Huawei Matebook X review: good performance and has useful features like integrated fingerprint sensor and Dolby speakers, but pricey and has a laggy trackpad
Valentina Palladino / Ars Technica :
Context & Ripple Effects
This review lands one year after The Verge's original Matebook verdict, which dinged the line for design quirks and weak battery life and called it hard to recommend as a full laptop replacement. Ars Technica's take on the slimmer MateBook X shows Huawei has kept the strengths — fast performance, now adding a fingerprint sensor and Dolby speakers — while the price and input-device complaints persist.
The recurring pattern matters because Huawei is clearly iterating toward a premium ultrabook contender, competing in the same bracket as Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1, which pairs similar Windows Hello biometrics with a higher price tag.
First-order effects
- Premium-laptop buyers weighing the MateBook X against Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 get a split decision: Huawei matches the biometric login and speaker experience but loses on trackpad feel at a still-high price.
Second-order effects
- The laggy-trackpad criticism sets the fix list for Huawei's next revision — and the MateBook X Pro review a year later shows the company delivered exactly that, pairing a great keyboard and trackpad with thin bezels and a pop-up webcam.
Third-order effects
- If the yearly refine-the-flaws cadence holds, Huawei's laptop line follows the same playbook as its phones: enter premium late with visible rough edges, then close the gap iteration by iteration until established PC makers face a credible fourth major rival.
The trend: Huawei is running an annual fix-the-criticism loop on its MateBook line, turning mixed early reviews into a progressively more complete premium ultrabook.