In July, Honor unveiled the MagicBook Art 14 for the Chinese market and it looked really impressive on paper.
It has a screen of about 15 inches (14.6 inches), which has a very convenient aspect ratio and a 120Hz touchscreen OLED panel. The laptop has a 60Wh battery, a full set of ports, Intel’s Core 7 Ultra 155H processor, up to 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage.
All of this packs into a 1.03kg package – you read that right – a feather above 1kg. To put that into perspective, the 15.3-inch MacBook Air has only 7% more display area (677 cm2 vs 634 cm2), but weighs 46% more (1.51kg vs 1.03kg). Half a kilo is a huge difference for an ultraportable laptop.
Honor has shipped the MagicBook Art 14 in a slim box, and its 65W adapter and detachable USB-C cable in a separate box, which is housed in a plain large cardboard box.
Design and build quality
The Honor MagicBook Art 14 has come up with a unique solution for the placement of its camera. Instead of thickening the top bezel of the laptop to house the camera, adding an ugly notch, or some other major solution, it has made the camera a magnetic piece that sticks to the top of the display when in use and fits into the body of the laptop the rest of the time.
This creates a 2.2mm bezel on the sides and top of the screen, making for a clean looking machine. It also removes any privacy concerns you may have because not only is the camera not looking at you, it also folds away completely when you don’t need it.
A clever internal design and the selection of lightweight materials throughout the laptop make the incredible 1.03 kg weight possible. The laptop features a titanium keyboard, which reduces the weight by 16% compared to previous models.
The body is made of magnesium alloy, making the casing 30% lighter than the previous model. The finish is called Satin Emerald Spraying Technology, a skin-friendly coating that is also highly durable, according to company claims. The laptop comes in either Sunrise White (with light pink and purple hues) or Emerald Green, which leans towards blue in certain light and is not as clear as olive green, according to press materials.
Inside, Honor has designed the battery in a way that it can optimize space usage by up to 28%.
The Honor MagicBook Art 14 is very similar to the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024, which we reviewed in July.
Both machines have a similar textured finish, but the MateBook X Pro 2024 is slightly lighter at 980 grams, its 14.2-inch display is noticeably smaller, as is its touchpad.
MateBook X Pro 2024 and MagicBook Art 14 2024
The tuckaway camera module is undoubtedly innovative. It sits flush in the left corner of the laptop and can be moved in or out with a finger press. The module sits very securely in the laptop body, and can be tucked in any way you like – even with the pins facing out (though you shouldn’t do this).
It’s a clever way to deal with the camera on a laptop, but it also pushes the two ports a little further down on the left side of the MagicBook Art 14. It’s an unbalanced look that might bother some people.
Clever magnetic mechanism to hide the camera
The camera module is mounted on the top of the laptop and remains largely out of sight. It snaps on with a positive magnetic feel and can be used with it facing the back of the laptop if you wish to do so for whatever reason.
Camera Attachment
Display, keyboard, speakers, camera
The display on the Honor MagicBook Art 14 is a masterpiece. Although it is not the only laptop to come with an OLED panel, it is indeed one of the best.
This is a 14.6-inch 2120x2080px FullView 10-bit display with a squarer-than-average 3:2 aspect ratio, up to 120Hz refresh rate, and 10-point touch control. The panel has 100% DCI-P3 coverage, as well as a DeltaE (ΔE) rating of less than 0.5. The panel features 4320Mh PWM flicker-free dimming and is even certified by TUV Rheinland for low blue light emission certification.
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 a little higher, especially in HDR (950 nits), but the MagicBook Art 14 is still impressively bright.
We’ve always praised Huawei and Honor for including proprietary display colour support in their machines, and the MagicBook Art 14 follows the same trend. Right-click on the desktop and go to Display Manager, where you can choose which colour spectrum the laptop follows – sRGB, P3, or Native. This is a great feature that most other PCs don’t have, and is especially useful for content creators.
This is where you can adjust the color tone of the screen, put it into e-book mode, and fine-tune the color.
Performance Management Software
Honor and Huawei keyboards have long been great for typing but the MagicBook Art 14 is a step up. We can’t really say we can appreciate the titanium build but the keys do feel a little softer and more damped than the MateBook X Pro 2024.
The keys have the standard 1.5mm of travel and are very well spaced. Avid gamers will laugh at the tiny up and down arrow keys, but that’s the only complaint we can think of.
The trackpad of the Honor MagicBook Art 14 is huge and of very high quality. The smooth glass surface is excellent for sliding your fingers and being a solid-state unit, you can click anywhere with the same precise feel. You can adjust the tracking sensitivity and vibration strength to your liking.
The trackpad supports up to 5 fingers, although Windows is currently limited to 4. There are a number of proprietary gestures via Honor’s pre-installed software such as Knock for screenshots. They all get short demo videos and you can decide whether to enable them or not.
