size to attract users who are often on the go.

The ‘full metal’ design is similar to the senior, inspired by the MacBook.

The design of the MateBook D 14 is completely similar to its brother D 15. The MacBook Pro heavily influences the machine with a minimalist style; the entire shell and frame are made of silver-gray aluminum alloy, flat edges, square inside. Only the border area surrounding the screen is made of Mylar plastic. That is the type of plastic commonly used to make yogurt lids or foil coffee bags.

Huawei’s laptop model is relatively slim with a thickness of 15.9mm and a weight of 1.38Kg, flexible enough to carry with you without being cumbersome for backpacks and bags. Holding the device with one hand and the other hand to manipulate the mouse or keyboard when needed is also completely possible without much difficulty. Previously, the MateBook D 15 used to have a thickness of 16.9mm and a weight of 1.62Kg.

The device continues to attract attention with its slim bezel on all three sides, rare in the $800 segment when most only have thin bezels on two sides. Huawei calls this a Full View edge-to-edge screen with three equally thin left and right edges; the size is only 4.8 mm, helping to achieve a large screen-to-body ratio of 84%. The thin bezel makes the device look modern and eye-catching, and at the same time, it provides more spacious and airy display content. Thanks to the thin bezel, the MateBook D 14 has a large 14-inch screen, but the size is not too much larger than the traditional thick-rimmed 13-inch machines.

Convenient Huawei Share feature but still only compatible with Huawei Honor phones.

Huawei’s feature particularly emphasized on the MateBook D 14 is Huawei Share, which allows this laptop to connect to Huawei and Honor phones using NFC technology quickly. Huawei dedicates a large logo in the palm rest to promote this feature. That is also the area containing the NFC chip that helps Huawei Share work.

Practical experience with the Huawei P40 Pro phone model, I need to touch the back of the Huawei Share area of ​​the MateBook D 14. Immediately on the laptop, a connection confirmation message will appear on the laptop. Then it takes about 5 seconds for the machine to process, and the entire phone image will be transferred to the computer. At this point, you can use the MateBook’s trackpad and keyboard to control the P40 Pro, answer messages, receive calls, chat messengers, etc. Even drag and drop images, videos, document files or copy text content, share clipboard back and forth from phone to computer, very convenient.

The speed of control and file transfer is quite fast and smooth. Try dragging and dropping a 4K 60fps video file of 1-minute duration, weighing about 260MB from the phone to the laptop; it only takes about 12 seconds for the copy process to complete. Thus, the file transfer speed is up to 20MB/s, almost on par with a wired connection. The good thing is that Huawei Share does not need an Internet connection, and the two devices do not need to connect to the same WiFi network.

One note is that to use Huawei Share, you will need to have the PC Manager software enabled with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity on the MateBook D 15 and turn on NFC on the phone. In addition, Huawei Share currently only supports mid and high-end phones of Huawei and Honor running EMUI 10 or Magic UI 3.0 or higher, equipped with NFC connectivity.

Fast fingerprint, responsive touchpad, average keyboard

A feature that has been very popular on phones but has only recently been equipped on laptops is the fingerprint sensor. On the MateBook D 14, the fingerprint is integrated directly into the power button, so when powered on, you can always log in to Windows with a touch, no need to enter a password. Fingerprint recognition speed is fast, accurate, just a light touch, can receive fingers at many different angles, but the finger needs to be dry. The advantage of Windows 10 compared to Android and iOS is that you can install as many fingerprints as you like; there is no limit to the number, so you can add all ten fingers and even toes if you want.

Besides the appearance, the MateBook D 14 shows that Apple influences it is keyboard part. The key layout, fonts, colors, icons to tweak the brightness, volume, or shape of each key are more or less reminiscent of MacBooks.

The typing experience on the D 14 feels uncomfortable, the key travel is quite shallow, the bounce is low, so typing is easy to miss, having to use a lot of force, so it gets tired quickly. The key layout is similar to the desktop keyboard, so it didn’t take me long to get used to it. This keyboard has a backlight with two different brightness levels to support working in the dark, but the brightness level is quite low. One point to note is that you can still use the Fn key combination + the navigation arrow keys to use the Home, End, Page Up, Page Down commands even though these symbols are not printed on the keyboard.

The large-sized touchpad is where Huawei continues to “learn” from Apple, although in terms of “supergiant,” it is not equal to the opponent. The MateBook’s touchpad offers a good drag experience, high sensitivity, smoothness, fast response, smooth scrolling, full support for multi-touch operations, and precision touchpad compatibility. The spacious area is a big plus, making it very comfortable to drag the mouse, freely drag and drop files. If I only use office tasks, browsing the web, I almost rarely have to use a separate mouse, in addition to when I edit photos, edit videos, play games that need high accuracy.

