When Honor presented the MagicBook Pro at IFA Berlin 2020, thanks to its Ryzen 5 4600H processor it quickly became one of the best laptops that could be bought for around 900 euros. It was fast, well built, and had an almost frameless display. There was only one problem: limited availability. You could only buy the MagicBook Pro in a few markets in Europe. But now that the company is no longer affiliated with Huawei, it can work with US companies to source components. Thanks to a partnership with Intel, Honor’s MagicBook Pro 2021 will have a Core i5 processor and will be available worldwide. The company hopes to bring him to the US and India.
However, replacing the processor involves a major compromise. When switching to Intel, the 2021 MagicBook Pro swaps the Ryzen 4600H processor of its predecessor and the Vega Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU for a 10th generation Core i5 10210U CPU and an NVIDIA GeForce MX350 GPU. The 10210U is a 14nm processor with four cores and eight threads and a maximum TDP of 25W. In contrast, the 7nm 4600H is a 12-thread CPU with six cores and a TDP of 45W, so you get one Processor with fewer cores and less overall performance. Oh, and the 10210U is celebrating its second birthday this year.
With 16 GB of RAM in addition to the processor and a snappy 512 GB NVMe for storage, the new MagicBook Pro should still feel fast. However, the 2020 model was one of the fastest workstation-free laptops you could buy in the past year. Judging by the technical data, it will be difficult for the 2021 variant to reach this mark. I think you win some and you lose some Entry into the US and India would be a huge win for Honor, but the 2021 MagicBook Pro is a less convincing device due to its old Intel processor.
For better or worse, Honor hasn’t made too many other improvements to the MagicBook Pro. Like the MateBook X Pro, it still has a pop-up webcam that makes you hate Zoom calls more than before. However, it still has a generous port selection including three USB-A ports, one USB-C port, and a single HDMI port, as well as the usual 3.5mm headphone jack. There’s also a fingerprint sensor that doubles as the computer’s power button, and the 16.1-inch display has a Full HD panel with 100% sRGB coverage.
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The company claims that you can get up to 11.5 hours of uptime on a single charge of the MagicBook Pro’s 56 Wh battery. With the included 65 W power supply unit, the battery is charged to 50 percent after 30 minutes.
There’s no exact release date, but if the MagicBook Pro becomes available later this year it will cost $ 1,000.