Honor MagicBook Pro: An Outstanding Mobile Workstation

The Honor MagicBook Pro, thanks to its excellent price-performance ratio, is surely a great laptop that also acts as an outstanding mobile workstation.

Among the brand’s three laptops introduced at IFA 2020 organized in Berlin, people are most interested in the MagicBook Pro due to its affordable price tag as well as its main target, the Apple’s 16-inch MacBook Pro. Continue reading our Honor MagicBook Pro review to find out if it is really the market’s most balanced and best-value mobile workstation.

Honor MagicBook Pro Price

There is only one model available with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. Honor MagicBook Pro price in India is expected to be Rs 71,999. The price includes a free Honor watch.

Honor MagicBook Pro Design

The design of the MagicBook Pro shares with the Apple MacBook Pro, the Dell XPS 15, and the Xiaomi Mi laptops some common features. The Space Gray color device has an aluminum chassis instead of a magnesium alloy one and a frosted matte finish.

The laptop has dimensions of 369 x 234 x 16.9mm. Its weight is 1.7kg. Honor doesn’t claim that it is the thinnest or the lightest laptop. With its 90% screen-to-body ratio, it isn't much bigger, compared to a 15.6-inch laptop.

The 16.1-inch HD display is connected to the base through a long hinge. The most noticeable thing about this laptop is its lack of holes along the bezel, meaning that the microphones and camera sensors are placed somewhere else.

The HD webcam using the Omnivision OV9734 resides between the F6 and F7 keys and will pop up when you need to use it. Even when you close the display and forget to push down the webcam, it won’t do any damage to the screen of the device.

The Honor MagicBook Pro doesn’t have a numeric keypad. There are two speakers hidden behind grills on the two sides of the keyboard. Goodix branded fingerprint reader is in the power button.

The keyboard keys have an apple-sque feel. They are almost flush with the laptop’s surface. The touchpad is proportioned generously but doesn’t have any physical buttons.

On one side are two full-size USB ports and an audio connector. On the other side are a full-size USB, a full-size HDMI 2.0, and a type-C USB. The Type-C connector also works like a universal power port paired with the bundled switching power adaptor from Huawei. The power adaptor delivers between 2A and 3.25A and 5V and 20V.

The base has two parallel rubber strips double up as raisers for air to go through a perforated grill to cool the inside components. There is no Thunderbolt 3 connector or card reader.

Honor MagicBook Pro Hardware

The highlight of the device is that it is powered by the six-core processor AMD Ryzen 5 4600H. Compared to its Intel rival, the 4600H is much faster.

The laptop has two 8GB memory modules, 16GB in total, a 512GB SSD and a Realtek 8822CE WiFi card, and Bluetooth 5.0. Its battery is charged using a compact 65W fast charger.

The battery is a 56WHr model which is 40% smaller than the one of Apple or the Gram 17 from LG. This could negatively impact battery life.

Honor MagicBook Pro Performance

The Honor MagicBook Pro is surely one of the fastest non-workstation laptops with a combination of a capable graphics subsystem, an extremely fast processor, a nippy SSH and an ample system memory.

According to Honor, the laptop is equipped with a higher-spin-rate cooling-fan motor and six temperature sensors to cool the device more effectively.

While the screen isn’t bright enough for working under direct sunlight, its matte finish helps reduce the glare. The image quality is clearly visible.

The laptop’s weak spot is probably the webcam. While it produces great quality pictures, the webcam’s location means that whoever on the other side will see you from downward when you put the laptop on your lap.

The battery life, at over seven hours, is decent but not exceptional. The laptop only takes 30 minutes to charge the battery to 50%.

The MacBook Pro 16-inch is the obvious rival of the Honor MagicBook Pro. The one from Apple is nearly three times more expensive but it has a higher-resolution display, four Thunderbolt 3 ports, a discrete GPU, six speakers, and a much bigger battery. It can’t be argued that the MacBook Pro 16-inch is truly a workhorse.

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