Huawei MateBook 14 2024 Review: Today, we’re taking a close look at the new Huawei Matebook 14 2024. It’s a powerful everyday laptop with a sharp OLED screen and Intel Core Ultra processor. And yes, it’s green—really green. I’ve been testing the Huawei Mbook 14 for a few days now, so here’s what I think.
Huawei MateBook 14 2024 Review with Detailed Specifications
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Design:
The Matebook 14 looks a lot like an Apple MacBook Air with its sleek and simple design. It has a sturdy, single-piece metal body. Although it’s not as compact as the new Matebook X Pro, it weighs just over 1.3 kg and is less than 15 mm thick at its thickest point, making it easy to fit into most backpacks.
The lid has a frosted finish that resists fingerprints and smudges. The minty green color is bright and bold but not too flashy. If you prefer more neutral colors, the Metabook 14 also comes in silver or gray.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Display:
The Matebook 14 has a beautiful 14.2-inch OLED touch-control handwriting screen that almost fills the lid. It’s one of the best features of this laptop. The 3:2 aspect ratio is great for working on two documents side by side or for creative tasks.
However, it’s not ideal for watching movies because of the black bars at the top and bottom. The screen has a sharp 2880 by 1920 resolution, making it excellent for photo editing and streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. Colors are vibrant, and it covers the full sRGB and P3 color gamuts, with almost full Adobe RGB coverage.
The screen’s brightness is just under 450 nits, so you can use it outdoors even on sunny days. The glare is manageable compared to other laptops. The refresh rate ranges from 48Hz to 120Hz, which is good for some gaming.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Ports:
The port selection on the Metabook 14 is a bit unusual. It has two full-sized USB 3.2 ports and one Type-C USB port. Most of these ports are on the left side. It’s disappointing that there isn’t a second USB-C port, but you can always use a dongle if needed. There’s also an HDMI port on the left side and a headphone jack, but no memory card slots, which might disappoint creators.
To log in, there’s a fingerprint sensor built into the power button. It’s fast and responsive, except when your fingers are greasy.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Keyboard & Touchpad:
The touchpad is decent and takes up a good portion of the palm rest. It supports multi-touch gestures.
Huawei’s keyboard on the Matebook 14 is well-designed. It’s a chiclet keyboard with well-spaced keys, providing a firm typing action with shallow travel. It’s comfortable for touch typing. The keyboard has three levels of backlighting, so you can type easily even in low light. The only downside is the cramped cursor keys in the bottom right corner, but it does have a double-row enter key.
Huawei MateBook 14 2024 Webcam:
The MateBook 14 2024 includes AI Camera technology with AI Camera5. It uses a 1080P ultra-HD camera to capture clear and sharp images, even in challenging lighting conditions. Eye Contact adjusts to where you look, making video calls feel more natural. AI Sound and Personal Voice Enhancement reduce background noise, improving the clarity of your voice during calls.
Huawei MateBook 14 2024 M-Pencil:
This laptop, paired with the advanced HUAWEI M-Pencil Package (3rd generation), is great for writing notes during meetings. You can easily highlight important points, making each note a step towards success.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Performance:
Now, let’s talk about performance. The device comes with Windows 11 Home, but you can upgrade to Windows 11 Pro through the device manager. It’s powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 155h processor with a TDP of up to 40 watts, which has 16 cores and 22 threads, reaching up to 8.4 GHz with Turbo Boost. This makes it very powerful for a 14-inch laptop.
The chipset includes Intel Arc graphics, which are significantly better than previous Iris Xe graphics, offering almost double the performance. The laptop has non-upgradable Wi-Fi 6 (not the latest Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7) but provides good reception and speed.
It comes with 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, though not the fastest available. The storage is partitioned into 200GB for Windows and 731GB for local storage, which helps keep your files safe during a factory reset.
In benchmarks, the Matebook 14 shows excellent multicore performance but slightly lags behind previous generations like the 13th gen in single-core performance. In Cinebench R23, it scores over 14,843 for multi-core and around 1,735 for single-core performance and a 3DMark Time Spy score of 3,521.
The integrated graphics perform well in synthetic benchmarks and handle 4K video playback smoothly, including VP9 codec on YouTube without dropping frames.
Overall, the laptop has been stable, with only minor issues like the brightness function keys occasionally not working for a few minutes.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Software Features:
The MateBook 14 2024 comes with useful software, including Huawei PC Manager. This software helps keep your drivers and BIOS up to date. It offers different power modes—Power Saving, Balance, and Performance—which you can switch between using the function P shortcut. In the top performance mode, the “Super Turbo” algorithms help the laptop start up quickly. However, some apps may still take a bit longer to launch.
Other features include Huawei Share for easy file transfers between your laptop and Huawei phone, the ability to use Huawei tablets as secondary displays, and various camera settings for privacy. The Control Panel provides quick access to features like SuperHub, ProColor, and Eye Comfort. The refresh rate is dynamic, ranging from 48Hz to 120Hz, making it suitable for demanding tasks like video editing.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 4K Video Editing with Intel Arc:
I’m currently testing 4K video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro on the latest version. The timeline performance is excellent, especially with the quarter playback setting. Previous generations had lag issues with integrated graphics, but Intel Arc graphics, optimized by Adobe, perform much better.
I’m using the YouTube 4K preset, which is hardware-accelerated with Intel Quick Sync, making editing faster. The laptop has 16GB of RAM, which works fine, but 32GB would be better for 4K editing. Export times are impressive, taking about 30 seconds to encode one minute of footage. The Intel Arc graphics handle most of the work efficiently, delivering excellent performance.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Gaming Performance:
I tested Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 1080p with lower settings. The frame rate averaged 38 FPS, which isn’t great. It runs better at 720p, averaging 49 FPS. For demanding games, 720p is recommended.
The Witcher 3 at 1080p also struggles, only getting over 30 FPS, but at 720p, it reaches 60-65 FPS, making it playable.
Lighter games like Counter-Strike 2 perform well at 1080p, with frame rates over 100 FPS on low settings. This shows Intel Arc graphics are much better than the previous Iris Xe for less demanding games.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Thermal & Fan Noise Under Heavy Load:
During heavy stress tests with Cinebench R23, the CPU temperature reached 101°C and caused thermal throttling. However, for gaming, the temperatures were in the high 70s to low 80s, and for video exporting, they stayed between the 60s and low 70s. The laptop’s thermal management is generally good, except under extreme stress tests.
The fans take some time to ramp up, but once they do, temperatures drop to around the 80°C. Overall, thermals and fan noise are excellent.The fan noise is loudest during a Cinebench R23 test in performance mode. Normally, the laptop is very quiet, and the fan noise is not an issue.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Audio:
The Matebook 14 has stereo speakers located underneath, providing decent audio. At maximum volume, you might hear some distortion, but the sound remains clear. This makes it suitable for watching videos or listening to music, even in noisy environments.
Huawei Matebook 14 2024 Battery Life & Charging:
The MateBook 14 has a 70Wh battery. It’s good enough for all-day use with mixed apps running. In a video drain test, it streamed video for just over 10 hours with the brightness at maximum. This is average for a laptop of this size.
The new power-saving mode adds an extra 90 minutes of use. The laptop comes with a 65W charger, taking about 75 minutes to charge from 5% to full.
Overall, I’ve been using the new Huawei MateBook 14 2024 Edition, and I have to say, I really like it. It’s sleek, well-built, and one of its best features is the stunning OLED display, perfect for creators editing photos and videos. The performance is solid. However, there are a few downsides like the lack of enough USB-C ports and sometimes crackly speakers.