The Huawei MateBook 16s is an excellent laptop from Huawei. Although you could purchase it for that amount alone, the Huawei ecosystem offers the best value. In fact, everything you use from a Huawei phone to a smartwatch, earphones, computer, display, and more is made to operate smoothly.
The MateBook 16s is not as powerful as other laptops and it doesn’t have a dedicated graphics card. If that’s the case, we’d prefer to see a P-series processor in this laptop. There are also minor issues, like the fact that only one USB Type-C port supports Thunderbolt.
Huawei MateBook 16s review: Design
The MateBook 16S is a surprisingly lightweight laptop that has a powerful processor and large screen. It is made of metal and has a surface that has been textured by ceramic sandblasting. In the company’s signature Space Gray color, everything looks pretty upscale.
The Huawei Mate 20 Pro is a powerful laptop that has a lot of ports. It has two USB 3 ports, a 3.5mm audio combination port, an HDMI output, and twin USB-C ports. It also has a Thunderbolt 4 port for data transfers.
We really like the power button/fingerprint sensor combination on the Huawei laptop. It’s faster than going through the Windows 11 login screen and it doesn’t have a built-in webcam that supports Windows Hello facial recognition. ..
Keyboard and touchpad
The Huawei MateBook 16s is a great laptop for typing and clicking. The touchpad is large and has a nice tactile feel, and the keyboard has a beautiful, uniform backlighting across each key. The scissor switches have a soft landing design, making it easy to type quickly and accurately.
We typed 86 words per minute on the 10FastFingers.com typing test, which highlights how ergonomically sound this board is. With a life devoted to smaller laptops like our daily driver, the M1 MacBook Pro, we didn’t go as quickly as the MateBook X Pro, but that is due to the keyboard being somewhat marooned in the middle of this large base. ..
The MateBook X Pro is a powerful laptop that has a large 5.7 by 3.6 inch touchpad that is smaller than the MacBook Pro’s but still feels spacious. This is to be expected on a 16-inch laptop. We were surprised that the edge controls were absent from the MateBook X Pro, but we are glad they are included in the MateBook X Pro S model. The touchpad is smooth and responsive with nice clicks, taps, and multi-touch gestures. ..
Huawei MateBook 16s review: Display
The Huawei MateBook 16s is a laptop that has an enormous screen, measuring 16 inches. Its aspect ratio is 3:2, it has a 90% screen-to-body ratio, and its resolution is 2520 by 1680. With its small bezels, it looks more upscale than some other chunkier laptops because it has ample vertical space to operate with numerous tabs open. The Full HD (19201080) display is more stunning in terms of quality, and the screen was vibrant enough to watch media on.
We tested the MateBook 16s screen’s actual capabilities using a colorimeter to support our assertions about real-world performance. It was simpler for us to work in brighter situations, even outside in the sun, because the brightness reached 335.12 nits, which is higher than the typical 300-nit count for most laptops. The contrast was 1739:1, which is comparable to the MateBook 16’s 1734:1 score.
We found that the 10-point touchscreen feature is very useful for anyone who must manage large Excel sheets, and it streamlines zooming into or scrolling through documents.
This laptop is not suitable for professional tasks because it doesn’t have the necessary color accuracy for work produced by experts.
Audio
The Huawei MateBook X Pro is a powerful laptop that offers great sound quality. It has a large number pad on the bottom, dual front-facing surround-sound speakers, and a respectable amount of detail to the highs and mids. The lows are also clear and oomphful.
In Four Year Strong’s rendition of “Bittersweet Symphony,” the soaring vocals stand out admirably above the intricate crunch of the distorted guitars, the intense fury of the drum kit, and the satisfying bass kick. This is a great-sounding system, regardless of what you’re listening to or under what conditions you need to listen (thanks to the 3.5mm headphone jack).
Huawei MateBook 16s review: Graphics
Huawei uses the built-in Xe Graphics G7 (96 EUs) for all its mobile processors. This card is known from the previous generation of Tiger Lake mobile processors. The new Radeon 680M of the Ryzen 6000 CPUs offers significantly more power and also a more effective video decoder, but the iGPU is entirely adequate for everyday use, including playback of high-resolution videos.
The MateBook 16 Pro has better graphics performance than the MateBook 16. This means that some older or simpler games will work fine on the MateBook 16 Pro, but people who want to play more demanding games may have to wait until later models come out. On medium/high resolution, games like F1 2021 continue to function without any issues. Additional GPU benchmarks can be found here. Graphics performance holds steady under continuous load and on battery power. ..
Performance
The 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900H, the 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H, and the 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12500H are three different CPU flavours available for the Huawei MateBook 16s. My unit had the i7 variant. Our tests demonstrated that the Intel H-Series processors offer high-end processing performance. Multiple tabs open at once, as well as different programmes like Chrome, Spotify, YouTube, and Slack, worked without a hitch on the laptop.
Huawei MateBook 16s outperforms new MacBook Air M2 in multi-core Geekbench 5 test and performs exceptionally well on PCMark 10 test. ..
Huawei MateBook X Pro is a powerful laptop with a discrete GPU that is suitable for basic Photoshop workloads and other moderately demanding jobs, but it lacks a discrete GPU, which restricts its creative output and gaming potential. It’s unfortunate that Huawei didn’t offer any discrete GPUs because an optional Nvidia RTX 3050 or RTX 3060 would help to expand its market and entice the creative crowd. Like the majority of MateBook laptops, the MateBook X Pro operated quietly when under pressure. However, it got a little warm on the bottom when under pressure, but it wasn’t unbearable and it didn’t spread to the rest of the laptop. ..
Battery life
The MateBook 16s has a large 84Wh battery from Huawei, but it still drains pretty quickly. In our battery test, it lasted for almost 12 hours of continuous movie playback, which is a fairly average result. That indicates that there is enough power here for a working day, but only if you’re not doing anything particularly demanding; the professional target market for Huawei will probably still need to be close to a charger. Thanks to the combination of quick charging and small USB-C power adapters, fortunately, this is not too painful.
Huawei MateBook 16s review: The 90W charger that came with our i7 model was able to recharge 43% of the laptop’s battery in just 30 minutes, which is remarkably quick for a laptop and a welcome balance to the average battery life. ..
Huawei MateBook 16s review: Heat
We are unable to provide a specific temperature for the MateBook 16s, but we can promise you that it maintains a comfortable temperature.
The MSI GAMING X570-A Pro is a powerful motherboard that easily dissipates any high temperatures while fans work hard to draw in cool air. Even more impressively, fans were whisper quiet during times of high stress when multiple tasks were being completed. Not a single component felt hot to the touch. ..
Configuration options
The MateBook 16s is a laptop that is designed for professionals and students. It has a powerful i7 processor, 8GB of memory, a fast SSD, and a great design. The MateBook 16s is also available in different colors, including black and silver.
The MateBook D16 is the new model that offers the same H-series i7 chip starting at £999, dropping to just £749 if you don’t mind an i5. If the 16s is too expensive for you, it is also available for £749 instead. The MateBook 16 from last year is also slightly less expensive, but it lacks a touchscreen, uses outdated silicon, and has a subpar webcam.
Conclusion
The new MateBook 16s is a laptop that replaces the MateBook 16 and shares many features with it, but after switching to an Intel processor, little of the former favorable price-performance ratio remains. The new Intel Core i7 of the Alder Lake generation performs only marginally better than the outdated AMD chip, and AMD processors would naturally also be capable of improvements like Wi-Fi 6E or more keystroke travel. There are no really compelling justifications for an Intel processor, and battery life is also reduced. However, the cost has increased by 500 euros.