On the front edge, Huawei continues to be influenced by Apple, with the edge being completely concave inward, helping to create a fulcrum, supporting the more convenient and quick opening of the device. The hinge of the MateBook D 14 is made firmly, allowing the device to open 180 degrees, but it still can’t open the device with one hand.

Of course, at less than half the price, the MateBook’s perfection is hard to compare with its rival from Apple. There is still a slight flex when pressing the lid or the center of the keyboard (the position of the G, H keys). The metal surface is not sophisticated because it seems to be covered with a layer of paint instead of an anode treatment. But overall, at the price range of $800, the MateBook’s perfection is still at a good level, the palm rest area, the two sides of the keyboard or the bottom of the machine are sturdy, the full metal material is cool and solid.

The display quality has improved.

With a screen ratio of 16: 9, thin borders, the MateBook D 14’s 14-inch screen is especially suitable for entertainment content such as movies, music videos. Full HD resolution (1920 × 1080) for definition, fine details. The IPS panel is matte, with an anti-glare coating, to achieve wide viewing angles, less glare.

As announced by Huawei, the screen brightness reaches 250 nits and is practically enough to display outdoors or under a strong light source shining directly on the screen. Huawei claims the device’s screen is TheV Rheinland certified, which helps reduce the blue light that is harmful to the eyes. The screen can be opened to a 180-degree angle, so you can comfortably fine-tune the viewing angle in many working situations or when you need to exchange work with the opposite person.

The drawback of this screen is that the colors are less fresh, the contrast is not high, only 800:1, so the displayed image is somewhat pale. Color coverage is also only about 40% AdobeRGB and 60% sRGB, so it is not suitable for photo editing and video editing tasks that require high color accuracy.

The speakers of the MateBook D 14 are arranged on the bottom; the volume is good, there is no distortion or distortion when turned up to the maximum. The speaker is equipped with Dolby Atmos technology to optimize the sound for each content; the quality is enough to enjoy light music or game shows, YouTube videos are not too demanding. Of course, adding headphones or external speakers is still a more reasonable solution.

The interesting point is that to achieve a slim screen border on the top edge, Huawei has switched to using a “jumping” webcam hidden under the keyboard, located between the F6 and F7 keys. This webcam only pops up when the user taps it.

When not in use, the webcam can be hidden to avoid the risk of revealing sensitive images. The handy point is that when the webcam is on, it is still possible to fold the device normally without fear of hitting the screen because the camera will automatically sink a bit. This mechanism helps that when the device is turned on, the webcam remains on without being closed, reducing the number of times you have to click to turn it on.

The image quality obtained from the “jumping” webcam of the MateBook D 14 is similar to most laptops today, stopping at the “have” level due to a resolution of only … 1MP equivalent to 720p HD. Because the webcam is located in the keyboard section, it must be tilted from the bottom up, so the image obtained will mainly be double chin and fingers when typing. This webcam also does not support Windows Hello infrared face unlock. The mic section for good, clear sound recording quality effectively filters noise.

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Agile performance, powerful integrated graphics

In terms of configuration, the MateBook D 14 version that BiaReview uses in this review is equipped with a 12nm AMD Ryzen 7 3700U CPU. A CPU with four cores and eight threads with a base clock of 2.3GHz can be accelerated to up to 4.0GHz; the default TDP level is 15W, can be customized from 12W to 35W. The machine does not have a discrete graphics card but uses the integrated GPU solution AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics with ten cores clocked at 1400 MHz.

Other parameters include 8GB DDR4 Dual Channel 2400 MHz RAM, soldered, no upgrade support, Samsung PM981a 512GB NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 2280 SSD storage, Windows 10 Home SL pre-installed.

The connection ports are relatively complete, with the left side having 1 USB Type-A 3.0 port, 1 USB Type C 3.0 port that also charges the battery and transmits data (does not support image and audio output), and 1 HDMI port.

The right side has an additional USB Type-A port, but unfortunately, only type 2.0. Next to the USB port is a headphone/mic combo port.

The MateBook D 14’s performance was responsive in nearly all of my daily tasks as a technology reporter. From browsing the web with Firefox with about 20 tabs, almost 20 pre-installed Add-ons, and simultaneously turning on Chrome and Edge with 4-5 more tabs, image processing with Lightroom, Photoshop, or Full video editing. HD with Premiere Pro, Huawei’s laptop still proved undeterred.

