Summary

With this Matebook D16 AMD, Huawei is venturing below 1000 euros for an office laptop, while trying to keep what made its reputation: efficient and reliable PCs. Here is our test of this 16 inch like no other.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

Huawei has been in the laptop market since 2018. The Chinese phone brand has continued to offer laptops with a sober look, navigating between the high end and the mid-range. With this Matebook D16, Huawei wants to play on two fronts. On the one hand, the firm promises a light and easily transportable 16-inch on the one hand, and on the other hand, it equips it with the first generation of AMD chips that have been effective for a long time on laptops, a 4000 series.

Huawei Matebook D 16 (2021) datasheet

A shoehorn design

Since the launch of Huawei, the sober and efficient design of its PCs has hardly changed. For once, with this Matebook D 16 2021, Huawei is trying a little touch of originality by integrating two speakers on each side of the keyboard, a bit like what is practiced at Apple with its Macbook Pro 16. Note that a similar design had already been offered by Honor's MagicBook Pro, a sub-brand of Huawei. Good except that the finish is coarse: the speakers are extremely visible here. This is not necessarily a defect: we know precisely where the sound comes from, and we can therefore place the PC accordingly.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

Another design originality, the 16.1-inch screen is accommodated in a size usually used for 15.6 inches according to Huawei. Good in fact, it measures 369 mm, or some 10 mm more on average than a 15 inch. But in use, it clearly does not feel like handling a 16 inch. With this little pirouette on the chassis, you obviously gain a lot in mobility. During my test, it fit easily into my shoulder bag, where a classic 16 inch or 17 inch can only do so with great difficulty.

The Huawei Matebook D16 weighs 1.74 kg. In use, I found this weight very suitable. In my two-piece, I carried around easily from one room to another, holding it easily with one hand, and without feeling the slightest discomfort during my transhumance. Likewise, laid on either to work in a sofa or a bed, its weight is barely noticeable.

To achieve this little pirouette on its chassis, the borders have been reduced: they measure only 4.9 mm, offering a very comfortable chassis / screen ratio of 90%. In a movie session with the PC on your knees, you are more easily caught up in the screen, which is really a very good point for a PC designed for multimedia use. Especially since with its 16-inch diagonal, not far from the 17-inch which is the maximum in a laptop, you can easily see all the details on the screen.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

For the rest of the PC, we are on a plastic chassis with aluminum finishes, which gives, for once, a very sober appearance to the whole. The finishes are not “laser” either, as one would say in Top Chef, but the result remains very clean.

Special mention to the hinge, which manages to require no force to be actuated, but which remains precise and fluid. The power button takes place at the top of the right speaker. It also acts as a fingerprint sensor.

Keyboard and touchpad

The keyboard is presumably the same as usual from Huawei. Even if it does not reach the edges, there was not necessarily a need to enlarge it since in use, it turns out to be wide enough. Too bad however not to have taken advantage of this space to insert a numeric keypad.

Typing comfort is average in our opinion. The keys are almost too far apart, requiring some extensions to fetch special characters. The rebound is lively and the stroke is quite good, but the material chosen, close to a rubber, does not convince us completely.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

A key gives access to two levels of backlighting, even if only the second, stronger level seemed usable. In semi-darkness, the backlight lacks a bit of power. On the other hand, at night, it offers an impeccable partition by illuminating the keys just enough to navigate without dazzling. The keyboard also turns itself off if left alone, which avoids having to deactivate and reactivate it inadvertently.

Note the presence of some very practical shortcuts, including the “screen sharing” key or a key dedicated to launching PC Manager, software supplied with all Huawei PCs. We also appreciate not having to go through the FN key in factory settings to lower the sound or increase the brightness. It adds a little extra comfort.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

The touchpad lacks a bit of comfort. It tries to mimic the glass feeling, but overall the fingers tend to drag and if you have a mouse lying around you should soon only use it when absolutely necessary.

Ports

At the connectivity level, there is plenty to do. On the right, two classic USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports accompany a 3.5 mm jack input. On the left, two USB-C ports allow you to charge the PC and an HDMI output of up to 4 K at 60 Hz is provided. Note also that as it is an AMD architecture, the connection via Thunderbolt is not available.

Webcam, speakers and microphone

It is one of Huawei's trademarks. The webcam is embedded between the F6 and F7 keys. The advantage is that it offers a plus in terms of privacy protection. The problem is that the angle chosen is really unflattering. In addition, it leads our interlocutors to see our fingers as soon as we type the slightest thing on the keyboard. Apart from that, the quality of the camera leaves something to be desired, as often, and it does not allow, moreover, to use facial recognition.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

On the loudspeaker part, the PC offers a rather good score, with a lean towards the treble (not always well defined) and medium. Very discreet basses sometimes invite themselves into the mix, which remains rather poorly endowed on this side. The volume is sufficient for listening to background music, for example while working, but not enough to use it as a speaker either. To watch a series, the sound can come to miss if there is the slightest parasitic noise. And if you're a little hard on the sheet, you risk going flat out quickly and running out of power. As for the microphone, it offers a very correct and audible sound without more. The spatialization is correct.

A wide screen, well calibrated, but poorly lit

Beyond 15 inches, we can consider that we are entering the territory of large laptop screens. With its 16.1 inches, this laptop offers a large panel that is pleasant to use just for its size. In the office, it is very comfortable. It is easy to work with two windows open at the same time. When you watch series or films, you take pleasure in immersing yourself in the scenes more than with a 15 inch.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

During our tests with our probe, we can assure you that you will not risk burning your retina, because the brightness is rather low with 291 cd / m². If we add to that a relatively low contrast of 1379:1, we have a rather greyish rendering of the whites which sometimes lacks pep.

