The HP Z series is all about high end workstation computing for demanding industries such as media, entertainment, architecture, geospace, engineering, construction, life science, healthcare, and product development. In my work as a web design director, graphic designer, and environmental designer, I’ve got an HP Z workstation tower on my desk attached to a Wacom Cintiq pen display and it’s awesome, but that’s in the office and we like to work remotely during Covid times, so having a mobile workstation is extremely useful. The HP ZBook Power G8 is one such workstation that’s great for getting serious work done from anywhere.
HP’s ZBook Power is the budget-friendly model in their line up. That’s relative to the other Zbook options of course, as it’s still pretty expensive and powerful. It’s their most budget-friendly ZBook with a powerful H-series Intel processor. It’ll be thicker like the ZBook Fury, but not nearly as powerful as that one.
Specs
The specs for our HP Zbook Power G8 review unit are as follows: Intel i7-11850H processor, 64GB of RAM, an NVIDIA RTX A2000 GPU, a Samsung PM9A1 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD, 15.6″ diagonal, 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) IPS narrow bezel anti-glare 400 nits low power 100% sRGB display, fingerprint reader, and HP Long Life 6-cell, 83 Wh Li-ion polymer. The dimensions are 14.15 x 9.21 x 0.9 in; 35.94 x 23.39 x 2.28 cm.
The Zbook Power G 8 is available in a wide variety of configurations though. For processors, you can choose from:
Intel® Core™ i5-11400H with Intel® UHD Graphics (2.7 GHz base frequency, up to 4.5 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 12 MB L3 cache, 6 cores)
Intel® Core™ i5-11500H with Intel® UHD Graphics (2.9 GHz base frequency, up to 4.6 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 12 MB L3 cache, 6 cores), supports Intel® vPro® Technology
Intel® Core™ i7-11800H with Intel® UHD Graphics (2.3 GHz base frequency, up to 4.6 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 24 MB L3 cache, 8 cores)
Intel® Core™ i7-11850H with Intel® UHD Graphics (2.5 GHz base frequency, up to 4.8 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 24 MB L3 cache, 8 cores), supports Intel® vPro® Technology
Intel® Core™ i9-11900H with Intel® UHD Graphics (2.5 GHz base frequency, up to 4.9 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 24 MB L3 cache, 8 cores)
Intel® Core™ i9-11950H with Intel® UHD Graphics (2.6 GHz base frequency, up to 5.0 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 24 MB L3 cache, 8 cores), supports Intel® vPro® Technology
Storage options include: 256 GB up to 2 TB PCIe® Gen3 NVMe™ M.2 SSD, or 512 GB up to 2 TB PCIe® Gen4 NVMe™ M.2 SSD or 256 GB up to 512 GB PCIe® Gen3 NVMe™ M.2 SED SSD.
RAM options include 8Gb to 64 GB DDR4-3200 non-ECC SDRAM.
In the box, we’ve got a big power brick, AC adapter cable, the ZBook Power G8, a bit of paper documentation, and a DVD disk. The computer doesn’t have a DVD disk drive, so you’ll need a different computer or an external USB DVD drive to read that. Speaking of packaging, the box that the ZBook Power ships in is made from recycled pulp, which is great because I often feel like manufacturers waste a lot of money on fancy boxes.
Hardware
When closed the Zbook Power looks a lot like the other HP ZBooks. Same grey body, same Z logo. The metal chassis does pass MIL-STD tests to ensure durability though.
49.7% of the metals used in the ZBook Power are from recycled metals while 42% of the plastics are recycled.
On the right edge, there’s a 3.5mm headset/microphone jack, a USB-A port, a faster thunderbolt USB-A port, a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port (which supports 8K displays), and a circular power/charging port along with a tiny LED charging indicator light. It’s so great to still have some USB-A ports on this laptop!
The back hinge is totally clean with interesting flat angular edges.
On the left side, there’s a lock port if you want to make the Zbook Power more difficult to steal. There’s also an actual ethernet port with a spring-loaded door that opens up to fit the ethernet jack. Then there’s another full-sized USB-A port and a full-sized HDMI port. Again, really great to have. Lastly, there’s also a smart card slot for secure log-ins.
On the back, we’ve got a ventilation grille in the middle, and two triangular strips of rubber to provide some elevation and grip on a table or desk. There are 5 screws on the back that will let you into the internals, but the ZBook Power also has a tamper lock feature that will show a BIOS warning on the next boot indicating that the bottom was recently removed. That’s a nice security feature for warning users that something may have been changed or accessed inside the computer. The Tamper Lock feature can be configured for stricter actions when the cover is removed. This whitepaper explains in more detail, but you could make it do things like requiring a password to boot up again or clear all keys from the TPM module.
The keyboard is pretty great. The keys are smooth with excellent travel and feel. Typing on this feels so much better than using a Macbook Pro!
The keyboard is wide enough to include a numeric keypad on the right, which is excellent. Not many laptop keyboards include this, but it’s very important for math/science applications as well as for keyboard shortcuts in 3D animation and design programs. I know Mac users who hate not having a number pad since that means they can’t create InDesign-style keyboard shortcuts.
The trackpad is excellent as well. It’s not ginormous, but the size is plenty for scooting the pointer around on the screen, although for some very tiny controls it can be difficult to get excellent precision, but that’s true with just about any trackpad. I’d rather plug a Wacom Intuos Pro in anyway.
The video conferencing camera nicely has a tiny shutter slider switch just above it that will cover the lens for guaranteed physical camera privacy.
Above, you can see the HP Zbook Studio on top of the Zbook Power. The Zbook Power is clearly thicker but that’s something that should be expected since the Zbook Power is meant to be a less expensive mobile workstation. The build quality feels a bit less premium as well.
The Zbook Studio on the left clearly has a different keyboard layout from the Zbook Power on the right. The trackpad positioning is different as well. Both are available with different internal configurations, so I think the big difference to choose from is the body thickness and the keyboard layout. The Zbook Power’s build quality does feel slightly less high-end than the Zbook Studio, but the money you save there can be put into a more powerful internal hardware configuration.
Software
Of course, the HP ZBook Studio comes with Windows 10 pre-installed. It nicely does not come with much bloatware like Candy Crush or whatnot. It’s a more professional installation. Still, there are a lot of HP-made included programs, but some of them you might find very useful.
One new thing that’s pinned to the Windows 10 taskbar by default is the “HP Easy Clean” app. This basically locks the keyboard and track-pad temporarily so that you can sanitize everything. That’s great if it’s a shared mobile workstation especially in the time of Covid.
Firstly, we’ve got a little “Welcome” app that gives you some more information about special offers, and tips for using the laptop.
There’s a diagnostics utility too for testing the hardware to make sure everything is running properly.
There are a good number of security utilities included as well. Above is the HP Client Security Manager where you’ve got a recovery utility as well as a “Sure Run” application monitor. It also includes a Chromium-based web browser that has a few extra HP-made security features. The browser includes the uBlock Origin plug-in by default as well.
HP Wolf Security is an anti-virus and anti-malware program that is included as an alternative to Windows Defender.
For more advanced users, there’s a programmable key in the F12 spot on the keyboard. You can set up a good number of different programmable actions such as opening applications, websites, files, folders, executing a key sequence, or entering text. You can assign different functions with modifier keys as well.
The HP Zbook Power doesn’t include the awesome Bang & Olufsen speakers that the ZBook Studio has, but you still have some special audio level controls in addition to the normal built-in Windows controls.
