Review Verdict: The MateBook X Pro 2024 is the best definition of balancing both power and portability, as it is one of the lightest ultrabooks in the Philippines with internals that are powerful enough to rival some of Apple’s M-series MacBook Pros. 

Pros

• Decent battery life
• Very light
• Top-notch internals

Cons

• Finish feels plasticky
• Limited port selection

After a 3-month wait, HUAWEI finally makes the MateBook X Pro 2024 available in the Philippines as its most premium laptop. Aside from being its lightest ultrabook to date, the MateBook X Pro 2024 is also HUAWEI’s most powerful with its Core Ultra 9 processor that can rival Apple’s M-series MacBook Pro. Is the MateBook X Pro 2024’s Php 130k asking price enough to convince you to go for this instead of a MacBook Pro?

 

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 Review Philippines: Design

The MateBook X Pro 2024 sticks to the same minimalist design HUAWEI has been using with the majority of its laptops. Making this premium ultrabook stand out is its Morandi Blue colorway, which is a refreshing sight in a sea of black, white, and gray-colored laptops. The entire laptop has a matte finish that tends to attract smudges at times.

The MateBook X Pro 2024 is one of HUAWEI’s thinnest and lightest laptops at 13.5mm and 980g. You will immediately feel its sub-1kg weight–as someone who uses a MacBook Pro M1 as his daily driver, the MateBook X Pro 2024 is so light that you can hold it with one hand. Aside from being thin, HUAWEI added subtle curves on the edges to the MateBook X Pro 2024.

Making a laptop this thin has a few compromises, the most significant being the port selection. You only get 2 Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 port, and a camera privacy switch on the MateBook X Pro 2024. There’s no headphone jack, but given the laptop’s dimensions trying to fit one is nearly impossible. As a fair trade off, HUAWEI was able to put a 70wHr battery inside the MateBook X Pro 2024, along ith adequately-sized fans to keep thermals stable. Aside from that, HUAWEI includes a USB-C to USB-A dongle with the MateBook X Pro 2024, along with a USB-C headset.

Just like the previous iteration of the MateBook X Pro, you have the webcam placed on the top bezel–HUAWEI has learned its lesson that placing the webcam on the keyboard area is not a great idea.

 

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 Review Philippines: Display and Speakers

Being HUAWEI’s premium ultrabook, you get a 14.2-inch OLED display with a 120hz refresh rate, 6.5k resolution. Aside from having insanely thin bezels, HUAWEI pulled off an amazing feat of still retaining touchscreen functionality despite the MateBook X Pro 2024 being very thin.

The MateBook X Pro 2024’s display has all the qualities you expect on a premium laptop: vibrant and accurate colors and a relatively decent brightness range. Despite being a thin laptop, HUAWEI also added an antireflective coating to the display. It’s not as good as the brand’s 2nd-gen PaperMatte display on the MatePad 11.5s, but reflections is less compared to other laptops.

As for audio, what surprised us is that HUAWEI was able to fit six speakers on the MateBook X Pro 2024’s slender chassis. They deliver a stellar soundstage that’s loud enough even at 50% volume, though you need to be mindful about the absence of a headphone jack, forcing you to either use a dongle or a pair of USB-C earphones.

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 Review Philippines: Keyboard and Trackpad

With ultra-thin laptops, designing a good keyboard and trackpad is challenging. To HUAWEI’s credit, the MateBook X Pro 2024’s keyboard has a decent size and does not feel cramped. It may have less key travel compared to other laptops, but the keys have a feather-like response. Unlike with the body, the individual keys are not that much of a fingerprint magnet despite having the same matte coating.

The trackpad, on the other hand, is surprisingly good despite its edge-to-edge design at the bottom part. It’s fluid and responsive, and has a generous size for doing multi-finger gestures with Windows 11.

 

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 Review Philippines: Internals and Battery Life

HUAWEI went all in with the MateBook X Pro 2024 in the Philippines: aside from having a Core Ultra 9 185H processor, the one that’s officially available in the country comes with 2TB PCIe 4.0 storage and 32GB LPDDR5 RAM. That’s probably the highest configuration you can get on an ultrabook right now.

We’ve tested a few Core Ultra laptops this year, and the Core Ultra 9 used on the MateBook X Pro 2024 is the most powerful iteration we’ve tried. Along with having loads of RAM, editing large JPEG and RAW photos on Lightroom Classic feels more fluid compared to a laptop with a Core Ultra 7–and also despite only using the integrated Arc GPU. What’s also impressive is its thermals: despite pushing the MateBook X Pro 2024 to its limit, the keyboard area is less warm compared to the other Core Ultra laptops we’ve tried that are thicker in size.

Its 70wHr cell is big for a laptop this thin, and the MateBook X Pro 2024 has long legs: despite using a Core Ultra 9, we were able to get a battery life of 6 hours and 34 minutes on our video loop test. That impressed us because that’s roughly the same battery life we got on a Core Ultra 5 laptop with a similarly-sized battery. Charging the battery is done using the same 65w charger HUAWEI uses on most of its MateBook laptops.

 

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 Review Philippines: Wrap-up and Conclusions

Finding a Windows UltraBook that can rival Apple’s offerings is hard, and HUAWEI comes very close with the MateBook X Pro 2024. Aside from having the most powerful internals you can ask for in a laptop, HUAWEI pulls it off with the MateBook X Pro 2024 with one that’s slim, light, and powerful.

HUAWEI MateBook X Pro 2024 Review Philippines: Price

The MateBook X Pro 2024 is priced at Php 129,999 for the Core Ultra 9 variant with 32GB RAM and 2TB SSD.