Huawei has unveiled an impressively light new laptop that puts portability at the centre of its design. The MateBook Pro S weighs as little as 798g and measures only 11.9mm at its thickest point, making it one of the more interesting ultra portable machines to emerge this year.
There is, however, a major catch for buyers outside China. Huawei has launched the MateBook Pro S exclusively in its home market for now, and the company has not announced plans to bring the machine to Western markets.
That has not stopped international buyers from showing interest. Some third party sellers are already offering the laptop to customers in other countries, although importing one can push the price well above Huawei’s original asking price.
An impressively light 14.2 inch laptop
The MateBook Pro S combines a 14.2 inch flexible OLED touchscreen with a 3.1K resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. Huawei claims the panel can reach 1,000 nits of full screen brightness and up to 1,600 nits at peak brightness.
On paper, that gives the laptop a display that should be well suited to everything from everyday work and browsing to watching video and handling creative workloads.
The real engineering story is the chassis. Huawei has used magnesium lithium for the bottom cover, while the upper sections use magnesium aluminum construction. The internal motherboard is split into three sections, allowing the company to make better use of the limited space inside the machine.
Cooling has also been designed around the laptop’s slim profile. Huawei uses a dual fan system with its Shark Fin blade design, while the battery uses a high silicon anode construction.
The result is a machine that manages to fit a reasonably large screen and a 54Wh battery into a remarkably compact package.
It is worth noting that the MateBook Pro S is not actually the world’s lightest laptop. Several Japanese manufacturers have produced machines that weigh considerably less. Some models come in at around 634g.
Huawei’s achievement is more about balancing low weight, screen size and performance in a mainstream laptop rather than simply chasing the lowest possible number on the scales.
The Kirin XE90 is the bigger question
The processor inside the MateBook Pro S is arguably more interesting than its weight.
Huawei has equipped the laptop with its Kirin XE90 chip, a HiSilicon ARM based processor designed for the company’s growing ecosystem. Huawei claims the XE90 delivers 23 percent higher single core performance, 25 percent better energy efficiency and 40 percent higher NPU performance compared with the regular Kirin X90.
The cooling system is designed to support up to 20W of sustained power.
Those figures certainly sound promising, but there is still a lack of independent testing. That makes it difficult to determine how the Kirin XE90 performs against established laptop processors from Intel, AMD, Apple and Qualcomm.
There is also some uncertainty around the manufacturing process. Analysis of Huawei’s Kirin X90 has previously pointed towards SMIC’s 7nm N+2 process. Current information suggests the XE90 could be based on a refined version of the same underlying design rather than moving to a newer manufacturing node.
That could have important implications for efficiency. In an ultra lightweight laptop, performance per watt matters almost as much as peak performance because there is only so much cooling hardware that can be squeezed into such a thin chassis.
China first, global availability uncertain
Huawei launched the MateBook Pro S in China on August 14, with the range starting at 7,999 yuan. That works out at just under $1,200 before taking into account taxes, import costs and international reseller margins.
There are several versions of the laptop, and the headline 798g weight applies to the Standard and Privacy configurations. The Soft Light version weighs around 805g, while the Collector’s Edition reaches approximately 825g and measures 12.2mm thick.
Huawei is also making some ambitious claims about battery life and connectivity. The company says the laptop can provide up to 18 hours of video playback. It also claims WiFi 7+ connectivity can remain stable over distances of up to 1,000 meters in open and unobstructed conditions.
For video calls and voice applications, the laptop includes a six microphone array that Huawei says can capture clear audio from as far away as 10 meters.
These are impressive specifications, but they should be treated as manufacturer claims until independent testing provides a clearer picture of real world performance.
For buyers in China, the MateBook Pro S looks like an intriguing combination of a large OLED display, extremely low weight and Huawei’s latest homegrown processor technology. For everyone else, availability remains the biggest problem.
The lack of Windows is another consideration. The MateBook Pro S runs HarmonyOS 6.1, so anyone accustomed to Windows or Linux will need to decide whether Huawei’s software ecosystem fits their needs.
That makes the MateBook Pro S an unusual proposition. Its hardware is clearly ambitious, and getting a 14.2 inch laptop down to 798g is an impressive engineering exercise. But until Huawei expands availability and independent reviewers put the Kirin XE90 through a proper set of benchmarks, it remains more of an intriguing showcase than an obvious recommendation for international buyers.
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