The Honor MagicBook 14 (2022) is a very promising laptop. It’s seen several upgrades such as a performance boost, sharper screen and a better placement of the webcam. Early signs suggest Honor will continue as one of the leading laptop brands for great value portables.
Key Features
- High-performance processor:The Intel Core i5-12500H is capable of breezing through day-to-day workloads.
- Optional RTX 2050 GPU:The discrete GPU boosts the graphical performance, which is ideal for entry-level photo and video editors.
- Fingerprint sensor:The MagicBook features a fingerprint sensor, allowing for speedy and secure sign-ins.
Availability
- EuropeRRP: €1099
Introduction
The Honor MagicBook laptop series has become well known for providing outstanding value.
The Honor MagicBook 14 (2020) was available for just £799.99 despite being a top class premium notebook.
The new 2022 model isn’t quite as affordable, with a €1099 starting price (roughly translates to £950). But with the 14-inch laptop seeing several improvements compared to its predecessor it still represents great value.
I’ve been able to get my hands on the new laptop to get some early impressions. Since I haven’t had time to finish the battery tests, I’m not giving it a final verdict just yet. But this is nevertheless a very promising laptop.
Design
- Design lacks distinctive personality
- Great selection of ports
- Webcam returns to top screen bezel
If you were to type the word ‘laptop’ into an AI image generator, you’d likely get something that looks very similar to the Honor MagicBook 14 (2022).
It has a space grey aluminium casing, with a thin black trim that surrounds the 14-inch screen. When viewed from afar, you could easily mistake this laptop for a MacBook Air or Huawei’s MateBook.
With such generic looks, the MagicBook could be accused of lacking its own distinctive personality, but it’s hard to complain too much about getting a solidly built portable at a reasonable price, undercutting the likes of the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13.
Honor isn’t attempting to design the world’s slimmest laptop, with a noticeably chunkier frame (16.9mm) than the likes of Dell XPS 13 Plus (15.28mm) or MacBook Air M2 (11.3mm), and yet it’s still been very easy for me to slip into a bag.
There’s an upside to having a slightly chunkier build, as it allows Honor to fit on a plethora of ports, including USB-A, USB-C, HDMI and a headphone jack. That’s one of the best port selections I’ve seen from an ultrabook in recent years, and I personally love having legacy ports to plug in an old peripheral or USB stick without the need of a dongle.
But it’s also important to note that the Honor MagicBook 14 is noticeably heavier than some of its rivals. Weighing in at 1.58kg, it’s a few hundred grams heavier than the Dell XPS 13 Plus (1.23kg) and MacBook Air (1.24kg).
Does that make a big difference in practice? I personally don’t think so. I can still comfortably hold the laptop in one hand, and it doesn’t cause any back strain when stowed in a rucksack.
One of my biggest gripes with the older MagicBook 14 (2020) was the pavement of the webcam – it would pop out of the keyboard and present video callers with an unflattering view up your nostrils. This has now been changed, with the webcam returning to its rightful place in the top screen bezel. Hurray!
I’ve got mixed feelings about the webcam’s capture quality. There’s not much visible pixelation, so you don’t have to suffer grainy footage, but it struggles with low-light environments. Video quality is quite low at 720p at 30fps too. All that said, this webcam is perfectly usable for video meet ups with friends and colleagues.
I was disapointed by the speakers. The volume can be dialled up to a high volume, but the audio sounds screechy and unpleasant. I had a a tough time listening to Crawling by Linkin Park whenever Chester Bennington hit those high notes. The speakers are located underneath the laptop, making it unfortunately muffled against your desk. If you’re listening to music or watching a movie, I strongly recommend donning a pair of headphones.
The keyboard follows the same design trend as the rest of the laptop; bland but practical. Farily deep key travel ensures an enjoyable typing experience, and each key is chunky enough to ensure you aren’t making typos on a frequent basis. You also get a fingerprint sensor embedded into the power button, allowing for speedy and secure sign-ins.
The trackpad is faultless too, with responsive swiping and satisfyingly clicky presses. You shouldn’t have to worry about plugging in an external mouse.
