The Honor MagicBook that’s coming is very different from the one we want

Honor Malaysia has provided an early preview of its MagicBook laptops for our local market. The AMD Ryzen powered laptops will go on sale very soon but it’s different from the one we’ve seen earlier.

Hardware-wise it is similar to the global MagicBook that was recently launched in Barcelona. However, the design looks more subdued as it lacks the cool blue chamfers on the lid of the laptop. There’s only a single Space Grey colour option and it comes with a 14″ screen.

The Honor MagicBook runs on an AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega 8 Graphics. It will be offered in a single variant that comes with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB of PCIe SSD storage which isn’t expandable. The display is a 14″ IPS LCD panel that pushes a Full HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. The bezels are 5.2mm thick and the display boasts an 81% screen-to-body ratio.

In terms of dimensions, the MagicBook 14 for Malaysia is 15.88mm thick and it weighs 1.45kg, which is heavier than the European version that weighs 1.38kg. As a comparison, the larger 15.6″ Huawei MateBook D 15 that comes with a secondary HDD weighs 1.62kg.

Compared to the initial MagicBook which we saw, the version that’s coming doesn’t come with a pop-up webcam and it offers a traditional front camera that sits on the top of the display. However, you still get a power button that doubles as a fingerprint sensor.

The MagicBook also comes with a quad-speaker setup that’s enhanced with Dolby Atmos. You’ll find speaker grills on both sides of the keyboard as well as underneath. This MagicBook version still comes with a generous amount of ports. It has a USB-C port for data transfer and 65W fast charging, 2x USB-A ports (USB 3.0 + USB 2.0), a standard HDMI port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

According to Honor, a full charge of its 57.6Wh battery is rated to last up to 10 hours. The MagicBook also supports Honor Magic-Link 2.0 which allows you to enable multi-screen collaboration or drag and drop files between a compatible Huawei/Honor smartphone and the laptop.

So far there are no pricing details yet but it’s expected to go on sale this month. We expect the MagicBook 14 to be priced competitively against the Huawei MateBook D 15. The Huawei option costs RM2,499 for the 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD version and RM2,299 for the 256GB SSD only option. Out of the box, the Honor MagicBook 14 comes with Microsoft Windows 10.