Despite the fact that the availability and, most importantly, the prices for laptops and components have grown by an unreasonable amount, the work of the workers has not diminished. This means that the need for inexpensive and simple workhorses, which are traditionally considered to be laptops, has not fallen either.
There are two main approaches here: buy a device with the best price / performance ratio, regardless of the case, design and details, or try to find some more balanced solution, albeit inferior in performance.
At one time, Xiaomi / Redmi devices entered the market “on their feet”, which proved that an inexpensive laptop can be well tailored and look not like plastic trays from IKEA. The second significant market expansion came from the Huawei / Honor duo. We have filmed videos about both companies more than once, but today we will talk about Honor.
If you come to an electronics store right now, put aside plastic “rattles” and outright junk, then there is no doubt that you will stumble upon the MagicBook series. Meet the Honor MagicBook 14.
In general, this is not the first generation of the well-proven “workhorse”. There were models on both AMD and Intel platforms, and even a discrete GeForce MX150 video card was installed in this series. There are a lot of modifications.
Today, the latest sample of the MagicBook 14 series fell into our tenacious paws, in which you can finally find 16 GB of RAM. Please read characteristics, gentlemen:
- Dimensions: 32,25 x 21,48 x 1,59 cm, 1,38 kg
- Display: 14 ”, 1920 × 1080, IPS
- Processor: Intel Core i5 / Intel Core i7 1165G7
- Video card: Intel Iris Xe
- Memory: 8/16 GB LPDDR4, 256/512 GB SSD NVMe
- Communication: USB Type-C, 2 × USB-A, 1 × HDMI 2.0, 3,5 mm mini-jack, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.0
- Battery: Li-Pol 56 Wh
- OS: Windows 10
- Cost: from 79 990 rubles
Screen and design
I think it is already clear that the Honor MagicBook 14 is a compact and standalone laptop, not a gaming monster. And the weight is not upsetting here – 1380 grams. That’s, for a second, less than the weight of the RTX3080 graphics card!
In any configuration, the monitor will be 14 “, the 15” version is allocated in a separate line. The resolution will be FullHD, and the matrix will be IPS with a matte finish. The bezels are really thin, but both Honor and Huawei have never had a problem with that.
This is a BOE panel, model 092E. The manufacturer boasts of the high performance of this miracle, but we don’t take a word for it, so we measured everything ourselves, and this is what happened:
The contrast is higher than we are used to seeing even in expensive laptops – 1250: 1. This is a high figure, even more than the manufacturer promises. The maximum brightness is not that impressive, but 340 nits should be sufficient for most scenarios.
But what really surprised me was the accuracy of the calibration. The average deviation in gray and color tells us that such a monitor can be used for content creation and color correction, and the coverage according to the sRGB standard is indeed 100%. Suddenly. And for those who understand, here is some additional information on testing. In short, the screen is very good, in a nutshell.
In general, the design of the laptop certainly resembles Apple’s devices, but this approach to design is no longer taken as a work of “motivation”, but rather as a matter of course. This look has become painfully textbook.
The keyboard here is backlit, and we should praise it: we have one of the infrequent examples when the backlighting is uniform for Russian and English. And the LEDs are hidden deep under the keys, so they don’t hit them in the eyes.
Of the design chips, the retractable camera in place of the F7 key immediately catches your eye. Such a paranoia-proof design deserves praise, but it has two drawbacks: firstly, the button does not have a tactile response, so it is not so easy to blindly detect that the camera is under your finger. And secondly, when making video calls, the interlocutors will look at your chin rather than in your eyes.
Human values have not been forgotten, the user has two USB Type-A ports, one Type-C, which is also used for charging, HDMI and a combined 3,5 mm jack. No frills, but the essentials are there. Perhaps it would be worth adding a second Type-C for more convenient work with hubs.
Hardware
You can choose the platform: either AMD or Intel. The difference will be in the built-in video accelerator: Intel has the latest Iris Xe, AMD has the familiar Radeon. And also, if there is a need for 16 GB of RAM, then you go to Intel, there is no such option on the “red” platform.
We tested a top-end configuration with an 7th generation Core i1165 (7G11) from Intel and 16 GB of RAM on board. What do the numbers in the name of the chip tell us? In general, nothing but the level of performance of the integrated graphics. Therefore, now we will clarify everything.
So, you probably already know that Intel had delays in mastering the new process technology. So, in laptops fresh 10nm chips have been installed for some time, and our copy is just like that. 4 cores, 8 threads, 12 MB of L96 cache and new powerful graphics with XNUMX execution units – that’s what you need to know about this chip first of all.
Naturally, it is crammed head over heels with various technologies like Intel VT-x / VT-d virtualization, Neural Accelerator 2.0 and, of course, our favorite AVX-512 instructions. If nothing is clear, but very interesting, then in short: the “pebble” will cover the basic needs of professionals and even a little more.
In general, the core frequency can reach more than an impressive 4,7 GHz, which happens all the time when performance per thread is required. The base frequency for all 8 streams is 2,8 GHz, but when fully loaded, the 3,2-3,7 GHz range is more often flickering. The processor will operate at approximately this frequency at full, but short-term load.
In terms of performance, the i7-1165G7 can be compared with the favorite of gamers of the recent past – the Core i7-7700K, but do not forget that this is a desktop hot stone that confidently walks over 150 W under overclocking, and here is a laptop “grain of sand” with limits at 12-28 W.