Another interesting addition from HP is the QuickDrop app. This is a file transfer program that works with Android and iOS devices. You can pair your phone with the computer and easily transfer files over a local WiFi network or the internet. This might be good for someone with one computer and one phone, but for me, I prefer to use good old FTP over my VPN, or SMB file shares on the local network.
The “Tile” software is also included on the HP ZBook Power and this can be used with other “Tile” products for keeping track of where things like keys and wallets are.
The Blender benchmark is 2-4 minutes slower than the ZBook Studio in all of the rendering tests.
Blender handles my Optimus Prime animation pretty nicely in the HP Zbook Power G8.
Processing thousands of RAW photos is one of the things I do a lot, and the Zbook Power G8 handles it really well without getting nearly as hot as the Zbook Studio. It might be a bit slower though.
Of course, the Zbook Power G8 handles video editing in Premiere Pro or Davinci Resolve nicely as well.
Gotta do a little programming in VS Code. No problems there.
Let’s try some web design in Lunacy. Of course, the ZBook Power handles that without issue.
Animations in AfterEffects were smooth sailing as well.
Oh sure, I had to try some games on the Zbook Power G8, too. Microsoft Flight Simulator worked great as long as I didn’t turn the graphics options up to ridiculous levels. The default settings were perfect for me anyway. Unfortunately, Halo: The Master Chief Collection games wouldn’t run at all, but that’s probably due to some bugs in the authentication since I was trying to run them through my Ultimate Game Pass subscription (and I see other people have the same issue).
Battery Life
The 83Whr Li-ion battery can keep the ZBook Power going for a good 8 hours with light usage. When doing real work like processing thousands of photos, editing 4K videos, 3D/2D animation, and other graphics work, the battery life is going to be a lot lower… more like 4 hours.
Pricing and Availability
The HP ZBook Power is available in a wide range of configurations that you can find on the HP website. Configuration pricing varies from about $1500 to a maxed-out $4960. That pricing is a few hundred dollars lower than Zbook Studio configurations. Most of the Zbook Power configurations seem back-ordered until December of 2021 though.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Excellent performance
Excellent keyboard with a number pad
Lots of peripheral ports on the sides (ethernet, USB-A, smartcard, Thunderbolt 4!)
Nvidia graphics processor
Lots of configuration options
Tamper protection
Cons
Thick and a bit heavy at about 4.2 lbs
No HP DreamColor display option (only 100% sRGB gamut options)
No SD card slot
Conclusion
Z by HP is HP’s series of desktop and mobile workstations that provide the highest amount of reliability and power for the most demanding computing careers and applications. The HP ZBook Power G8 is certainly capable of high-end work just with a little less power than some of the other more expensive Zbooks. The 100% sRGB screen is good, but it’s not as good as the DreamColor 100% Adobe RGB color gamut screens you can get on other ZBooks. Still, the port selection, processor selection, RAM, and storage capabilities are impressive, and having the numeric keypad on the right side of the keyboard is excellent. That comes in handy for so many keyboard shortcuts in professional-grade programs like InDesign or Blender or Microsoft Flight Simulator.
While it’s not the cream of the crop in the ZBook series, it’s an extremely capable mobile workstation that will save you some money over the more expensive models.
Adam Z. Lein
Adam has had interests in combining technology with art since his first use of a Koala pad on an Apple computer. He currently has a day job as a graphic designer, photographer, systems administrator and web developer at a small design firm in Westchester, NY. His love of technology extends to software development companies who have often implemented his ideas for usability and feature enhancements. Mobile computing has become a necessity for Adam since his first Uniden UniPro PC100 in 1998. He has been reviewing and writing about smartphones for Pocketnow.com since they first appeared on the market in 2002. Read more about Adam Lein!
During the pandemic, PCs have regained a lot of popularity. It’s just so much nicer to get your work done on a large screen desktop or laptop vs the consumer tablets and smartphones everyone has. Laptops are great for not taking up too much desk space, too, but what if you want a bigger screen? Now we have some very small compact desktop computers that are basically just little boxes with a bunch of ports on the outside. You may have seen other small cube-shaped PCs like the Chuwi LarkBox, GMK NucBox, or Xiaomi Ningmei Cube, but the Pantera Pico PC is the next step beyond those.
Specs
The XDO Pantera Pico PC will be available in a number of different configurations, but they’ll all have the basics such as an Intel J4125 2.7Ghz Gemini Lake Celeron processor, 2.4/5Ghz 422Mb/s WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, 3 USB-A 3.0 ports, 1 USB-A 2.0 port, M.2 internal SSD storage, a Micro SD slot, a 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI 2.0 port, and Intel UHD Graphics 600 GPU for 4K video output. There is a USB-C port, but that’s only used for the power supply. The dimensions are 60 x 60 x 50 mm and the weight is 0.39lbs. Configuration options will have 4 to 8Gb LPDDR4 RAM, and 64Gb to 512Gb EMMC5.1 storage.
Our model came with a nice padded carrying case that holds the computer and the power supply.
We also got a smaller Velcro fabric case that holds only the PC, and none of its wires. This is probably good for scratch protection if you’re going to throw it into a bag with a bunch of the peripherals.
Hardware
Let’s say this is the back. The DC port is a USB-C port, but it’s only used for the included power supply. There’s also the HDMI 2.0 port for plugging in a monitor or TV. The blue USB-A port is 3.0 speeds, while the other one is 2.0 speeds. Use the slower one for a keyboard and/or mouse which doesn’t require high bandwidth. Then in the middle is a 3.5mm audio jack for plugging in some speakers.
On the front, we’ve got a ventilation grid for the cooling system, a small power button that’s flush with the case to avoid accidental presses, a hole for the reset button, a slot for a MicroSD card, and two USB-A USB 3 ports for more peripherals. The USB ports can nicely handle a couple of external hard drives and of course, the MicroSD card slot can be used for expanding storage as well.
The bottom just has some rubber to keep it from sliding around, plus the model info and logos. I kind of wish there was some mounting hardware to screw this to the back of a TV or monitor.
The Pantera Pico PC is really small. While I wouldn’t call it a “mobile” PC, it’s certainly portable.
When you plug everything in and turn it on, the edge of the top lights up with blue LEDs.
And we’re off! The Pantera Pico PC is driving this 4K monitor just fine. I like that XDO added a start-up logo, too.
Software
The Pantera Pico PC comes with a bare-bones installation of Windows 10 Home, and that’s great. Well, you do get some games pre-installed once you connect to the internet, and the web-page versions of Microsoft Office are probably going to show up on the Start menu, but that’s fine.
The only bundled software we saw was a Burn-in Test program used to make sure the hardware is working properly. No special utilities or bloatware from XDO, and that’s great. Although, I would have liked a customized background wallpaper image.
The Intel Celeron J4125 processor is pretty low-end and has to put in a lot of work just on light tasks. Still, it’s totally acceptable for something of this size and price.
The Intel UHD Graphics 600 GPU is nothing amazing either, but it’ll handle things like Minecraft and some older games just fine.
The M.2 SSD isn’t super fast, but it’s totally acceptable.
The 256Gb storage version has 209Gb of free space, which is plenty for a good number of programs and files.
I kind of wanted to use the Pantera Pico PC as a headless server, but Windows Home doesn’t do Remote Desktop, so I’ll need to install some other operating system.
