Dell's XPS 13 9380 webcam makes Huawei's unique pop-up webcam look silly

When Huawei first unveiled the MateBook X Pro in early 2018 to supplant the original MateBook X, one of its biggest distinguishing features was the narrow display bezels. The webcam, however, had to be repositioned in favor of the very high screen-to-body ratio. Huawei's solution was to put the camera under what would have been a standard F7 key.

The resulting pop-up webcam was a novel approach at the time, but it is becoming an undesirable feature on Huawei's flagship laptops. Namely, the poor webcam angle is arguably worse than Dell's "nose cam" angle on the older XPS 13 9370 series. Other manufacturers have seemingly solved this issue by utilizing newer webcam components designed for narrow bezel displays.

Recent examples are the XPS 13 9380 and the Asus ZenBook S13 UX392 which offer very narrow bezel designs while preserving the traditional position of their webcams. Even the privacy advantage of Huawei's pop-up webcam has been made moot by webcam sliders and "kill switches" as found on newer Lenovo ThinkPad and HP Spectre laptops.

Thus, there is little reason for Huawei to continue incorporating its pop-up webcam on future laptops moving forward. Newer webcam components are able to offer the same narrow bezel and privacy advantages of the pop-up webcam without impacting camera angle as exemplified by some laptops already in the market. The MateBook 13 has moved the webcam back to its original position and we suspect that the upcoming 2019 MateBook X Pro and MateBook 14 will be the last Huawei laptops with the pop-up camera feature.