If the processor is loaded to the maximum, then silicon behaves as follows: first, the frequency goes beyond 3,5 GHz, and then gradually decreases to 2,4 GHz per core with a consumption of 18 watts. It is on such indicators that you should focus if you take a laptop for atypically complex tasks. Let’s go through the benchmarks.
In CPU-Z, the 1165G7 shows results slightly higher than in the desktop Core i7-7700K in stock, moreover, in the load mode on one core, the gap is noticeably larger. The same state of affairs in Cinebench R20, where the single-threaded performance clearly increased – 585 points, which is more than a good indicator for an ultrathin laptop. In Linpack, the results drop slightly after 15 runs, but nothing critical: from 183 to 136. And 3DMark estimates the CPU at 3853 points in the Time Spy scene. What can you say? The increased productivity per thread is encouraging, it was high time.
Let’s move on to the embedding. You won’t be able to play especially on it, but you can start something. Let’s start with the parrots:
At first glance, it seems like the results are modest – 1461 points in Time Spy and 871 “parrot” in Superposition. However, in general, this is higher than that of the Ryzen 7 4700U, so everything in our world is relative.
If we talk about games, then you can run a different kind of “turkey” like Superhot and enjoy more than 40 frames per second, not to mention some simple platformers. At medium quality settings, a peeping simulator – NieR Automata – is fine. Yes, it will be “cinematic smoothness”, in the region of 30 frames per second, but it is quite possible to play.
Or, say, the second wind Left4Dead, who would have thought, is easily played at 60 frames per second. Well, we’ll also write competitive games like Dota, League of Legends there, and that’s all.
In general, the new “build-in” Iris Xe is good first of all for its ability to decode “heavy” video formats with a dense bitrate. This provides not so much jerk-free playback, which has never been a problem before, but increased energy efficiency. And this, no doubt, will affect the autonomy.
Plus, these chips even support 8K monitors with Dolby Vision HDR. And for simple games, the developers have implemented an advanced vertical sync system, also known as Adaptive Sync, which prevents the picture from “falling apart” in dynamic scenes.
This modern quad-core processor with an integrated video card is cooled by one fan, coupled with two heat pipes of different thicknesses. As expected, the spinner stops completely during idle time. By the way, a very simple disassembly process should be noted: just unscrew the screws, throw off the cover and voila!
The autopsy showed some interesting points, in addition to the banal fact that the RAM is soldered on the board and cannot be replaced. First, the speakers have huge acoustic boxes! These are usually found on 17-inch laptops.
Secondly, there is no mention of the “big brother” in the person of Huawei on the battery, although the designs of the laptops of these companies are similar. Well, in general, the build and styling quality is high, there is nothing to complain about. And the maintenance of such a laptop, such as replacing thermal paste or cleaning, should not cost cosmic money – everything is simply disassembled and assembled back.
What else interests us? Operative! Here its 16 GB, DDR4 standard, 3200 MHz frequency, and in two channels, which gives very good read and write speeds in the region of 43 Gb / s. This is important because the graphics accelerator uses system memory for its own needs.
Our modification has a 512 GB drive. This is an NVMe “solid-state” device, connected on four PCIe lanes, and not two, as some do. It is, of course, removable. It is presented by Western Digital as part of the high-performance WD Black line.
The speed indicators are gorgeous. I was especially pleased with the speed of random reading in blocks of different sizes. This is the same speed that is achievable in practice in most applications. One gigabyte per second? Very good.
Of the pleasant bonuses, we note a fingerprint scanner built into the power button, and support for a new, faster standard – Wi-Fi 6. Well, the same speakers with large acoustic boxes, for which the manufacturer claims a power of 2 W, whatever it means … They sound decent, although they strongly depend on the surface on which the laptop stands, since they are directed downward.
Autonomy
The 56 Wh battery promises up to 10,5 hours of continuous FullHD video playback, which is fair enough since we don’t have a 4K screen. It is charged with a 65 W power supply with a normal human Type-C connector, so picking up the cord when abraded will be easy. Fast charging is also supported. Not as fast as smartphones, but we get 44% in half an hour without any problems.
It is also interesting that the built-in PC Manager software allows you to save battery life if the laptop is used in various scenarios. For example, you can hold a charge of no more than 70%, which will have a positive impact on the life cycle of the battery.
Right there, by the way, you can check the current drivers and adjust the duration of the key illumination and pairing with the smartphone via the proprietary technology Honor Magic-link. We’ve already seen this with Huawei laptops.when the smartphone can be controlled from the laptop screen – it is very convenient.
Cost and opinion
With prices, the situation is as follows: the top-end configuration on the Core i7 with 16 GB of RAM will cost 100 rubles… Like an average iPhone or just half the size of an NVIDIA RTX 3070 graphics card. Not insanely expensive, I guess. The younger version with Core i5 and even cheaper, they promise to give for a little less than 79 990 rubles… When buying on the official website, they also offer a gift to choose from.
In general, an excellent device, what else can I say? Honestly, there is nothing to complain about. Yes, and there is no particular desire. With such prices for high-performance solutions, a device for work for 100 rubles in a top-end configuration does not seem like some kind of direct luxury.
The performance is more than sufficient, the screen is excellent, the autonomy is high, the necessary ports and technologies on board. What else does? With a clear conscience, we recommend buying.