The Pantera Pico PC supports virtualization, so you can run multiple virtual machines on the device. You’ll have to turn this on in the BIOS. See: Enabling Virtualization On Your Pantera Pico PC (Part 1) – XDO
Manjaro works ok from a live-boot disk, but there were some problems after installing it fully. For example, the PC wouldn’t wake from sleep and required a hard reboot.
Debian 11 works a lot more reliably, but it doesn’t include the WiFi hardware drivers out of the gate, so getting the network connection might take some work.
Getting some flavor of Linux running on this will take some more time, but XDO provides a guide for getting Ubuntu to run as a live disk from a USB drive. Ubuntu gave me some errors trying to get it onto a MicroSD card (as I think that card became corrupted after installing Debian 11), so I didn’t even get that to live boot just yet.
Pricing and Availability
The Pantera Pico PC’s Kickstarter campaign pre-ordering campaign starts on September 3, 2021. The low-end model will be $149 with 4Gb of RAM and 64Gb of storage while the 8Gb RAM and 128Gb storage model will be $179. There will be storage options up to 1Tb. Check out the XDO website or the Pantera Pico PC site for all of the options.
You’ll find that XDO also offers a lot of accessories for the Pantera Pico PC that will increase its value. You can get a matching Pico Projector that’s about the same size as the Pico PC. Then you can also get an external battery to power the devices. They even make some nice keyboard options in addition to carrying cases.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Takes up only a few inches of desk space
Powerful enough for most undergraduate educational uses
Lots of ports for accessories & peripherals
Available in different colors
Quiet, small, and inexpensive
Supports Windows 11, Windows 10, and Ubuntu Linux
Cons
Not as expandable as a larger tower computer
Processor, GPU, and RAM options are not as powerful as more expensive desktop PCs
No Ethernet port
No USB-C Thunderbolt port
Conclusion
I’ve been a huge fan of the small Raspberry Pi single-board computer and the XDO Pantera Pico PC reminds me a lot of that. It’s tiny, compact, and has a good number of useful ports. While it’s not as inexpensive as a Raspberry Pi, it is still quite inexpensive, and with the Intel architecture and processor, along with the wider variety of storage and RAM options, it’s much more capable.
You could probably build a gaming emulator station out of the Pico PC for retro gaming. Or you could put Plex Server or Kodi Server on there and plug in some larger storage hard drives or a big MicroSD card to turn it into a home theater PC or streaming media server. Or, I could easily see a school buying dozens of these for a classroom and plugging them into existing monitors for mainly browser-based education uses. XDO markets the Pantera Pico PC as a desktop replacement, and it could certainly do okay as one of those.
It’s nowhere near the power of a much more expensive workstation or tower, but for primarily web-based uses, it’s plenty. The portability option is pretty nice too as XDO also offers a portable projector, battery, keyboards, and carrying cases for those who may need to do larger presentations at different locations frequently.
While the $149 model with only 4Gb of RAM and 64Gb of storage may be pretty slim on specs for a Windows 10 desktop, if you put Linux on that either with an XFCE desktop environment or no desktop environment at all, you could get much better performance and some excellent home server capabilities out of the little cube-shaped Pantera Pico PC.
Adam Z. Lein
Adam has had interests in combining technology with art since his first use of a Koala pad on an Apple computer. He currently has a day job as a graphic designer, photographer, systems administrator and web developer at a small design firm in Westchester, NY. His love of technology extends to software development companies who have often implemented his ideas for usability and feature enhancements. Mobile computing has become a necessity for Adam since his first Uniden UniPro PC100 in 1998. He has been reviewing and writing about smartphones for Pocketnow.com since they first appeared on the market in 2002. Read more about Adam Lein!
There’s just something about the HUAWEI MateBook X Pro which has “love at first sight” written all over it. We pretty much felt the same about the 2020 model, and the ones before it. Don’t get us wrong, at a first uneducated glance, its performance numbers match, at least on paper, those of the HONOR MagicBook 14 (2021) we reviewed last month, but the MateBook X Pro is just so much more.
Even though they are similarly equipped, they address two different target audiences, with two different price points. And, since they perform fairly similar, it’s just fair we put this year’s MateBook X Pro to the test and see where it stands out. This is our HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2021 review.
Hardware
Why change something that has proven to successfully work? This is probably what engineers at HUAWEI had in mind when discussing the design of the 2021 MateBook X Pro, which went pretty much unadulterated for the past couple of years, and this is a good thing! It’s still as minimalistic and gorgeous as it ever was, and there’s absolutely no need to change that.
Mystic Silver is the third color available last year that didn’t make it to 2021. Instead, there’s a Space Grey and an Emerald Green (our unit) in the line-up.
With the same precision machining and crafting as the predecessor, the 2021 MateBook X Pro didn’t gain any pandemic weight, maintaining it at 1.33kg. Measurements are the same as well, with the computer maintaining its fitness at 14.6mm in height (thickness).
With no noticeable changes, you can expect the same chamfered edges that light nicely bounces off of, with a nice shine to it. You can find these around the edges, the trackpad, and the power button. Similar to last year, the power button includes a fingerprint scanner that has a cache, enough to hold on to your fingerprint and unlock Windows with a single touch of the button upon powering up.
Underneath the power button lies the precision, full-sized, Chiclet Keyboard, with a fine speaker grill to its left and right, containing a total of four (2 x 2) speakers, that cooperate with the 2 microphones. A considerable part underneath is taken up by the upgraded Touchpad with Multi-touch — the HUAWEI Free Touch — and this year, with HUAWEI Share built-in (more on that later).
The display retains its 14-inch (13.9) size, and its 3000 x 2000 resolution and 260PPI. It’s an LTPS panel, like last year, with a 1500:1 contrast ratio, 3:2 aspect ratio, 450 nits of brightness, and it is one damn fine display! Our only complaint is the fact that it’s shiny and highly reflective.
Viewing angles have been retained at 178 degrees, which is really something, as well as touch features via 10-point multi-touch sensitivity. Not only that, but HUAWEI got rid of everything else around the display, achieving a whopping 91% screen-to-body ratio, which you really have to experience in person to appreciate.
That means, subsequently, that the webcam, a 1MP 720p unit, is still inside the keyboard. The infamous “nosecam” has its advantages though, as tucking it in the body of the device makes hacking it, and subsequently your privacy, impossible.
We mentioned the similarities in the preamble of this review with the MagicBook 14 (2021). The MateBook X Pro (2021) comes equipped with either the 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor or the 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 chip. Our particular unit, just like the MagicBook 14, comes with the Core i7, and, to put it simply, “damn, it is fast”!
8- and 16GB memory options are available, with the unit you see in the pictures having 16GB of 3733MHz RAM, and 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD (a version with 512GB is also available for you to configure if you need less storage and want to lower the price of the device).
Graphics are handled by the integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics, which is a step-up from last year’s dedicated NVIDIA GeForce MX250.
The battery is rated 56Wh, and the connectivity is handled via Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax, and Bluetooth 5.1. There are two USB Type C ports, for charging and connecting a display, a full-sized USB A 3.2 port, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack that doubles as a microphone input port. Of note is that you don’t have an HDMI connector, so keep that in mind when selecting external monitors or cables. You will need a USB Type C connectivity solution.
Software
Just like its predecessor (and the models in the line-up), the 2021 HUAWEI MateBook X Pro runs Windows 10. It’s the Home Edition that pops-up with the configuration screen out of the box, and HUAWEI added little to no bulk to it. Not that there wouldn’t be enough space on the generous 1TB storage drive, but this is pretty much how I’ve seen HUAWEI roll in the past. Keeping things as simple as possible.