I also tried playing some familiar games like League of Legends, Fifa Online 4, and CS: GO on this machine, and they all run well at 60fps, Full HD resolution with graphics settings from medium to high. With 3A offline games, this GPU will “give up,” having to lower all settings to low, 720p resolution can temporarily play at 30-40fps. That is still a pretty respectable result for a thin and light office laptop with only an integrated graphics card.

Benchmark results show that AMD Ryzen 7 3700U on D 14 is about 20% higher than AMD Ryzen 5 3500U on D 15 and is almost on par with Intel Gen 10 chips like Core i5-10210U or i5 -1035G1. Still, AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 Graphics GPU performance is superior, up to 40% higher than i5-1035G1 and 60% compared to i5-10210U. That is not too surprising because AMD has always been appreciated for its integrated GPU performance. After all, it holds core technologies from many years of experience in making discrete graphics cards.

The only point to note is that the AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 GPU performance is highly dependent on RAM, so it is necessary to ensure as much free RAM as possible when running graphics-heavy tasks such as video editing. Unfortunately, the MateBook D 15 cannot be upgraded with more RAM. The amount of RAM is 8GB, but only 6.94GB is available (1.06GB to the GPU). To compensate somewhat, Huawei has set up Dual Channel dual channels, so it’s temporary enough for basic needs.

With efficient heat dissipation, the machine runs smoothly, does not “poke” performance.

Regarding heat dissipation, the surprise is that despite its strong performance, the MateBook D 14 runs very quietly and coolly. Although continuously running benchmarks, squeezing system power with 100% CPU and GPU Full load for a long time, the maximum recorded temperature is only 91 degrees Celsius; the machine does not emit any annoying noises from the radiator fan. In the entire palm rest area, the keyboard is only slightly warm.

THEREFORE, the CPU and GPU performance is very stable, keeping a high pulse rate and not experiencing the phenomenon of overheating like most U-series Intel chips. At the same time, even when running on battery power, do not plug in the charger; the machine’s performance is still not degraded.

That is probably because the MateBook has a large heatsink on the bottom, seeing the heatsink and exposed copper pipes. The heat dissipation is much more effective than many other laptops, which usually only have a heatsink in the screen hinge.

Significantly improved battery life, compact and convenient fast charging

Battery life on the MateBook D 14 has improved significantly compared to the D 15. The screen is smaller, the battery capacity is larger, reaching 56 WHr, and basic tasks such as browsing the web, typing Word, screen. 40% brightness in Better Battery priority mode, the device can last up to about 7-8 hours. When using heavier applications such as Photoshop, Lightroom, the battery life will decrease to only about 4 hours. That is a good battery level, enough to meet a working day before needing to be charged.

Another valuable point is that the MateBook D 14 is equipped with a compact 65W USB-C charger, only half the size of regular laptop chargers and about as big as two phone chargers comes with a USB-C 2 cable head. According to Huawei, this charger supports fast charging and can fully charge 46% of the battery in 30 minutes when the device is in a sleep state.

Actual testing shows that, in 30 minutes of charging from 0% (the device does not turn on, showing the icon asking for charging), I achieved a battery level of 45%, almost equivalent to Huawei’s announcement. It takes about 2 hours to charge the battery to 100% fully. The charger of the MateBook D 14 supports the PD standard, so it can quickly charge compatible phones.

Summary

In the latest “occupying the yard” to the laptop “stage,” Huawei shows that they are not “a novice.” MateBook D 14 continues to converge many elements to create an attractive laptop. The device has an eye-catching, solid metal design. Slim design, easy to carry. Modern, airy 3-sided thin screen border. Features Huawei Share useful phone connectivity, a one-touch fingerprint sensor integrated with a handy power button. Spacious touchpad, high sensitivity, fancy “jumping” webcam. Battery life is enough for a working day. If you like the design of the MacBook but don’t like the macOS operating system, this could be a reasonable choice.

The performance of the MateBook D 14 is also good, especially the graphics processing ability, which helps to play popular games with high graphics settings or when it comes to basic photo editing and editing. The machine also runs smoothly and coolly, keeping high performance even when running on battery only.

The drawback of the MateBook D 14 is the low-bounce keyboard, shallow travel, easy typing to miss, and hand fatigue. Screen color and color coverage average, less fresh. The machine also does not allow RAM upgrades; the Type C port cannot output images or sound.

At the price range of $800, Huawei MateBook D 14 will compete with rivals such as Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 15ITL05, Asus VivoBook S433EA, HP Pavilion 14 dv0010TU, or Dell Vostro 3500. 3-sided metal, while competitors mainly only use metal for the top and palm rest. MateBook also owns many unique features such as Huawei Share, hidden webcam, 3-sided Full View thin border screen, agile performance, cool machine, and quiet running.