Huawei MateBook D 14: Just as good as the D 15
First things first: We still cannot possibly understand why most notebook manufacturers choose to throttle their laptop’s CPUs under load after a short period of time. Huawei’s MateBook D 15 was living proof by the Chinese manufacturer that it is indeed possible to create a slim high-performance notebook not only capable of maintaining its high initial level of load over time but also on battery.
Furthermore, the MateBook D 14 proves that this is possible even in a 14-inch device, where a well-designed cooling solution is used to tame AMD’s Ryzen 5 3500U. In addition to scoring above average in our CineBench R15 benchmarks it also managed to maintain its initial level of performance over long periods of sustained load.
Cinebench R15 Sustained Load Test
Overall system performance left nothing to be desired either, albeit 8 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD with average performance are run-of-the-mill these days. Unfortunately, only the SSD can be retroactively upgraded. Upgrading the RAM is not possible.
Should you opt for the MateBook D 14 you get a very long battery life in return, as it lasted for more than 14 hours in our real-life Wi-Fi battery test and still up to 9 hours when browsing the web over Wi-Fi on maximum brightness.
At roughly $700 you get a great subnotebook made by Huawei with only a few minor flaws. Among others these include the lack of a home and end key on the keyboard as well as its limited maintenance options. We would have also preferred a higher color space coverage.
Source(s)
More in our review of the Huawei MateBook D 14