A few firmware and software updates await for you to apply after your first setup, and that’s pretty much the entire effort you need to put into having a buttery smooth Windows 10 experience. We need to mention that the laptop is eligible for a Windows 11 upgrade, and no doubt it will handle it beautifully.
Those of you who owned previous generation MateBook computers will be familiar with the PC Manager suite. For those of you who are new to it, this application makes sure your drivers are up to date and helps you connect a HUAWEI (or HONOR) smartphone to your PC.
One of the novelties this year on the Pro model is that you no longer have the NFC sticker on the palm rest next to the trackpad. HUAWEI embedded it into the trackpad itself, a trackpad that has also been upgraded on the Pro line-up. It now features haptic feedback (called Free Touch) for a more precise feel and exquisite experience. Both of these features debuted at the end of last year on the MateBook X (sans Pro).
We went on a short hardware tangent there, but it made more sense to mention all of this while talking about the PC Manager.
We described the PC Manager and the entire “connecting your smartphone to your laptop” experience ad nauseam. In a nutshell, you get Multi-Screen collaboration with mirroring displays, copy-pasting content and images between devices, taking calls, sending texts, and more. Check out the details of that in our original MateBook X Pro review from 2020, this current one’s predecessor.
Not much else to mention on the software end, and, I can’t stress this enough, this is a good thing. At the end of the day, it’s a pretty vanilla Windows 10 experience, with the occasional frustration of compulsory and sometimes lengthy restarts upon system updates, but that’s a Microsoft issue, not a HUAWEI one.
Experience
Describing the experience using the 2021 MateBook X Pro is close to driving a fine, luxury, sports car. Everything just runs (literally, really fast!) smoothly, from the moment you unbox it, through the setup process, to the day-to-day operations and activities.
We’ve used this particular model as our daily driver for over a month, with some occasional breaks in-between.
The display is, simply put, gorgeous. The colors are rich, the blacks are deep, the contrast is spot on, brightness is enough for visibility even on the brightest outdoor days. If I was to nitpick, my only critique would be with its reflective nature. If you have a bright light behind you, it might make things a little difficult to discern on the reflective display.
Touch sensitivity is more than accurate (though I still can’t wrap my head around touch capabilities on a device that doesn’t fully convert into a tablet or handheld).
The keyboard is very pleasant and silent to type on, with enough key travel to get an actual feel for the keys you’re pushing down. Backlight is also nice, with no bleeding, and at times even too bright at its highest setting.
Probably my favorite component to input is the trackpad. Haptic feedback emulates an actual click/push down so well, and the feedback is so natural, that you’ll instantly love it. It will take a couple of minutes to get used to it, but once you do, you’ll love it!
The four speakers are pretty loud. While lacking a bit on the low end, which is normal considering their size, they’re loud, crisp, and clear, with no distortion even at high volumes.
With decent display brightness – by decent we mean normal usage, not forced maximum of 100% just for the sake of it – we got through one full workday and some relaxation at the end of it without an issue. And that is really something, as my workdays are not your regular ones, stretching towards 16 hours. Increase the brightness and do some heavier, more power-intensive tasks, and you will need to have a charger handy to make it through the day.
The system runs cool with only occasionally getting warm enough for the fans to kick in, and that’s mostly during gameplay, video rendering, or other intensive tasks.
Overall, it’s a great experience, to sum it all up.
Performance and Benchmarks
Nothing we threw at the 2021 MateBook X Pro made it stutter or managed to bog it down. It was chewing through tasks like the champ it is. App load times and even Windows boot-up are pretty fast, and overall operation is buttery smooth.
Office tasks (document management, emails, browsing, virtual calls, and everything in between you might do for work) are most of the times instant, fast at worst. Now, if you are doing heavy image manipulation, video rendering, CAD, or other demanding tasks, it will get the job done, but it will, as common sense implies, take more time.
Here at Pocketnow, we’re more inclined towards judging a product’s performance based on real-life operation, rather than numbers. However, for those of you who need to have analytic data based on benchmarks, we ran a couple and included the results above for your viewing pleasure.
– pop-up webcam angle is sometimes awkward. If it matters to you, buy an external webcam; – reflective display doesn’t make it the perfect outdoor laptop on a sunny day; – you’ll need to import it if you’re in the U.S.
Conclusion
We have no reservations in recommending the 2021 MateBook X Pro for those who want a beautiful laptop that’s fast, lightweight, portable, and, most importantly, future proof thanks to its great specs.
The 2021 HUAWEI MateBook X Pro is not for everyone. It’s the premium flagship laptop from the company, and it is also competing with the Apple MacBook Pro. That being the case, you should also expect a steeper price HUAWEI is asking for. It is not prohibitive, but it’s in the premium segment.
The 2021 HUAWEI MateBook X Pro goes for anywhere between €1.399,00 and £1399.99, depending on the region. Also, depending on where you are you might only have an option for the Core i5 version. Your configuration, based on processor and storage, will of course influence the price, and, depending on which country you are in, HUAWEI is running different discounts. Best to consult your local HUAWEI store for the price available to you.
All that being said, we have no reservations in recommending the 2021 MateBook X Pro for those who want a beautiful laptop that’s fast, lightweight, portable, and, most importantly, future proof thanks to its great specs.
HUAWEI Matebook X Pro HUAWEI 65 W USB-C Power Adapter USB-C Charger Cable Quick Start Guide Warranty Card
Keyboard & TouchPad
Full-size Backlit Chiclet Keyboard Touchpad with Multi-touch and HUAWEI Free Touch Huawei Share Built-in
Anton D. Nagy
Anton is the Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow. As publication leader, he aims to bring Pocketnow even closer to you. His vision is mainly focused on, and oriented towards, the audience. Anton’s ambition, adopted by the entire team, is to transform Pocketnow into a reference media outlet.
HUAWEI had a field day, well more like a field year, all throughout 2020 with its GT2 smartwatches. It began with the GT2 back at the end of 2019 and continued all the way to the end of 2020 with the GT2 Pro. Thanks to their pros and irrespective of the cons, the GT2 line-up was a real success, and we recommended watches in the product family every time we considered they deserved it. Which they did.
In 2021, HUAWEI is moving away from the GT naming scheme, and, instead of what logically should have been the GT3 line-up, we got the Watch 3. The new naming scheme suggests major changes, and boy did HUAWEI bring some major changes to the Watch 3.
Fun fact, the original HUAWEI Watch from 2015 didn’t have a number, but the 2017 follow-up was the HUAWEI Watch 2. It’s the GT line-up that’s the anomaly in the evolution of the watch, as we get back to the numbers with the Watch 3.
We’ll be looking at all those changes, and how they might impact the company’s smartwatch line-up moving forward, in our HUAWEI Watch 3 review below.
HUAWEI Watch 3 specs
Dimensions
46.2 mm x 46.2 mm x 12.15 mm — 54 gr. without strap
Remember the major changes I told you about? Well, they’re almost evenly split between hardware and software.
On the outside, the Watch 3 has a beautiful finish and in-hand (as well as on-wrist) feel. The combination of ceramic and stainless steel speaks premium and offers a great sensorial reward. The first change you’ll notice is on the outside. You no longer have the two upper right and lower right buttons from the predecessor. This time around you get a flat lower right button, which will now not be accidentally pressed by the bending of your wrist during workouts.
