Nation's home workers hitting refresh on 7 April can buy... Honor's bargain-basement Ryzen ultrabook
(2020/03/20)
- Reference: 1584718638
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/20/honor_announces_uk_availability_for_its_bargainbasement_ryzen_ultrabook/
- Source link:
The people of Great Britain will soon be able to get their hands on Huawei sub-brand Honor's latest ultrabook – the Magicbook 14.
First released in China in November, the MagicBook is Honor's latest foray into the laptop sphere. The firm announced it would bring it to Europe in February, at a press-conference that otherwise would have coincided [1]with the now-cancelled mega consumer show Mobile World Congress , but instead took place in a much quieter Barcelona.
The machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, with a similar deep groove at the bottom of the chassis, and a relatively unblemished metal frame. The 14-inch display is a 1080p IPS affair, with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Under the hood is AMD's Ryzen 5 3500U processor with Vega 8 graphics and 8GB of DDR4 RAM. Honor hasn't cheaped out on storage, using fast NVMe storage rather than the increasingly dated SATA standard.
The MagicBook 14 borrows the pop-up webcam mechanism found on the Huawei Matebook X Pro – which is a bit of a mixed bag. Although it allows smaller bezels (and therefore a more svelte package), you end up with a camera pointed upwards towards your chin. The reverse-MySpace angles, if you will. Still, many may regard this as a reasonable price to pay for an 84 per cent screen-to-body ratio.
Honor reckons you'll be able to get about 10 hours of continuous usage with the MagicBook 14, which is respectable, if not outstanding. It does win points for the inclusion of 64W USB-C fast charging, however, which can give a 46 per cent charge in just 30 minutes.
Available on April 7, the Honor Magicbook will retail at £549.99 at Argos and Amazon - presuming you can manage to order one before it [2]goes the way of the other laptops . And while it'll face stiff competition, not least from parent company's Matebook D, it does appear to be a fairly enticing little number – particularly at that price. ®
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/12/mwc_barcelona_2020_cancelled_coronavirus/
[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/20/home_working_laptops_monitors_wlans_selling_fast
First released in China in November, the MagicBook is Honor's latest foray into the laptop sphere. The firm announced it would bring it to Europe in February, at a press-conference that otherwise would have coincided [1]with the now-cancelled mega consumer show Mobile World Congress , but instead took place in a much quieter Barcelona.
The machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, with a similar deep groove at the bottom of the chassis, and a relatively unblemished metal frame. The 14-inch display is a 1080p IPS affair, with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
Under the hood is AMD's Ryzen 5 3500U processor with Vega 8 graphics and 8GB of DDR4 RAM. Honor hasn't cheaped out on storage, using fast NVMe storage rather than the increasingly dated SATA standard.
The MagicBook 14 borrows the pop-up webcam mechanism found on the Huawei Matebook X Pro – which is a bit of a mixed bag. Although it allows smaller bezels (and therefore a more svelte package), you end up with a camera pointed upwards towards your chin. The reverse-MySpace angles, if you will. Still, many may regard this as a reasonable price to pay for an 84 per cent screen-to-body ratio.
Honor reckons you'll be able to get about 10 hours of continuous usage with the MagicBook 14, which is respectable, if not outstanding. It does win points for the inclusion of 64W USB-C fast charging, however, which can give a 46 per cent charge in just 30 minutes.
Available on April 7, the Honor Magicbook will retail at £549.99 at Argos and Amazon - presuming you can manage to order one before it [2]goes the way of the other laptops . And while it'll face stiff competition, not least from parent company's Matebook D, it does appear to be a fairly enticing little number – particularly at that price. ®
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/02/12/mwc_barcelona_2020_cancelled_coronavirus/
[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/20/home_working_laptops_monitors_wlans_selling_fast
Mr Sceptical
Should be standard HW under the hood - just take a Live USB distro along with you and try it out.
It's only if it's got a non-standard NIC/Wifi card I'd be concerned about Linux drivers.
Warm Braw
According to [1]this , Huawei actually sells Linux versions, at least in China.
[1] https://www.huaweicentral.com/honor-magicbook-14-and-15-2019-launched/
The machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the 13-inch MacBook Pro
macjules
Does it come with a shite keyboard? Occasional battery failure? Prone to shutting down unexpectedly?
Any idea if it would run Linux? This strikes me as quite a good spare machine, it would be a waste to run Windows on it (although it would at least run quickly).