Fortunately, the color part is rather very good for this price range. The color temperature measured indicates a value around 6472 K, slightly below the recommended 6500 K. Thereupon, no problem, the colors are faithful, neither too garish nor too dull. Finally, the panel has a coverage of the sRGB spectrum of 99%, for 67% DCIP3. Likewise, the color calibration is excellent, since the DeltaE2000 measured is on average 3.3 when we consider that a difference of 3 is invisible to the naked eye.

Windows 10 and Huawei overlay

Huawei delivers a flawless version of Windows 10, without any bloatware. If you dig a little, you still find the slightly intrusive AMD Radeon Software, necessary for the graphics drivers. The shortcut bar at the bottom right is immaculate. You don't even need to configure it on the first launch.

Huawei adds a very fine software overlay. For example, there is a performance mode that can be launched by pressing Fn and P simultaneously. At the bottom right, an icon opens a rather readable tab on the right which gives access to some shortcuts such as a screen capture tool fixed and video, the calculator or the notepad. You can also quickly find your last opened documents as well as your last copy and paste saved in the clipboard. By looking a little, when you open the right-click menu on the home screen, you access a menu dedicated to eye comfort rather well done.

By pressing the Huawei shortcut key – in F10 – you can access a small software for updating the drivers and maintaining the machine. This is also where you can start multiscreen collaboration with a Huawei phone.

The Ryzen 5 4600H has not said its last word

At first glance, the Ryzen 5 4600H (6 cores/12 Threads), based on the Zen 2 architecture, may seem a little weak compared to the most recent Ryzen 5000 series, based on Zen 3. But in addition to containing somewhat the price compared to a state-of-the-art processor, it displays very decent performance and will be more than enough for use in classic office automation.

Equipped with 6 cores clocked at 3 GHz, it is also accompanied by an AMD Radeon graphics processor (6 cores). Added to this is 16 GB of DDR4 3200 MHz RAM and 512 GB of NVMe PCIe SSD storage, partitioned into 119 GB and 337 GB on our test machine. It is also possible to add up to 2 TB of memory.

Performance of the Matebook D16 AMD 2021

The Huawei Matebook D16 AMD offers excellent performance for classic office tasks. In order to measure its performance more precisely, we tested it on PC Mark 10.

It obtains an excellent score of 5102. This is a score that could place it at the gates of PC gaming performance, which generally goes beyond 5500. All applications are launched with great ease and overflowing fluidity.

We then run it on Cinebench, a tool dedicated to the processor in order to know its specific performance.

As is often the case with the Zen 2s, the test on a single core is a little weak since it obtains 1146 points. It is still above a 10th generation Intel processor like the Core i5-1035G1 of the Surface Laptop Go which had obtained 1027. It is however not far from a Ryzen 7 5800H – a Zen 3 therefore —, like the one we tested on the TUF Gaming A15.

In multi-core, it does much better with 7966 points. It ranks far ahead of the i5 1035G1 and its 2699, but also just a few points higher than the Macbook Pro's M1, and its 7448.

Thanks to CrystalDiskMark, we measure the performance of the SSD. As a reminder, we are testing the 512 GB version partitioned into two disks, which performs very well, well ahead of the results of the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 or even slightly faster than the SSD of the Razer Book 13.

Graphics performance

The Ryzen 5 4600H comes with the AMD Radeon integrated graphics processor. Dare to say, its performance is simply stunning… for an integrated graphics chip. You can have fun launching a whole gallery of small games in simple 3D or in slightly fine 2D with your eyes closed.

Its score on 3DMark Night Raid via confirms this first impression, since it displays an impressive score of 12,134. On a test which is intended for ultraportables and tablets without dedicated graphics chips, it remains very good.

Stake

Fortnite offers us as basic settings a 3D resolution at 66%, with the graphics slider set to medium and a definition of 1080 p. At 30 frames per second, the game is very stable. If you push it a bit and allow it to go up to 60 frames per second, the rate varies between 30 and 50 frames per second, which is still very passable. With the graphics options on high, the game is not playable since it drops below 25 FPS.

Overall, for 2D and low-poly 3D, the GPU does very well. For example, Fall Guys runs around 45 FPS stable. On the other hand, a slightly more complex to display game like Valheim just isn't smooth enough to be enjoyable.

For the cooling part, there is simply nothing to say as it is effective. The PC doesn't make any noise, and we've never had any heat issues.

Autonomy and load

The autonomy of the Huawei Mateview D16 places it in the high range. It takes advantage in particular of its 56 Wh battery. By combining web browsing, office automation, listening to music, I got around 8 hours of use. Launched on the PC Mark battery test, it managed to last 9 hours, which again places it at the top of the middle of the table, above an Asus Zenbook Duo and its 8:22, and under the very recent Rog Strix G15 and its 10:30 a.m. – and incidentally its much more energy efficient Ryzen 9 5900HX.

Source: Anthony Wonner – Frandroid

Recharging takes a little over 1 hour 10 minutes thanks to the 65W charger supplied with it in the box. And if you forget it at home, don't panic, a Power Delivery compatible USB-C charger can take its place for the day.

Huawei Matebook D16 price and availability

Huawei markets its Matebook D16 AMD 2021 in France for the sum of 899 euros. On the site, it is indicated that a configuration with a Ryzen 7 4800H exists, but impossible to buy it. A single color is also required. It should also be noted that Huawei offers white Huawei Freebuds 4i worth 79.99 euros (and rated 8/10 at Frandroid) for the purchase of a Matebook D16 AMD 2021.