The upper right button is now a rotating crown. If you immediately thought about that other manufacturer with a rotating crown on its watch, you nailed it. It’s a double-action button: you can press down on it, and of course, rotate it up or down in order to scroll through menus, lists, or content.
The glass protecting the display is nicely rounded towards the edges, and this 2.5D approach makes the already small screen bezels appear even smaller. Of course, the deep blacks of the AMOLED display help with that as well.
Speaking of the display, it’s probably the most beautiful display I’ve seen on a smartwatch. Colors are rich and popping, black is truly black, and somehow HUAWEI managed, yet again, to create that effect where you almost believe that content is floating on the glass itself. You don’t perceive depth between the glass and the display, things are just there, on the surface.
There are four versions of the Watch 3. We’ve got the all-black Active Edition, but there’s also a Classic Edition with a leather strap, an Elite Edition with stainless steel strap (which is a recycle of the Porsche Design strap, literally), and a Classic Edition with nylon strap. The straps are interchangeable, of course, and you can finally purchase them separately.
The holes in the body of the watch are for the microphone and speaker (which is pretty loud), as well as for air to get in for the barometer and other sensors that might need it..
Flipping to the bottom of the watch you’ll find the new and improved sensors which are in permanent contact with your skin, through the ceramic. Not only has the heart-rate monitor been improved for better pulse readouts and blood oxygen levels, but, true to the times we’re currently living in, HUAWEI added a skin temperature sensor as well.
Software and experience
Software
The HUAWEI Watch 3 officially introduces HarmonyOS to the smartwatch. It ships with version 2.0 out of the box, but thanks to software updates (we’ve received two during our review period), it bumps the build number to 2.0.0.170.
While most, if not all of the interface design elements have been kept from the previous software, LiteOS, on the predecessors, this is a completely new platform. The company had no choice but to build HarmonyOS because of the Trump administration ban. We won’t go into it again, as the horse is already dead and needs no more beating.
The first thing you’ll immediately notice is how fluid HarmonyOS is. It also helps that the display operates at a 60Hz refresh rate. All the animations and transitions are buttery smooth, including scrolling through lists or menus. Since we already mentioned the menus, the rotating crown isn’t the only Apple-inspired feature. Apps are also displayed similarly to how they show up on the Apple Watch, in a grid, but thankfully there’s an option to revert to the old vertical list, which is what we did for obvious reasons.
The two things I constantly criticized about LiteOS, namely the display of truncated notifications, and the inability to act on them, have been partially addressed.
Notifications now display in the entirety of the message, and they’re really easy to read and dismiss. Sadly, you still can’t act on them. Dear HUAWEI, why can’t I reply to a text message when HarmonyOS clearly has a keyboard, which is actually easy to use? I just used it to enter my Wi-Fi password when I set it up. I used it later to search the AppGallery. Why not allow me to text back a quick “OK”? You know we won’t be typing out our Ph.D. thesis, we just want to be able to send a quick one without running to wherever we left our phone, just to say “On my way”.
AppGallery makes its debut on a HUAWEI smartwatch, which is something I salute. However, we do have to understand that the app situation is still in its infancy, pretty much like it was back in the days when nobody except people in China used it on their phones. The only useful app (for me) currently in there is Petal Maps, and that only made it on July 16.
With that in mind, it will inevitably grow as the company is bringing in more and more developers to populate the AppGallery, following the same recipe used for the smartphone situation.
Experience
Smartwatch experience
With apps currently lacking, your smartwatch experience will be limited to a couple of tasks. Obviously, you’ll have access to information like the time, date, and weather conditions. You can review (but not act upon) notifications, except dismissing them, and listen (stream) to music through HUAWEI Music with the option of synching playlists to the watch.
One of the features I ended up using more than I anticipated was note-taking. Yes, we’ve had voice recorders and voice memos on our phones and other devices for quite some time, but honestly I don’t know what made me use it on the Watch 3 more than previously.
You can take calls on your HUAWEI Watch 3 in two ways. One way, also the way most of you will likely take calls, is to have the watch tethered to your phone and just take your phone call on your wrist, instead of the phone.
The other way (which we couldn’t test out because of our carrier service limitation) includes activating your Watch 3’s embedded eSIM. Once that’s activated you can get calls on your watch without the need to be in the proximity of your phone, as now the watch itself is connected to the network.
With the latest addition of Petal Maps to the watch AppGallery, you can have your directions on your wrist, but, for me personally, it kind of defeats the purpose. I’d rather look at the bigger screen or just listen to the voice directions.
Navigating through screens, menus, and lists via touch is something we already know how to do, so I won’t describe it. However, new to the Watch 3 is the rotating crown, which acts and feels exactly like the one on the “other” watch. It even offers haptic feedback when your scroll snaps into place to let you know you’re one tick down or up. This is extremely useful when your hands are wet since we all know wet hands and touch displays don’t really work well together.
After a future firmware update, you will also be able to control some aspects of the watch with hand gestures, like clenching your fist and releasing to take a call or turning your wrist to the side to mute the call.
In terms of battery life, we had everything enabled to constant monitoring, and, with always-on-display off, we managed to go for two, sometimes two and a half days on a single charge. HUAWEI advertises three days for this scenario, but we simply couldn’t get there during our review.
Fully charging the watch takes anywhere between an hour or two, depending on the charger you plug its cable into. As with most recent predecessors, charging is wireless and the watch snaps magnetically onto its charging plate, provided in the box.
Fitness and health experience
Just like with previous models, all the information about your activities and vitals is being synced to the HUAWEI Health app on your phone. It comes preloaded on HUAWEI phones, but if you use another Android device or even an iPhone, you can download it from their respective stores.
The Health app becomes your centralized hub for everything the watch collects about you, and you can use it to track performance, health, stress, sleep, and many other metrics. We described the experience in detail in our Watch GT2 review.
When it comes to fitness, there’s nothing really to complain about. The Watch 3 takes what the GT2 line-up already did pretty well, and just runs with it. It supports over 100 workout modes (still no Basketball mode, HUAWEI!) and reports fairly accurate heart rates. When it comes to calories burned, that’s another conversation, as all smartwatches estimate that metric based on other variables.
The step counter was pretty accurate and in line with our daily and workout routine averages reported by other devices. So was our heart rate readout.
Health management is done via monitoring four categories, and these can be set up to be continuous, 24 hours a day: blood oxygen and heart rate tracking, stress management, and sleep tracking. Without any easy way of verifying the data, we have no choice but to believe the reports, but luckily all measurements were within normal range.
New on the Watch 3 is skin temperature tracking. One thing to note is that your normal body temperature, which is between 36.5–37.5 °C (97.7–99.5 °F) is specifically measured on certain parts of your body. Also, note that parts, where vital organs or large muscles reside, will have a higher temperature than other regions.
All of this is to prepare you for seeing lower than “normal” temperatures when reported by the watch, as it takes the temperature of your skin on the wrist. These could be anywhere between 6 and 3 degrees centigrade lower than the “normal”.
Last, but not least, there’s fall detection with automatic emergency dialing.
Pros and Cons
Pros
+ beautiful design; + premium materials; + gorgeous display; + good battery life; + 4G via eSIM; + great health and fitness capabilities.
Cons
– you still can’t act on your notifications; – some functionalities are not available outside China; – no contactless payment in Europe; – AppGallery is in its infancy.
