HONOR reached out and wanted us to show you their brand new MagicBook Laptop. They claimed that this is the very best Laptop for students and it does have some very unique features which no other Laptop has. We are going to run you through all the specifications, all the features and everything that this Laptop can do, then you can decide if the new HONOR MagicBook is a good option for you!
What We Will Cover
As most of you were, or probably still are students, the most important factors when buying a Laptop for University are:
1. The Portability – You need this to be a lightweight Laptop that you can easily take it to classes.
2. The Battery Life – You cannot have this last for two hours, you need this to last for pretty much an entire day.
3. The Display - This has to be pretty good, both in terms of its size and also in terms of its sharpness. The last thing you want is a horrible Display that you need to look at all day.
4. The Keyboard - You’ll (hopefully) be doing a lot of typing, so the Keyboard is extremely important.
5. The Performance - This depends on what you are studying. If you’re into Computer Science, Animation or Graphic Design, you need your Laptop to be able to handle all of that.
6. The Price - No student wants to spend a ton on a Laptop, unless your parents buy it for you, then it doesn’t really matter. However, as a student who bought my own gear, from my own hard earned money, I know how important it is to get all of the above for a good price.
1) The Portability
Starting off with the Portability, the new HONOR MagicBook 14 is… well…a 14” Laptop, but it’s footprint is just about the same, or even smaller than some 13” Laptops. It weighs in at just 1.38kg and is just 15.9mm thick. It is not the lightest Laptop on the market but it is still one of the thinnest. You’ll see why that is, when we get to the Performance section, we think you’ll be quite impressed.
One of the more compact Laptops on the market right now.
Just to give you guys an idea on how light this really is, we can lift and hold it with just two fingers and, when this is in a bag, you almost don’t feel it at all. Sometimes we thought that the bag was empty and had to stop and check that is was still there. So, if you’re a student, the HONOR MagicBook 14 is great for Portability.
Also, it’s not just the Portability that’s great about the MagicBook 14, it also looks stunning. It comes in a full Aluminum build, which also has a matt finish, so no need to worry about fingerprints and smudges. On top of this, the MagicBook 14 also has this beautiful diamond-cut Chamfered Edge Frame that shines in blue whenever you shine some light on it. We absolutely love this effect, it almost gives you the impression that it has an LED strip all around the body.
2) Battery Life
When it comes to the Battery Life, you get 10 hours for things such as web-browsing and office work. This is what most students will be doing, so you can pretty much get an all-day battery life in this scenario. But, the MagicBook does indeed come with two very special battery related features that students would absolutely love.
When it comes to charging, one size fits all
The first one being the fact that it comes with a USB Type C Port for charging. This means that if you have any modern Smartphone, you can actually use your Smartphone Charger to charge your Laptop as well (and vice-versa). On top of this, you can even buy a USB Type C Battery Bank and charge the MagicBook from there, if you’re out in the wilds and you have no power socket anywhere near you.
But what is probably our favourite feature of this laptop is the fact that you get this very powerful 65W Charger with it, which also supports Fast Charging. Normally, Laptops take around three to four hours to fully charge, depending on the model of course, but the MagicBook 14 can charge to close to 50% in just 30 minutes. This means that if you’re running late for class and you just have a few minutes to top off, you can easily get a few more hours of usage out of it. With most other Laptops, this would not be possible at all.
3) Display
The MagicBook 14, as the name implies, comes with a 14” Display. This is a 1920x1080 Resolution Display with a 16:9 Aspect Ratio. We do like the fact that it’s 14 inches in size and the Bezels are insanely thin. However, the bottom Bezel looks more like on a traditional Laptop. We would’ve loved to see those thin Bezels on all four sides, but this would’ve resulted in the Keyboard or the Trackpad being sacrificed. A 16:10 Display would have solved this to some extent, as it is taller.
Regardless, it is a pretty nice Display with about 300-400 Nits of Brightness, which is also laminated with an anti-reflective coating. It’s not a Touch-Screen, in case you’re wondering, but the Display can go full flat so you get 180 degrees of tilt here, perfect for any viewing experience.
4) Keyboard
The Keyboard is where it gets really interesting. We have a Scissor-Type Keyboard mechanism, pretty standard on most Laptops. The keys themselves are quite thin, but they do provide significantly more travel than the Butterfly Keyboard that we’ve had on MacBooks for so many years now. The Keyboard is also backlit so you can easily type at night, which is always a nice feature to have.
A fresh take on a Web-Cam, stashed away at the top of the Keyboard
You might have noticed that there is no visible Camera on this. This is because HONOR actually hid it inside the Keyboard. All you have to do to bring it up, is to press on the Camera key. If you were ever concerned about someone spying on you through the Webcam, this is really the best approach there is. The Camera is always hidden unless you want it visible.
Also, our next favourite thing about this Keyboard is that you also have a built-in Fingerprint Reader. It’s built into the power button, so you can always use that to unlock your Laptop, so no need to type in your password.
5) Performance
The MagicBook actually comes with an AMD Processor, the Ryzen 5 3500U in the case of our unit and this is a pretty powerful Chip. It’s a 15W Processor with a base clock of 2.1GHz and Turbo up to 3.7GHz, this is also a Quad-Core Processor.
We also get 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4 Memory as well as an AMD GPU. This is an integrated GPU, the RX Vega 8, but it’s actually quite powerful when it comes to the Performance, for an integrated GPU. You can indeed play some games in low to medium settings, at 1080p Resolution and get a decent FPS. If you’re into photo editing and even some 1080p or light-weight 4K video editing, the MagicBook can even handle that.
The MagicBook 14 also comes with a unique S-Shaped Blade design for the Fan, with 49% more Blades than in competitor Laptops. This gives you a 28% better Fan performance, while Heat Dissipation is also increased by up to 38%, according to HONOR. We also get a very good selection of Ports here. We get one USB Type C, one USB Type A, one HDMI, another USB type A on the other side and a 3.5mm Headphone Jack
‘Magic-Link’ is one of the stand-out features on this Laptop
But probably one of the coolest things that this Laptop can do is something called Magic-Link. If you have an HONOR or Huawei Smartphone, you can just hold it close to the HONOR Magic Link sticker on the MagicBook and it will instantly open up the EMUI Desktop on your Laptop. Long story short, this lets you control your Smartphone using your Laptop, but you can transfer photos and files directly to your MagicBook. It actually works like magic. You just open up your Photo Gallery app and drag them from your Smartphone onto your Laptop and they instantly transfer. This is honestly the best phone-to-laptop sync tool that we’ve ever seen. It’s fast, it’s powerful and it’s extremely easy and intuitive to use.
6) Price
Having said all of this. What is the price of the MagicBook? Well, we’re guessing most of you would expect this to cost around £1200 or around £1000 at least, but that’s not really the case here.
We mentioned Price as one of the most important things for a student that buys a new Laptop and definitely the best news here is that the HONOR MagicBook 14 only costs £550.
Conclusion
In the end, what are our final thoughts on the MagicBook 14 and who should get this?
First off all, this is a very portable Laptop that not only offers a great all-day Battery Life but it also gives you some insanely fast Charging. If you’re the kind of person that’s always on the go, and you need that Portability and Battery Life, the MagicBook 14 is definitely for you.
Also, if you are a student, this is an amazing choice as it costs pretty much half of what you would expect a good student Laptop to cost. You get a great selection of Ports and a Quad-Core Processor, alongside a very powerful integrated GPU, which can handle everything from photo editing to lightweight video editing & gaming.
The Webcam, which is hidden inside the Keyboard, as well as the Fingerprint Reader, make this a very good option for anyone concerned about their privacy.