We love the Honor MagicBook Art 14 – it’s slim and feather-light, and it has a lovely OLED display with a Goldilocks 14.6-inch diagonal and 3:2 aspect ratio. And now we finally get it with an ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite processor.
When we reviewed its Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H-powered sibling, we concluded that it’s a great laptop, but it could be better in Snapdragon guise, mainly for its improved battery life. Well, it’s been a few months, but the wait is over and we finally get to test that hypothesis.
We got the Starry Gray model this time (not the Green one) but it ships with the same 65W charger and USB-C cable. At the time of this article, the Snapdragon model has a single 32 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD configuration that’s €1,700 but you can claim a €200 discount with a coupon on Honor’s website, making it a very compelling €1,500. You also get an Honor Pad 9 8/256GB and Honor Earbuds X6 White for free.
Half of the story with the MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon is the processor (heck, it’s in the name). It’s the Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100 with 12 physical cores, 42 MB of total cache, a 3.4GHz multi-core frequency, and a 4.0GHz peak clock speed. Only two configurations of the X Elite are more powerful – the X1E-84-100 and X1E-00-1DE – but it’s mostly a difference in peak clock speed – one is 4.2GHz, and the other is 4.3GHz – not that significant.
The Starry Gray model has a silky smooth texture – the opposite of the tactile and grippy Emerald Green Intel-powered model we reviewed. Here’s the Snapdragon model pictured next to the Morandi Blue MateBook X Pro 2024 with the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H.
The Honor has the upper hand in screen size – 14.6-inch vs 14.2-inch on the Huawei.
The Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon and the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024
The other big thing with the Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon is the body. The laptop weighs only 1.02kg with a nearly 15-inch OLED display. In perspective, the 13-inch MacBook Air is 1.24kg and the 15-inch one is 1.51kg.
The OLED display of the MagicBook Art 14 is exceptional – 3120x2080px, touchscreen, support for 100% DCI-P3, and an advertised peak brightness of 700 nits.
Honor has achieved a slim bezel all around the screen by moving the camera out of the way. It sits in its own magnetic holster on the left side of the laptop and snaps onto the top when needed.
We’ll be back with a full review of the MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon in January!
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