The Huawei MateBook 16 Review, Powered by AMD Ryzen 7 5800H: Ecosystem Plus
by Dr. Ian Cutress on October 20, 2021 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- Huawei
- Matebook
- Ryzen
- Zen 3
- MateBook 16
- Huawei Share
- Ryzen 7 5800H
System Performance: Balanced and Performance
The design of the MateBook 16 puts it in a smaller sub-section of the market. It’s a laptop designed to be big, but portable, so it has a strong 45 W CPU inside, albeit tuned down to 35 W, and no discrete GPU. That means we’re between a rock and a hard place – it has more performance and sustained performance than anything built with 15 W processors, such as the U-series, but compared to other laptops its size, which have big cooling and discrete graphics, it cannot sustain the high turbos that the others can. The upside is battery life in comparison.
So the MateBook has to play to its strengths, and those involve using the Zen 3 architecture up to 4.7 GHz for strong single-threaded performance, and then pushing all eight cores and sixteen threads when needed. Combine that with strong integrated graphics in Vega 8 (it’s still not RDNA 2 quite yet) and a fast SSD, and it should push through faster than a U-series without the bulk of a gaming laptop.
The Performance mode had little-to-no effect on any of our single thread metrics, however there was a good 4-9% gain in multi-threaded workloads. The longer the workload, the bigger the improvement. In comparison to other processors tested, it carves through the 15 W options, and against the 11th Gen Core-HK hardware it falls behind on general tests that can’t push the frequency or power, but for the traditional tests AMD does well on, it can beat what Intel has to offer.
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TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - link
Good to see another company jump on the "use a 45w ryzen chip without a dGPU" train, letting that iGPU stretch its legs a bit mroe. Shame it limits TDP so much, the mechrevio1 is a similar laptop that doesnt do that, rather allows up to 54 watt. But the huwaei has that gorgeous 16:10 display.....We need mroe of these types of laptops, and less of the dell/HP/lenovo garbage weve been getting.
at_clucks - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
We would have had a Kirin M1-like CPU soon if Huawei wasn't targeted by the restrictions on using US tech. Somehow those restrictions don't apply when buying straight up from Qualcomm or AMD, only when competing with them.So while I love to see mobile devices based on AMD CPUs, I would very much have loved even more to see a proper ARM SoC in there, giving M1 a run for its money. SOmething that's not tied to MacOS for example. And no, I don't consider ARM Surfaces to be that.
Arsenica - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
Nah, Huawei only licensed IP cores straight from ARM.At most they would have an Exynos 2000 equivalent (Cortex X1 and Mali G78 cores).
blanarahul - Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - link
"I’m a fan of notebooks that promise good power and battery life at the expense of graphics.""I have some software in my daily toolset that doesn’t work on either, so until then, I’m still focused on devices built with AMD or Intel."
Cannot agree more. I recently got a gaming notebook and while having a discrete GPU is nice, having a modern processor that is allowed to consume up to 30-40 watts and strech its legs makes a world of difference in terms of responsiveness in the applications I need to use on a day to day basis (which cannot run on Linux or Mac).
I wonder what difference Alder Lake will make with its 6 P + 8 E cores design to responsiveness and battery life.
Alistair - Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - link
and yet I've been trying to sell my top of the line CPU laptop (Ryzen 4800H) for $650 (it has a 1650 ti) and you'll find nobody wants it, I think gaming has taken over the vast majority of the market, CPU aficionados tend to have less computer knowledge, and think any Intel quad core is the same as an AMD 8 coreMccaula718 - Wednesday, October 20, 2021 - link
Your Zen 2 cpu is not top of the lineat_clucks - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
That's not really the problem, it's close enough to it when it comes to AMD's mobile lineup. But most people have no brand awareness when it comes to AMD, and Intel has a much more powerful brand that will attract regardless of actual performance standing, even price. And futhermore, these days a 5 year old decent laptop still does the job fine for regular day to day things. So the market for midrange new laptops (meaning not cheap low end, not superfast high end) might be smallish.You can't get a proper PC GPU so you go for the next best with a mobile GPU where the whole device is still cheaper than the PC GPU. Or you get a cheap laptop that does browsing and the likes. The offer presented above is smack in the middle.
Alistair - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
the 4800h was the best CPU you could buy a year ago, now it is second best, yes it isblanarahul - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
In my entire social circle, I am the only one who knows AMD makes excellent CPUs and GPUs as well. They all think Intel is the only one who makes CPUs (for laptops) and Nvidia is the only one that makes dGPUs. They find AMD to be "sketchy". It is upsetting but it is what it is.AMD needs to succeed in consoles and workstation/server market because as much as I hate it, Windows + Intel + Nvidia is just too powerful a combo (in terms of market presence) in the mainstream consumer market.
Alistair - Thursday, October 21, 2021 - link
exactly, that's the problem, someone actually thinks the 11400h is faster than the 4800h for example :/