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Today we are checking out the Huawei Matebook D14 2020 – could this be the best 14inch laptop? The great news about this laptop is that it’s on a special Black Friday deal on Amazon. Let’s start our review with the design because it’s one of the major things about any laptop.
Today we are checking out the Huawei Matebook D14 2020 – could this be the best 14inch laptop?
Table of Contents
Design & Build Quality
The first thing that is apparent when looking at the Huawei MateBook D14 2020 is a striking similarity to the Apple MacBook. This is not a bad thing, since Apple’s famous laptop is accepted as having one of the finest and most timeless designs.
The Huawei MateBook D14 2020 is made of an aluminium alloy material and externally it only has the Huawei logo on the lid. To the side of the device is a USB-C charging port which allows the device to be charged from any USB charger, although high output devices are best. Other ports include 2 X USB3, and a combined 3.5mm headphone / microphone socket.
With the lid opened, its apparent that this is a clean and uncluttered design, with an edge-to-edge screen, a tactile and easy to use keyboard with good key spacing, and a large touchpad.
One unusual design feature is the positioning of the webcam – this is located under a pop-up key on the keyboard. While this design provides good privacy, some users have commented that the angle of the camera when is use is less than ideal as it looks up at the user instead of straight ahead.
Display
One of the main highlights of the Huawei MateBook D14 2020 is its high-quality display. The Laptop comes with a full HD 1920 x 1080 14-inch IPS display that has excellent colour reproduction and contrast.
The screen stretches from edge to edge giving it a very modern feel, and the viewing angles are good. It performs quite well in bright outdoor conditions due to the presence of a matte screen, however this is not the brightest screen available.
Performance
The Huawei MateBook D14 2020 is certainly a work-horse laptop, and it is designed for professionals. It comes with the AMD’s mighty Ryzen 5 chip, which comes with 4 cores and 8 threads. The CPU is built-on the latest 7 nm manufacturing process, and it offers excellent performance for the price.
As it is a work-horse laptop, we tested it with various professional software such as Adobe Photoshop & Premiere Pro. The Laptop was able to handle the editing on Adobe Photoshop well. It took around 13 minutes to render the 4K footage with 24 FPS, which is quite remarkable.
When it comes to Gaming, the MateBook performs better than most laptops without a dedicated GPU. This is because it has Vega 8 graphics which will allow it to play most recent titles albeit with reduced frame rates and resolution.
This is a very thin and portable laptop and due to the reduced interior space the thermal performance of the Huawei MateBook D14 2020 is average. During normal everyday use, the temperature hovered around 43 degrees centigrade, and this increased to a maximum 102 degrees centigrade during intensive use. Having said this, the fans did not produce any distracting noise levels at any time during testing.
The overall performance of the Huawei MateBook D14 2020 is excellent for most scenarios, especially for use with Office and business software, and for students who may be interested in some light gaming.
- With powerful system architecture and software stack capacities, the laptop provides you with the large screen and light weight possible for a laptop of its size; with a thickness of 15.9 mm and a weight of 1.38 kg, the MateBook stands out from other laptops with a 14 Inch screen
- Multi-Screen Collaboration facilitates seamless cross-device interaction with the MateBook D 14, allowing you to project your phone screen to the laptop; this not only allows you to use phone applications and edit phone files on your laptop, but also to drag files between the two devices more easily
- Fingerprint sensor suuported allowing you to log in to your MateBook D 14 without having to enter a password by simply pressing the power button; It also features a two-stage backlight that illuminates the keyboard in the dark
- HUAWEI MateBook D 14 is a ideal travel companion packed with 56 Wh battery, you can get through a long haul flight by binge-watching a series with up to 9.5 hours of 1080P videos
- The increased AMD Ryzen 5 3500U efficiency make this laptop ideal for use in a variety of complex office and gaming scenarios; the S-shaped blade design facilitates heat dispersion and airflow, increasing the laptop's ability to dissipate heat
Battery Performance
This laptop comes with a 56 WH battery, which offers around 8 hours of battery life under moderate usage with 50% brightness.
Under heavy use the battery performance may drop slightly, but the overall battery performance of the MateBook D14 is good considering the battery size it comes with.
The Laptop is supplied with a 65W power brick and USB-C cable which can recharge the Laptop from empty to 100% in around 1.5 hours.
Other Features
Recent Huawei laptops have an interesting feature whereby they can automatically link with a compatible smartphone using a feature named “Huawei Share”. This provides a seamless link so that the phone display is duplicated on the laptop and files can be easily shared without having to go through time consuming processes each time. Compatibility is currently limited to Huawei and Honor phones only.
Pros & Cons of Huawei MateBook D14 2020
Now that you know almost everything you need to know about Huawei MateBook D14 2020, let us look at the pros and cons.
Pros
- Great Design
- Solid Build Quality
- Good display
- Great Overall performance
- Decent Battery Life
- Very short recharging time
- Comes with a powerful AMD Ryzen 5 processor
- Up to 512 GB Storage
- Great Laptop for work & students
- Decent Thermal performance
Cons
- No Dedicated GPU
- Only suitable for basic gaming
What is the Alternative?
There are tons of great Laptops available in the market but if you are looking for an alternative to the Huawei MateBook D14 2020, you can consider the Acer Swift 3. It is a very capable 14-inch Laptop that comes with AMD Ryzen 7 and 8 GB of RAM.
Now, the Acer Swift 3 is not as good looking as the MateBook D14, but overall, it is a very powerful laptop. It comes with a slightly better CPU, but it is also more expensive than the MateBook D14 2020. In our opinion, the Huawei MateBook D14 2020 offers better value for money.
If you are looking for the best budget laptop on the market then check out our review of the ASUS Vivobook E402YA.
- When you choose that thin laptop, you're making a statement, a statement that says, “I go where I like—just with style”
- The sleek, aluminium body is cool to the touch and gives this laptop a sense of personality
- With up to 12 hours of battery life, finish the day with time left to spare
- Whether powering through the mundane or breezing past the most complex of tasks, our latest gen processors have you covered
- Do more while doing less with multi-tasking features that streamline your life for efficiency and convenience
Now, the Acer Swift 3 is not as good looking as the MateBook D14, but overall, it’s a very capable laptop. It comes with a better CPU, but it’s also more expensive than the MateBook D14 2020. In our opinion, the Huawei MateBook D14 2020 offers a much better deal and value for money than Acer 3. So go for that one if your budget can stretch to it.
If you are looking for the best budget laptop on the market then check out our review of the ASUS Vivobook E402YA.
