Huawei MateBook X Pro (2021) unboxing and first impressions

Top-down view of the Emerald Green Huawei MateBook X Pro

It’s been over five years since Mobile World Congress 2016 when Huawei introduced the MateBook, its first Windows 10 PC. A few months later, I hiked out to Manhattan for the U.S. launch event at the observation deck of the World Trade Center. The following year, Huawei split its lineup into three: the MateBook X, MateBook E, and MateBook D.

Huawei is celebrating its five-year anniversary in the space, refreshing a big chunk of its lineup, including the MateBook X Pro. Coming in a beautiful Emerald Green color, it now has Intel’s 11th-generation ‘Tiger Lake’ processors. There’s no more dedicated GPU, at least in this model, but presumably, Intel’s new Iris Xe graphics are good enough to not need Nvidia’s MX-series GPUs.

There’s also a new touchpad that has Huawei Share built into it. If you’re got a Huawei phone, it’s pretty awesome. You just pull up some pictures or videos on your phone, tap it against the PC, and it transfers.

Other than that, it still has some of the trademark features that it’s known for. The power button has a built-in fingerprint sensor, and Huawei was the first to do that with the MateBook X. It’s also got a 13.9-inch 3K display, Thunderbolt 4, and unfortunately, a webcam that’s built into the keyboard.