In July, Honor introduced the MagicBook Art 14 for the Chinese market, a model that on paper looked really impressive.
It has a nearly 15-inch (14.6-inch) display with a very comfortable 3:2 aspect ratio, and it’s a 120Hz touchscreen OLED panel to boot. The laptop has a 60Wh battery, a full set of ports, an Intel Core 7 Ultra 155H processor with up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage.
All this fits into a 2.4-pound package—you read that right—a feather over 2.2 pounds. To put things in perspective, the 15.3-inch MacBook Air only has about 7 percent more display area (677 cm2 vs. 634 cm2) but weighs 46 percent more (3.3 pounds vs. 2.2 pounds). A pound is a huge difference for an ultraportable laptop.
Honor ships the MagicBook Art 14 in a slim box, with the 65W adapter and detachable USB-C cable in a separate box, stuffed inside a larger cardboard box.
Design and build quality
The Honor MagicBook Art 14 has found a unique solution for camera placement. Instead of fattening up the top bezel of the laptop to accommodate the camera, adding an unsightly notch, or settling for an “up your nose” solution, it has made the camera a magnetic piece that attaches to the top of the display when in use and tucks into the body of the laptop the rest of the time.
This leaves the screen bezels at 2.2mm on the sides and top and makes for a clean looking camera. It also eliminates any privacy concerns you may have, as not only is the camera not looking at you, but it’s completely detached when you don’t need it.
A smart interior design and selection of lightweight materials make it possible to achieve an incredible weight of 1.03 kg. The laptop has a titanium keyboard, which reduces weight by 16% compared to previous models.
The body is made of magnesium alloy, making the enclosure 30 percent lighter than previous models. The finish is called Satin Emanel Spraying Technology, a skin-friendly and highly durable coating, according to the company. The laptop ships in Sunrise White (with subtle pink and purple hues) or Emerald Green, which turns blue in certain light and isn’t olive green as the press materials would have you believe.
Inside, Honor has designed the battery to optimize space utilization by 28%.
The Honor MagicBook Art 14 looks very similar to the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024, which we reviewed in July.
Both devices feature a similar textured finish, but while the MateBook X Pro 2024 is slightly lighter, at 980g, its 14.2-inch display is noticeably smaller, as is its touchpad.
MateBook X Pro 2024 and MagicBook Art 14 2024
The pop-up camera module is undoubtedly innovative. It sits flush inside the left corner of the laptop and can be inserted or removed with a little finger pressure. The module sits very securely in the body of the laptop and can be inserted any way you want, even with the pins facing out (although you shouldn’t do that).
It’s a clever way to handle the camera on a laptop, but it pushes the two ports on the left side of the MagicBook Art 14 a bit lower. It’s an unbalanced look that might irritate some people.
The ingenious magnetic mechanism to hide the camera
The camera module attaches to the top of the laptop and remains largely out of sight. It attaches with a positive magnetic feel and can be used facing the back of the laptop if desired for any reason.
The camera attachment
Display, keyboard, speakers, camera
The Honor MagicBook Art 14’s display is a masterpiece. While it’s not the only laptop to ship with an OLED panel, it’s truly among the best out there.
It’s a 14.6-inch 3120x2080px 10-bit FullView display with a more square-than-average 3:2 aspect ratio, up to a 120Hz refresh rate, and 10-point touch control. The panel has 100% DCI-P3 coverage and a DeltaE (ΔE) rating of less than 0.5. The panel features 4320Mh PWM flicker-free dimming and has even earned TUV Rheinland certification for low blue light emissions.
The panel is rated at up to 700 nits of brightness in HDR mode, and we measured a consistent 500 nits in SDR mode. The Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024 measured slightly higher values, especially in HDR (950 nits), but the MagicBook Art 14 is still incredibly bright.
We’ve always praised Huawei and Honor for shipping their computers with proprietary display color support, and the MagicBook Art 14 follows that trend. Right-click on the desktop and go to Display Manager, where you can choose which color spectrum the laptop adheres to: sRGB, P3, or native. This is a great feature that most other PCs lack, and it’s especially useful for content creators.
Here you can also adjust the color tone of the screen, put it into eBook mode, and fine-tune the color.
Screen management software
Honor and Huawei keyboards have long been excellent for typing, but the MagicBook Art 14 is a step above. We can’t say we love the titanium construction, but the keys are slightly softer and dampened than the MateBook X Pro 2024.
The keys have the standard 1.5mm travel and are very well spaced. Hardcore gamers will scoff at the smaller up and down arrow keys, but that’s about the only complaint we could think of.
The Honor MagicBook Art 14’s trackpad is huge and very high quality. The smooth glass surface is excellent for sliding your fingers, and since it’s a solid-state drive, you can click anywhere you want with the same precise feel. You can adjust the tracking sensitivity and vibration intensity to your liking.
The trackpad supports up to 5 fingers, although Windows currently only supports 4. There are several proprietary gestures through Honor’s pre-installed software, such as knock to screenshot. All have short demonstration videos and you can decide whether to enable them or not.
There are six speakers and three microphones on this laptop, and they do an excellent job. There’s enough volume to fill a room, and there’s even some underlying bass, which makes the sound full.