Conclusion
We recommend the HUAWEI Watch 3 as a great all-around, fitness-oriented smartwatch, with snappy performance and good battery life.
The HUAWEI Watch 3 will set you back €369, or £349.99. That’s pretty much in line with what competitors are asking for their flagship smartwatches. It is a great choice if you’re looking for your first smartwatch, but, if you have a GT2, we believe the changes are not dramatic enough for us to recommend an upgrade (unless you have to have Skin Temperature readouts and/or want to rub the rotating crown in your Apple Watch wearing friends’ faces). Maybe to the Watch 4.
As it is, I think it offers great value for the price. Though some features might be half-baked (sorry, HUAWEI, I will keep bringing up the notification topic until my keyboard breaks, and then I’ll buy a new one and keep doing it again until you finally do something about this), or not working (like contactless payments, Celia), the pros outweigh the cons by a large margin.
With the HUAWEI Watch 3, you get a beautiful timepiece that has a gorgeous display, plenty of watch faces to choose from, a cornucopia of health and fitness features, and you won’t have to charge it every day like with many of its competitors.
HUAWEI Watch 3 review gallery
Anton D. Nagy
Anton is the Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow. As publication leader, he aims to bring Pocketnow even closer to you. His vision is mainly focused on, and oriented towards, the audience. Anton’s ambition, adopted by the entire team, is to transform Pocketnow into a reference media outlet.
Contact: [email protected]
We looked at the HONOR MagicBook 14 back when the company was still a HUAWEI sub-brand. That laptop was powered by the AMD Ryzen 5 4500U processor, but things have since changed, both for the brand (which no longer is tied to HUAWEI) and for the MagicBook 14.
Announced in the second half of May, the 2021 HONOR MagicBook 14 refresh now comes equipped with an 11th generation (Tiger Lake) Intel chip, available in the i5 and i7 configurations. We have the more powerful model in our labs, and we’re looking at everything it has to offer, in our HONOR MagicBook 14 (2021) review.
Hardware
Those of you familiar with the AMD version from last year will recognize the identical twin. That’s to say that there are literally no changes on the outside, but are happening on the inside.
The aluminum exterior is just as sleek as it was last year. The same color options are available, in Space Gray and Mystic Silver, and our unit is the latter. The notebook itself measures 214.8 mm in height, 322.5 mm in width, and 15.9 mm in depth, and It weighs 1.38 kg, slightly less than last year.
The external ports are the same as well, with the 3.5mm headphone port, a full-size USB3.2 Gen 1 (Type A), a USB Type-C, an HDMI, and a full-size USB2.0 (Type A) port.
The battery is the same 56Wh unit as last year, hence it should offer comparative battery life (but we’ll get to that in our Performance segment below). More on that in our segment below.
The display is still a 14-inch IPS panel with a Full HD 1920 x 1080 resolution, and the same plastic bezel around it offering it a screen-to-body ratio of 84%. There’s a step up in brightness and contrast, at 300 nits typical brightness and 1,000:1 contrast ratio, versus last year’s 200 and 800:1, respectively.
Now, on to the changes. AMD Ryzen 5 4500U is out, Intel Core i7 1165G7 is in. This 11th generation processor is a 10nm unit with four hyper-threaded cores clocking at 2.8 GHz (up to 4.7GHz in its Turbo mode) and a 12MB L3 cache.
With the Ryzen out the Radeon graphics are out as well, meaning the Intel Core i7 brings in the Intel Iris Xe onboard graphics processor.
Our particular unit features 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
The usual suspects include the fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button, backlit keyboard, a camera tucked inside the keyboard (the infamous nose cam), Bluetooth 5.1, stereo speakers, and Wi-Fi 6 2X2 MIMO Dual Antenna. Bundled with the notebook you’re getting the 65W Type-C Fast Charger.
For even more details you can refer to our review of its AMD twin sibling here.
Performance and battery life
As previously stated, our review unit is equipped with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. That, coupled with the power of the Intel Core i7 processor should be enough to handle complex game titles. However, the weakest link in the chain this time around is the graphics card, which is not as fast as a dedicated one, but pretty damn good as far as integrated solutions are concerned.
I’m not saying you won’t be able to play games. What I’m saying is that you will likely have to stay away from very graphics-intensive titles, or turn the graphics settings inside the game down a notch or two so you can enjoy the experience.
That aside, this notebook is perfect for your day-to-day activities, let it be work (documents, spreadsheets, browsing, emails, video calls, etc.), or entertainment (YouTube, Netflix, listening to music, basic photo manipulation).
As you probably know by now if you’re a Pocketnow reader – if you’re not, you’re just about to find out – we’re not big fans of benchmarks. We’re all about real-life usage, but we get it, so here are some numbers for the analytical among you.
Last but not least, when it comes to battery life, the Intel chip is slightly hungrier for power than last year’s AMD processor. You should last through the workday if you keep your brightness decent and you do light office work. Expect around 7 to 8 hours of autonomy under the aforementioned conditions before you need to reach for your charger.
Anything brighter and more power-intensive will cut it down dramatically. Expect about 8 hours of YouTube streaming at up to 50 percent brightness and about 10 hours of browsing with the same brightness level. Crank it up to maximum brightness and you can easily expect the battery to last about 1.5 hours less.
When it comes to charging the 65W included charger topped off the notebook from 0 to 100% in one hour and 43 minutes.
Software and experience
This segment is pretty much identical to the Software and experience section of our review for the AMD sibling. The MagicBook 14 comes with Windows 10 (Home Edition) out of the box. What we said in our previous review still stands valid for the Intel version, namely: “After a couple of updates to the operating system, drivers, and firmware, once you’re up to date, the entire experience is smooth. Not much to report here, things are working, behaving, and performing as they should.”
In terms of preinstalled software, you’ll find the PC Manager (more in a bit), Microsoft Office, and one or two additional titles (including Adobe Photoshop Express, TikTok, a game title) you can easily remove or ignore if you don’t want them on there.
The PC Manager is the app that, on one hand, makes sure your computer is up to date in terms of drivers, and operates at a top-notch level, while on the other hand is the connection hub to your phone.
It does that as part of the HONOR MagicLink, which is the company’s take on HUAWEI Share. If you have a compatible HUAWEI or HONOR phone, you can use the sticker next to the trackpad to connect your phone to your PC by tapping the NFC tag.
Once the two devices are paired, your smartphone’s home screen will pop up on your computer. This way you can take calls, chat, send texts, and drag and drop files between the two devices seamlessly.
You can also read more about this in our AMD-version review here.
The overall experience is admirable. The display is bright, sharp, with nicely balanced color and satisfying contrast. The sound is satisfactory for a laptop of its size, and we absolutely love the feel of the keyboard. We found it smooth and silent, as well as comfortable while typing out three reviews on it, this included.
There’s no overheating and everything overall just works, which is everything a user or owner can wish for.
Conclusion
The Intel-equipped HONOR MagicBook is more expensive than its AMD brethren. It goes for €1,199.90 (though you might find discounted prices depending on the market), which is about €400-450 more expensive than the similarly specced AMD version, granted that only comes with 8GB of memory. However, the Intel version is substantially faster in terms of processing power, storage speed, and graphics.
The performance is there (save for a slightly shorter battery live) and it takes it real close to the high-end range. You can definitely future-proof if you opt for this model as it’s got everything it needs to serve you well for the years to come.
However, if performance is not the priority, but rather battery life and stamina, you could probably turn to the AMD version and save some money while at it. That one’s a real road warrior and offers plenty of endurance.
