The Honor MagicBook Art 14 notebook stood out at the IFA 2024 exhibition in Berlin in early September. Many were impressed by the unusual webcam, which is attached with a magnet and can be detached and hidden in the case. However, this is not the only interesting thing about the model. The new product has already arrived in our test lab, and before we start our instrumental tests, we will share our first impressions.
The thin box in which the notebook is delivered immediately catches the eye.
It's a clever design move, but it does include a little trick: the cable and charger (which is thicker than the laptop itself) are in a separate box. The cable is USB-C to USB-C, and the adapter is 65-watt and, of course, replaceable.
The laptop is stated to be 13 mm thick and weighs 1.03 kg. The focus is on lightness and compactness, allowing the laptop to successfully compete with tablets in keyboard cases, which together weigh only slightly less — usually around 900 grams.
The metal body is coated with a matte paint and is available in two colors: Jade Green and Misty White. The surface is not completely resistant to fingerprints, but marks remain less noticeable compared to glossy finishes.
The set of ports on the case is not as wide as that of business models, but it is not as minimalistic as that of many ultrabooks. It includes USB-C 3.2 Gen2, Thunderbolt 4 (via USB-C), USB-A 3.2 Gen1 and even HDMI 2.1. They did not forget about the audio jack either. The laptop charges via either of the two USB-C, and there is a small blinking moon-colored indicator next to it.
The lid can be opened with one hand, but it requires caution and smooth movements. The laptop with a 14.6-inch screen has a resolution of 3120 x 2080, an OLED matrix, and a refresh rate of 60 or 120 Hz. The declared characteristics include 700 nits brightness, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and a PWM frequency of 4320 Hz. We will definitely check all these parameters and present the results in a detailed review. It is also nice to note the rounded corners, although some users may consider this a loss of pixels.
For some reason, none of the publications about the MagicBook Art 14 that I dug through mentioned that the screen is also touch-sensitive. And it is touch-sensitive, by the way.
The keyboard takes up almost the entire width of the top case, and on the sides there are only narrow speaker grilles (the manufacturer claims that there are six speakers — we will check this when we open it). Naturally, there is no digital block. The keys are large and provide a pleasant, soft stroke. The cursor block has full-size side arrows and reduced vertical ones. The power button has a fingerprint scanner built into it for quick access to the system.
The touchpad is large, with physical pressing and a bunch of gestures that are selected and configured in the proprietary PC Manager utility.
Before we move on to the filling, we need to remember the most spectacular feature of the model — the camera. It is stored in a compartment on the left side, next to the connectors.
The camera can be installed on any side. Its working position is on top, above the screen, where cats used to lie in the era of CRT monitors. There are metal contacts there, but you don’t need to aim, as the magnet directs and holds the camera in place. The system detects it in a split second. Surprisingly, even if you install the camera backwards, i.e. pointing it away from the user, it will still work.
Now let's move on to the hardware. The laptop is based on the Intel Core Ultra and offers two processor options: Core Ultra 7 155H (we are already testing this one) and Core Ultra 5 125H. It will be interesting to check how the cooling system copes and what performance the chip with a TDP of 28 W demonstrates. The manufacturer promises an ultra-thin cooling system «Bionic VC», developed from composite materials and silicon carbide. The RAM is represented by LPDDR5X with an effective frequency of 7467 MHz, and only one volume option is available — 32 GB (at least on the Russian market). The laptop also has a 1 TB SSD drive.
The laptop's battery capacity is 60 Wh, and Honor promises up to 9.5 hours of battery life. During the first quick test, running utilities that show the system status, under a load similar to working with documents, the battery estimated the remaining battery life at 13 hours from 81% charge. It is safe to assume (and then check) that the battery life will be around 9-10 hours when playing video.
As for the price, it is $1875 for the version based on the Core Ultra 5 and $2083 for the model with the Core Ultra 7. At the same time, pre-orders have already begun, offering various promotional discounts and gifts depending on the seller. The next step is a detailed review with the results of performance, battery life, noise level, heat and screen quality tests, which we plan to publish before the end of the pre-order period.