You get a fingerprint scanner with Windows Hello support inside the power button and it works without any issues. It supports fingerprint caching, which means a single press will turn on the machine and automatically log you into Windows once it boots to the login screen.
The 1080p magnetic camera does not have IR sensors for Windows Hello. In terms of quality, it is a fairly good webcam, but nothing special. The image quality is acceptable, but there is no HDR, for example.
The webcam’s field of view is very wide and you can set it to follow your face across the frame. You can also play with virtual backgrounds.
Making calls through the MagicBook Art 14 is a fantastic experience. Callers reported hearing us well through the laptop’s trio of microphones and appreciated the active noise cancellation.
The MagicBook Art 14 will not leave you wanting in terms of ports. You have two USB-C ports on the left side: one Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps) and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps). On the right, there is a USB-A (5 Gbps), an HDMI 2.1 (4k@60Hz), and a 3.5 mm audio jack.
For charging, you should use the USB-C port with Thunderbolt on the right (it has a lightning bolt), as it provides the fastest charging speed.
Ports
Performance, Copilot intelligence, battery life
You can configure the Honor MagicBook Art 14 with either an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (14 total cores, 4 performance, 8 efficiency, 2 power efficiency) or the more powerful Core Ultra 7 155H (16 total cores, 6 performance, 8 efficiency, 2 power efficiency) with Arc graphics, which we have here.
You can choose between 16GB or 32GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 1TB of NVME SSD.
This is the first Honor laptop with Copilot built in, replacing the regular Windows key with a dedicated Copilot key. Copilot runs on the device to provide personalized responses and is deeply integrated with Microsoft apps like Outlook and Microsoft 365.
It can generate formulas, create charts and graphs, summarize key points in emails, and transcribe meetings in real time. This is a real speed booster if you work through Microsoft’s suite of apps.
Co-pilot
Intel’s Meteor Lake has been reviewed to oblivion at this point, so we’ll focus on how it performs in this machine specifically. It’s very similar to the Core 9 Ultra 185H we tested in the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024, having the same number of physical cores.
In Geekbench 6, it scored similarly in single-core but was about 15% behind in multi-core. SSD speeds are good but are closer to PCIe Gen 3 than Gen 4.
Geekbench 6 and disk speed
We ran a 1-hour stress test on the Honor MagicBook Art 14. Like other thin-and-light laptops, it prioritizes being cool and quiet. When under stress, the processor can briefly peak at 2.7GHz (43W) and then drop to 2.1GHz (22W) where it stabilizes. It occasionally jumps up to around 26GHz-2.7GHz (35W-39W) and then drops back to 2.1GHz (22W) where it stays for most of the test.
During testing, the fans were running at full blast but produced no more than 55dB, barely audible in a relatively quiet office environment. This is an incredibly quiet machine.
The MagicBook Art 14 doesn’t get very hot either. The dual fans are connected by a generous vapor chamber, which combine to contain and then disperse heat from above the keyboard to the back of the machine. We measured just under 50°C at maximum, which isn’t bad—you can use this laptop comfortably under load.
Thermal performance
The MagicBook Art 14 comes with a 60Wh battery that lasts 6:37 hours in our video test on YouTube (400 nits, 80 dB) and 6:53 hours in our web-browsing loop test (400 nits). Charging the laptop from 0% to full took about an hour and a half, and it hit 43% in the first 30 minutes.
Conclusion
Honor has created a compelling ultrabook with the MagicBook Art 14. From any angle you look at it, it’s a stunning device that stands out from the crowd of thin-and-light laptops. Its build isn’t your typical machined metal, and it comes in two attractive colors. The innovative magnetic camera allows for a thin, seamless bezel around a display that’s larger than most 14-inch competitors. Not to mention, it’s an incredible OLED panel with a fast 120Hz refresh rate.
Then there’s the impossible lightness of the MagicBook Art 14: art makes the air feel like lead.
And as a whole package, the Intel-powered machine does pretty well: It’s powerful yet cool and quiet. And you can get very reasonable runtimes from the 60Wh battery. However, the just-announced Snapdragon X Elite-powered MagicBook Art looms over this Intel one with pressing questions: How much better will the ARM version’s battery life be?
However, there is still some time to go and the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, with its far superior graphics, is about to hit the market.
Professionals
- It achieves an excellent balance between size and weight
- Solid feel, we like the unique color
- Color-accurate OLED display with 500 nits SDR and 700 nits HDR brightness
- Great selection of ports: Thunderbolt, USB-A, HDMI
- Runs quietly and coolly
- Innovative magnetic camera design
Against
- Only one USB-C is Thunderbolt 4
- The camera slot moves the USB-C ports to the center of the laptop
- SSD not quite up to PCIe 4.0 standards
Honor hasn’t revealed the price and availability of the MagicBook Art 14 yet, so we can’t really advise you whether or not to buy one. In China, the highest-specced model in this review currently costs CNY9,499, which translates to €1,200, although the European price will undoubtedly be higher.
But if budget is no object, this might be the best laptop in the 14- to 15-inch category.
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