Pros and Cons
Pros
+ great display; + fast performance; + loud speakers; + pleasant keyboard; + integration with HUAWEI and HONOR phones.
Cons
– pop-up camera (nose cam) is something you’ll have to live with; – not recommended for graphics-intensive tasks. Get a gaming laptop instead if you’re big on gaming; – port selection could be better; – slightly poorer battery life than on its AMD-equipped sibling.
We recommend you also read our HONOR MagicBook (2020) AMD review.
Anton D. Nagy
Anton is the Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow. As publication leader, he aims to bring Pocketnow even closer to you. His vision is mainly focused on, and oriented towards, the audience. Anton’s ambition, adopted by the entire team, is to transform Pocketnow into a reference media outlet.
HUAWEI managed to put itself in a really good position. As a company, it has an audio product for everyone. Prefer over-the-ear headphones? Check out the FreeBuds Studio. Want a comfortable pair of ANC buds? Check out the FreeBuds 3 (and well, the successor we’re looking at today, the FreeBuds 4). Want both passive and active noise cancelation? Look no further: FreeBuds Pro.
Of course, we only mentioned the flagship products in our enumeration above, but you’ll be happy to find out there are plenty of other products in their portfolio, like the FreeBuds 4i, and the FreeLace Pro, just to name a few, so they really have something for every taste, need, and wallet.
The FreeBuds 4 build on the success of the FreeBuds 3, with the company retaining the design principles and overall looks of the earbuds, but making slight changes and tweaks to improve upon the predecessor. We’ll be looking at those, and of course the resulting product, in our HUAWEI FreeBuds 4 review below.
HUAWEI FreeBuds 4 specs
Compared to the FreeBuds 3, the FreeBuds 4 is slightly smaller, both comparing the buds themselves, as well as the charging case.
One earbud weighs a mere 4.1 grams, and measures 41.4 mm in height, 16,8 mm in width, and 18,5 mm in depth. The charging case weighs 38 grams (with the buds removed) and, since it’s pebble-shaped, has a diameter of 58 mm and a height of 21.2 mm.
Inside, you’ll find a slightly larger, 14.3 mm driver, and the same Kirin A1 chip that is used to power the company’s GT2-series of smartwatches, earbuds, and even the FreeBuds Studio.
Battery capacity didn’t suffer from the overall slight reduction in size, with units rated 30mAh per earbud, and 410mAh for the charging case.
Bluetooth connectivity has been upgraded to Bluetooth 5.2, and the earbuds this year have earned their IPX4 rating against splashes from all directions.
Wireless charging has been dropped, with no clear plans to offer a version that supports it in the future, and so was the bone sensor that was a feature on the predecessor.
Design, build and fit
The design, per se, is beautiful, and pretty much in line with what we’re used to getting from HUAWEI on its premium products. The finish is also top-notch, with nothing further to report.
HUAWEI went with the open-fit design, similar to the FreeBuds 3, which makes me really excited about the FreeBuds Pro’s successor this year. An open-fit design has its pros and cons. We’ll talk about them, but if you’re someone who doesn’t like in-ear canal earbuds (like the FreeBuds Pro and more recently, the FreeBuds 4i), you should definitely take a look at these.
Fit-wise, because of the open-fit design, HUAWEI had more wiggle room to optimize the size and shape of the FreeBuds 4 to comfortably fit most ears. After a couple of minutes, you forget you’re wearing them. They’re comfortable and due to their light weight, you easily get accommodated to wearing them.
Those are two of the major pros of an open-fit design. We’re going to address the cons in the segment below pertaining to audio quality and ANC. However, we’d like to preface this with the fact that they’re only cons if you’re coming from an in-ear canal design. If open-fit is your bread and butter, you should dismiss these so-called cons.
Audio quality, ANC, and Experience
Audio quality
We have to approach the audio quality and ANC conversation from the open-fit design standpoint. Of course, an over-the-ear design will sound better because of the larger drivers, while also offering better noise isolation, and the in-ear canal earbuds will offer the best audio quality and ANC thanks to their passive noise cancelation and isolation of the sound inside the ear canal.
The 14.3 mm drivers inside the FreeBuds 4 offer a really pleasant sound. They’re lacking a bit on the low end of the spectrum, where the bass and lower-mids reside, but that’s just a consequence of the open-fit design. Consequently, if your taste in music involves heavy bass and punchy lows, the FreeBuds 4 might not be the earbuds for you. However, they are really silky on the mids and highs, with emphasis on vocals and instruments.
There aren’t many settings to play with inside the AI Life app in terms of audio quality, and you can even get away with using them without the app which at this point, aside from customizing controls and updating firmware, does little to nothing to improve the audio experience.
Active noise cancelation
HUAWEI claims ANC has been improved over the predecessor. We’re not saying they haven’t, we’re saying that we didn’t see a discernable, significant improvement. ANC is there, and it works.
Does it block out as much noise as the FreeBuds Pro or FreeBuds 4i? Of course not, as those have the advantage of extra passive noise cancelation thanks to the in-ear canal design.
With the FreeBuds 4, noise cancelation will almost fully block out an air conditioner or a fan, but anything beyond that will bleed through due to the open-fit design.
Considering that having ANC on almost halves the battery life (from 4 hours to 2.5 hours), we’ll advise you to keep it off unless you specifically need to turn it on. And, when you do, expect, depending on the environment, for some noise to be blocked out, with most of it seeping through in a muffled, muted, or otherwise unadulterated manner.
Experience
We’ve been using the FreeBuds 4 for phone calls, VoIP calls (Signal, Zoom, Skype, Google Meet) as well as listening to music. All of the above was delivered in line with the expectations. We covered the audio quality in the segment above, and voice calls sounded good. On the other end of the line, people said they can hear us clearly, irrespective of the call quality (lesser phone calls, upper VoIP calls).
Dual-device connectivity (the ability to be connected to two devices at the same time) will definitely come in handy if you want to bridge the gap between work and play. I do most of my work on my computer while I listen to most of my music from my phone.
With wear detection, you don’t have to fumble for the pause button when you quickly want to stop your music. Just take them out of your ears and multimedia playback will immediately stop.
Battery life is close to the one advertised. 4 hours without ANC, 2.5 hours with ANC, and 22 more hours with the charging case and no ANC. While this is similar to the numbers of the FreeBuds 3 and definitely manageable, there are other HUAWEI and competitor models that offer more. It’s just fair to mention that!
Charging will take about an hour both for the earbuds and for the charging case. Currently only wired charging is available, so don’t expect to use reverse wireless charging on your phone to keep them going while you’re out.
The stem of the buds is touch-sensitive, and, while you can configure the actions inside the AI Life app, the defaults are double-tapping for play/pause, long-tapping for toggling ANC on/off, and swiping up and down to increase/decrease the volume. Thanks to this feature you can get away with using the FreeBuds 4 without AI Life, on another Android, or even iPhone or Mac.
When you do use the AI Life app, you can update the firmware (we got one update during our review period), configure the aforementioned gestures, and try to locate the earbuds should you have misplaced them.
Last, but not least, HUAWEI seems to have made it a mission for users to struggle to remove the earbuds from the charging case. Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to struggle with every model from the company, and the FreeBuds 4 are not at all easier to remove. It’s a combination of the magnets and the shiny surface and finish that denies the proper grip for easy removal.