Screen
- Impressivly high screen resolution
- Squarish 3:2 aspect ratio
- No touchscreen
Despite its affordable €1099 starting price, Honor has somehow managed to fit in a top-notch 14-inch panel with a surprisingly high resolution.
Coming in with a 2160 x 1440 resolution, the Honor MagicBook 14 (2022) has a noticeably sharper display than a standard Full HD panel. Supported videos look more crisp, with less fuzzy pixelation in the background. This is a great laptop for streaming the likes of Netflix and YouTube.
I haven’t been able to test the screen with a colorimter just yet, but Honor claims the screen has a max brightness of 300 nits, which is about average for a laptop. I’ll put that figure to the test in the coming days, as well as the contrast and colour coverage.
Honor has opted for a 3:2 aspect ratio for the screen, which makes it look a little more square than the average laptop display. This makes the screen well suited to productivity work, enabling more vertical visibility when viewing web pages or documents. Laptops with a 16:9 (or even 16:10) have a wider screen better optimised for watching video. But if you’re happy to put up with chunky black bars, the MagicBook is still a perfectly good option for streaming.
Performance
- Speedy processor performance
- Option for a discrete GPU
- Fast SSD speeds
The Honor MagicBook 14 (2022) has an impressive spec sheet, packing a 12th Gen Intel Core processor (the i5-12500H to be specific), as well as 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. You even get the option for an RTX 2060 GPU for added graphical grunt.
Let’s focus on the processing performance first. Honor has opted for a high-performance processor for this laptop, ensuring a speedy performance that depletes the battery at a quicker rate than a U-Series or P-Series flavour.
| Honor MagicBook 14 (2022) | Dell XPS 13 Plus | MacBook Air M2 | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-12500H | Intel Core i7-1260P | Apple M2 |
| Geekbench 5 single / multi | 1661 / 11,042 | 1467 / 7155 | 1928 / 8698 |
| PCMark 10 | 5913 | 5211 | N/A |
As the benchmark results show above, the Honor MagicBook 14 (2022) offers an even faster multi-core performance than laptops that will likely cost a couple hundred quid more.
The Honor MagicBook 14 can not only sail through basic day-to-day workloads, but can also tackle more intense tasks without slowing down. Honor is offering an optional RTX 2050 GPU to boost the graphics performance even further. That GPU may be outdated now, but it’s a smart way to offer a graphics boost without seeing a dramatic rise in price. My model unfortunately lacks a discrete GPU, so I’m unable to provide benchmark figures or offer an idea of the GPU’s battery drain.
Honor has even been able to use high-speed SSDs in the MagicBook 14. Our benchmark tests showed it to have read and write speeds of 6774MB/ and 4851MB/s. Those are better results than the vast majority of laptops I’ve reviewed, especially at this price point. Such speed should ensure brisk boot up times, as well as a breezy performance when loading up installed apps. It’s also handy when transferring large files, which is ideal for budding video editors.
Battery life
- Honor claims 15 hours of video playback
- Features a 75Wh battery
I haven’t been able to finish testing the battery life just yet, which is obviously an important factor for a portable PC. Honor claims the 75Wh battery can last 15 hours of video playback at a 1080p resolution.
That figure seems a little ambitious to me, especially since the laptop is using a high-performance Intel processor. For normal use, it’s likely that the figure will be closer to the 9-hour stamina of the Honor MagicBook 14 (2020) model.
However, I don’t want to make any assumptions, so will be updating this review with our battery life results as soon as the testing is complete.
Honor also claims the battery can be charged from 0% to 100% in just 80 minutes via the USB-C port, which we’ll also make sure to test in our final review.
First impressions
The Honor MagicBook 14 (2022) looks to be a fantastic productivity laptop that not only excels at day-to-day workloads, but can even blitz through entry-level content creation too. It’s an excellent alternative to the MacBook Air for those who want to stick with WIndows.
The ultrabook has seen numerous upgrades on its predecessor, including a faster performance, sharper display and a better placement of the webcam.
It’s a shame that the design is a little bland, especially when compared to the MacBook Air and Dell XPS 13 Plus, while I still need to finish testing the battery life before giving it a final score. But the MagicBook 14 otherwise ticks every box to make it a great value Windows laptop.
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