This laptop has six speakers and three microphones and they work great. There’s enough volume to fill a room and there’s some hint of bass underneath as well, 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 once pressed, the machine will turn on and you will be automatically logged into Windows once it boots to the login screen.
The magnetic 1080p camera doesn’t have an IR sensor for Windows Hello. Quality-wise, it’s a good webcam, but nothing special. For example, the image quality is okay, but it doesn’t have HDR.
The webcam has a very wide field of view and you can set it to track your face in the frame. You can also play with virtual backgrounds.
Making calls via the MagicBook Art 14 is a smooth experience. Callers reported that they heard our voices clearly through the laptop’s three mics and appreciated the active noise cancellation.
The MagicBook Art 14 is not short on ports. On the left are two USB-C – one Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbps) and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps). On the right is one USB-A (5Gbps), one HDMI 2.1 (4k@60Hz) and a 3.5mm audio jack.
You should use the Thunderbolt-enabled USB-C (it has a lightning bolt on it) on the right side for charging, as it offers the highest charging speeds.
Ports
Performance, Co-Pilot smartness, Battery life
You can pick up the Honor MagicBook Art 14 with up to an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H (total 14 cores, 4 performance, 8 efficiency, 2 low-power efficiency) or the more powerful Core Ultra 7 155H (total 16 cores, 6 performance, 8 efficiency, 2 low-power efficiency) with Arc graphics, which is what we have here.
There is an option to choose between 16GB or 32GB LPDDR5x RAM and up to 1TB NVME SSD.
This is Honor’s first Copilot-integrated laptop and it swaps the right Windows key for a dedicated Copilot key. Copilot works across the device to give personalised replies 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. It’s a real speed boost if you work your way through Microsoft’s suite of apps.
Co-pilot
Intel’s Meteor Lake hasn’t been fully reviewed at this point, so we’ll focus on how it performs specifically in this machine. It’s very similar to the Core 9 Ultra 185H we tested in the Huawei MateBook X Pro 2024, which has the same number of physical cores.
In Geekbench 6, it achieved the same score in single-core, but lags behind by about 15% in multi-core. The SSD speed is good, but it is 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 staying cool and quiet. When stressed, the processor can briefly reach 2.7GHz (43W) and then drop to 2.1GHz (22W), where it stabilizes. It occasionally spikes to 26GHz-2.7GHz (35W-39W) and then drops back to 2.1GH (22W), where it remains for most of the test.
During testing, the fans were running at full speed but produced no more than 55dB of sound – barely audible in a relatively quiet office environment. This is an impressively quiet machine.
The MagicBook Art 14 doesn’t get too hot either. The dual fans are joined by a generous vapour chamber, which combine to contain and then dissipate heat from the top of the keyboard towards the back of the machine. We measured a maximum temperature of just under 50°C, which wasn’t too bad – you can use this laptop comfortably under load.
thermal performance
The MagicBook Art 14 has a 60Wh battery that lasts a long time 6:37 hours In our YouTube video test (400 nits, 80dB) and 6:53 hours In our browsing loop test (400 nits), the laptop took about an hour and a half to charge from 0% to full, and it reached 43% in the first 30 minutes.
conclusion
Honor has created an attractive ultrabook in the MagicBook Art 14. From whatever angle you look at it, it’s an exceptional device that stands out from the crowd of thin and light laptops. Its construction isn’t your typical machined metal and it comes in two interesting colors. The innovative magnetic camera allows for a thin and uniform bezel around a display that’s larger than most 14-inch competitors. Not to mention that it’s an amazing OLED panel with a fast 120Hz refresh rate.
Then there’s the impossible lightness of the MagicBook Art 14 – the art makes the air seem like lead.
And as an overall package, the Intel-equipped machine works quite well – it’s powerful but runs cool and quiet. And you can get very reasonable run times from the 60Wh battery. However, the recently announced Snapdragon Xe Elite-equipped MagicBook Art looms over this Intel one with pressing questions – how much better will the ARM version be in terms of battery endurance?
Nevertheless, it is still some time away for the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with its improved graphics to hit the market.
Pros
- Excellent balance of size and weight
- Solid feel, we like the unique color
- Colour-accurate OLED display with 500 nits SDR and 700 nits HDR brightness
- Excellent port selection – Thunderbolt, USB-A, HDMI
- Runs quiet and cool
- Innovative magnetic camera design
Shortcoming
- There’s only one USB-C Thunderbolt 4
- The camera slot moves the USB-C port to the middle of the laptop
- SSD is not compliant with PCIe 4.0 standards
Honor hasn’t yet revealed pricing and availability for the MagicBook Art 14, so we can’t advise you on whether or not you should buy it. The highest-spec model in this review is currently priced at CNY 9,499 in China, which equates to €1,200, although European pricing will undoubtedly be higher.
But if money is not an issue – this could be the best laptop in the 14-inch to 15-inch category.