Conclusion
The FreeBuds 4 are a perfect pair of elegant earbuds if you’re new to Wireless, ANC-enabled models. We don’t consider them a significant step-up from the FreeBuds 3 in order to advise an upgrade.
The addition of the IPX4 rating means you can wear them in the rain and even the gym, as splashes of water won’t damage the earbuds. That right there is a great selling point, in addition to silky smooth sound (lacking a bit on the low end), and its relatively small footprint.
They currently go for £129.99 in the UK and you get a HUAWEI Band 4 Pro (valued at £49.99) as a gift. You can currently buy them in the EU for €119.00, where they’re currently off (at the time of this review) from €149, but the discounts vary from region to region, so make sure to consult your local HUAWEI store for the latest prices.
– weak ANC; – poor battery life with ANC; – audio lacking on the low end; – no wireless charging.
Gallery
Anton D. Nagy
Anton is the Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow. As publication leader, he aims to bring Pocketnow even closer to you. His vision is mainly focused on, and oriented towards, the audience. Anton’s ambition, adopted by the entire team, is to transform Pocketnow into a reference media outlet.
The Huawei Sound gets our Recommended award for the best sounding Bluetooth speaker in the compact form-factor category
As with many recent Huawei products, since the bans on the company were applied, many of its products offer a different user experience in China than in the rest of the world. It might not even be a stretch in saying that some Huawei products are completely different outside of its homeland, from a user experience perspective.
That is the case with the Huawei Sound, the smaller sibling to the Sound X. We’ll take a look at this, and other aspects, in our Huawei Sound review below.
Design
It’s no secret that Huawei stepped on the gas pedal when it comes to audio. They manufacture some of the best sounding earbuds on the market, so it made sense to team up with French audio technology company Devialet for the Sound X.
While smaller than the Sound X, the Huawei Sound, still fruit of the collaboration with Devialet, retains the main design of its larger sibling.
The bottom portion of the device is covered in textile mesh, while the rest (about three quarters) is shiny black plastic. While it looks great, it’s a magnet for dust and fingerprints, not that you’ll have to touch it often. The manufacturer thought of that, as it includes a cleaning cloth in the box, as well as a pouch should you not use the Sound for long periods of time.
At the very top, you’ll find four touch-sensitive buttons that light up when your hand gets close enough or hovers. There’s also a circle of light (in various colours) surrounding the area, with the NFC tag dead centre you can scan to pair, or just touch the speaker with an NFC enabled phone to start the process.
The two cutouts on the side reveal the two passive units which resonate with the woofer to minimize or eliminate membrane distortion for bass driver.
The Sound has an external power source, like a laptop, which means it will most likely spend most of its time somewhere close to a power outlet. Usually, these places are shelves and desks, which kind of defeats the 360 degrees sound purpose, but if you’re ok with dealing with cables in plain sight, you can benefit from that 360 sound by placing it on a table closer to the centre of the room. Just don’t trip over the wires.
Also, remember, this thing might be small, but it’s heavy. It weighs 2.2kg, so make sure whatever surface or shelf your place it on can handle the weight.
Hardware
We touched upon the woofer and the two passive units in the design segment above (as the passive units are visible and Huawei wants you to notice them).
What you don’t see is the other three full-range speakers that are placed in the bottom of the Sound, about where the textile mesh covers the speaker.
Even though it has Wi-Fi support, you connect to the Huawei Sound via Bluetooth, something extremely easy via NFC and Huawei’s own OneHop feature. It also has an auxiliary input in the form of a 3.5mm headphone jack you can use to connect external analogue devices.
Wi-Fi is being used to update the speaker’s software via the Ai Life app, but casting sound to it isn’t as easy as it seems. Apple’s AirPlay is not supported – for obvious reasons – and it’s always just easier to stream via Bluetooth (LDAC supported) than to try and set up UPnP.
Experience
Let’s get this straight from the get-go: the Huawei Sound is a smart speaker in China and China alone. There you can use Celia, but if you’re outside of China, the Sound is pretty much a Bluetooth speaker. Period. Don’t let that microphone icon/button trick you. Google Assistant and Alexa are not supported, so if you’re anywhere else in the world, consider this a simple Bluetooth speaker.
There’s nothing simple about its sound, though. It’s sophisticated, rich, full, and to put it frankly, it’s the best sounding Bluetooth speaker I’ve heard in this small form factor. Competitors who achieve the same sound volume and quality usually have products in a much larger form factor.
Whether you have a Huawei phone or not doesn’t matter, you’ll need to get the latest version of the Ai Life app on your phone. That is if you want to access the few settings inside there. You’ll be fine without it, but if you want to customize how the Sound, well, sounds, Ai Life is the only way. You can choose to apply three sound profiles (EQ presets), and, if the insane amount of bass isn’t enough out of the box, you can go ahead and boost it further from the app.
The app is also where you update the firmware, but we never got one since we have the Sound.
The sound
If you haven’t been surprised in a while, the first 10 seconds of listening to the Sound will surprise you. I know I was. I’m still baffled by how much sound Huawei packed inside this relatively small box. We’ll go with this, and claim it our own: “the sound to size ratio” is through the roof.
Under normal usage, I never stepped above the 50 per cent volume mark. But I just had to go crazy and push it to its limit (or my neighbours’ limits) and it was insane.
What’s really interesting, and speaks in favour of the Sound, that usually there’s some distortion at high volumes. That’s not the case with the Huawei Sound.
Punchy bass and clear highs are granted, but output is a little muted in the mid-range. It might bother some of you, some might be ok with it. It’s not dramatic to the point of cut-off, but if you’re heavy on rock and other assortments of guitars really punching from your speakers, these might not be the best solution for you.
Conclusion
View Huawei Sound at Huawei Store UK
I’m an audio fanatic and I can say that the Huawei Sound really impressed me. I didn’t have any issues connecting to a Huawei phone, or any other Android, iPhone, and even my Mac.
The listening experience is pleasant (or can drive you nuts with the bass punching you in the chest), but there are some caveats.
If you decide to buy the Huawei Sound, you’ll probably purchase the best sounding speakers in the compact form factor segment. They’re also relatively affordable, going for £149.99 (with £50 off) at the Huawei UK store at the time of buying this.
You do have to understand though, that these are not smart speakers for the rest of the world. Can you make them smart if you already have, say, an Amazon Echo device? Sure. Hook it up via the 3.5mm port and you’ve got it. Just don’t expect it to be anything more than a really good sounding compact Bluetooth speaker out of the box.
Pros
+ compact form factor; + amazing sound (for its size); + great design; + Hi-Res Audio support; + affordable price.
Cons
– shiny finish can be a pain to maintain clean; – they need to be connected to the power supply; – no way of turning off (low-power operation can be triggered though); – not smart outside of China.
Anton D. Nagy
Anton is the Editor-in-Chief of Pocketnow. As publication leader, he aims to bring Pocketnow even closer to you. His vision is mainly focused on, and oriented towards, the audience. Anton’s ambition, adopted by the entire team, is to transform Pocketnow into a reference media outlet.
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It also includes a Chromium-based web browser that has a few extra HP-made security features. The browser includes the uBlock Origin plug-in by default as well.
Another interesting addition from HP is the QuickDrop app. This is a file transfer program that works with Android and iOS devices. You can pair your phone with the computer and easily transfer files over a local WiFi network or the internet. This might be good for someone with one computer and one phone, but for me, I prefer to use good old FTP over my VPN, or SMB file shares on the local network.
