During an event that took place today in Barcelona, Huawei unveiled its MateBook hybrid, a device we already knew was coming, thanks to the leaks from the past days. Strangely, the company didn’t unveil the MediaPad T2 tablet, that we were also expecting to see in Barcelona.
MateBook is intended to be a Surface Pro 4 rival, that’s for sure, only it has a few advantages over its rivals. For one, it’s very light and slim, measuring just 6.9 mm in thickness and weighing just 630 grams. The 12 inch convertible has a tablet part that can be clipped onto a keyboard and used in conjunction with the Mate Pen stylus.
There’s a fingerprint scanner built into the side and the product comes with either Core m3, m5 or m7 processor inside, within the sixth generation range. Huawei decided to go all out with the USB type C connectivity here, so if you’re looking for regular USB, you need an adapter. The stylus we just mentioned has 2048 levels of pressure and integrates a laser pointer, useful for presentations.
The entry level MateBook costs $699 and the keyboard case goes for $129. The basic model brings 128 GB of storage, 4 GB of RAM and a Core m3 processor. The higher end unit, the 8 GB RAM, 512 GB storage MateBook comes with a $1599 price tag and also brings a Core m7 processor. Launch is scheduled for “the coming months” and the convertible stands out through its chamfered edges, 10 mm bezel and a fanless design.
In comes with a black facade and silver body, or white face and gold body. The keyboard is backlit and offers angles of 67 and 54 degrees, plus 1.5 mm of key travel, an upper hand on the 1.3 mm of the Surface Pro 4. We should also mention that the keyboard is spill resistant, an important aspect. MatePen has an elastometer tip, costs $59 and it seemed to be pretty intuitive, from what we saw in the presentation.
Autodesk draws professionals, by offering 3 months of membership to Autodesk Pro for people interested. Finally, the Huawei Matebook comes with a 33.7 Whr battery, good enough for about 10 hours of usage and a 400 nits bright screen, that offers a 2160 x 1440 pixel res on a 12 inch diagonal. WiFi and Bluetooth are also here, plus a 5 megapixel back camera. There’s also the MateDock accessory, an USB Type C dock, that features VGA output, USB output and Ethernet, wrapped around in a special case.
The USB type C charger of the Matebook is very compact and offers adaptive 12, 9 V and 5V charging, in order to also juice up Android devices.
