HUAWEI MATEBOOK 16 REVIEW

If you are able to get your hands on one of these, it has a number of selling points. It’s fairly light for a 16-inch notebook at 4.39 pounds. The trackpad is smooth and roomy, though it occasionally had issues with palm rejection. The keyboard is sturdy and impressively quiet — it’s probably the most MacBook-esque keyboard I’ve ever used on a Windows laptop (and I mean the recent models, not the god awful butterfly ones). There’s a useful port selection with two USB-C, two USB-A, a headphone jack, and HDMI. The speakers are quite good, with bass that’s a bit weak. It’s got an unobtrusive, professional look.

The touchpad is “a durable matte glass.”

The highlight of the device, for me, is the display. Not only is it a whopping 16 inches, but it has a 3:2 aspect ratio, which is my favorite laptop aspect ratio. (Yes, I have a favorite.) There’s a ton of vertical space, and I comfortably worked in multiple windows side by side; as someone who generally uses a 13-incher, the extra room feels luxurious. The panel itself, while not quite MacBook quality, still displays strong colors and sharp details and kicked back almost no glare. I enjoyed looking at it.

Fingerprint reader in the power button.

Now, for the weird things. The MateBook’s microphones come equipped with Huawei’s Ai noise cancelation technology that’s supposed to reduce echo and ambient noise, but coworkers said that it made me sound very weird on Zoom calls. It was clearly processing my voice while I was speaking; someone said I sounded like I was underwater. They could still hear and understand me just fine, but it’s an odd caveat to such a nice laptop. I’ve asked Huawei about this issue.