I am used to review samples coming with a US keyboard where only a few keys are differently placed but this arrived with a German keyboard and when you use a UK keyboard overlay on it a number of keys move the most obvious is that the Y and Z are transposed but harder to fathom is where other keys have gone the most vital on initial setup of this Notebook is the ‘@’ key as try entering an email address without it, once booted you can investigate further.
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The Honor MagicBook Pro measures 36.5x23.5x1cm and it weighs 1.674 kilos. The viewable screen is 35.5x20cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of 16.1inches. The margin on the top and sides is only .5cm. The unit is 1920x1080 with the screen resolution defaulting to 125% but it is quite useable at 100%.
It has an AMD Ryzen processor and graphics running at 3GHz. It comes with 16GB RAM. It has a SSD with 460GB available split into ‘C’ and ‘D’ with around 414GB free over the two parts of the drive. As sent to me the ‘D’ is empty which means there is only 73GB available on the ‘C’ drive so be careful how you install any new programs or Apps.
Going around the outside has a USB ‘C’ which with the installed fast charger included in the box you should get a full charge in less than two hours, HDMI out and USB all on the left side, the right side has 3.5mm headphone socket and two further USB ports.
Once I had worked out where all the non-Alpha keys are having a UK keyboard driver on a German keyboard was not a problem it just required a little more thought. I am sure any unit sold in the UK will have a UK keyboard.
The keyboard is 81 keys and there is 3cm free behind it and 2cm free on either side of it. In front of the keyboard is a 9.5cm wrist area, the 12x7.3cm trackpad is mounted centrally in this area.
The speakers are the same depth as the keyboard on each side of it unlike a lot of notebooks that have their speakers outputting onto the base so into whatever you are resting the notebook on, if it’s your knees that is not to bad but if it’s a desk a lot of the volume – and clarity – of the sound would be lost. Here the sound is excellent because it is sent upwards.
The screen is also rather good which encourages you to watch too many videos and stream too much, together with the excellent sound this is a ‘naughty but nice’ scenario.
It has a webcam but you will have to look very hard to find it as it resides under the F7 key and not at the top of the screen as it used to, this also means you cannot be spied on if the F7 key is flat rather than flipped up by 45 degrees.
As an example of the units speed I always do a full reset before returning and this took 24 minutes and on some PCs this has taken over two hours.
My initial problems outlined above were overcome so then I was able to see this for what it is a rather nice notebook with excellent sound, and video capabilities on the nice screen the Ryzen processor has to have a part in this. Lastly the screen size of 16.1inches makes anything you look at better.
The Honor MagicBook Pro is currently available from Honor's own website priced at £849.99 and comes with a choice of one of three free items.
At the time of publication you can also buy the MagicBook Pro from Amazon at the same price of £849.99. Both options include free deliver.
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