Huawei MateBook D (i7-7500U, GeForce 940MX) Laptop Review

[Redaktion]

Wallet-friendly mainstream..business? Huawei's 15.6-inch mainstream laptop surely looks the part, but while the build quality is good and the overall performance decent, the MateBook D suffers from a few significant shortcomings.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Huawei-MateBook-D-i7-7500U-GeForce-940MX-Laptop-Review.249230.0.html

[Jack]

A suggestion to further explain why it's 40% more efficient than the Asus S15? GPU throttling: Simple driver optimization issues? SSD vs HDD? It's what a typical user would expect when reading along. Thanks

[Jack]

Being a long time of reviews on your site, I think it's rare that the blue color becomes less accurate AFTER calibration. Can you offer some educated guesses as to why?

[Moe Moo]

Are there UHD version if this? I would buy it. The keyboard looks great! Pgup/pgdnw, home/end in place! Good job Huawei!

[Bernie Pechlaner]

Hi

Being a long time of reviews on your site, I think it's rare that the blue color becomes less accurate AFTER calibration. Can you offer some educated guesses as to why?

Hi Jack,

It's actually not that rare - at least not when we are talking about displays with narrow gamuts. Calibration is a balancing act and might improve accuracy in one aspect while simultaneously making another one worse. Usually, automatic calibration tools favor more accurate colors at lower saturation than higher saturation and blue usually gets the short end of the stick.

Thanks for reading our articles!

Bernie

[Bernie Pechlaner]

A suggestion to further explain why it's 40% more efficient than the Asus S15? GPU throttling: Simple driver optimization issues? SSD vs HDD? It's what a typical user would expect when reading along. Thanks

Hi Jack,

That is difficult to answer. Yes, many SSDs can be more efficient depending on the load scenario, but I'd be surprised if the improvement compared to a platter-based drive would amount to more than 10 percent. But the battery life also depends on how much the particular display consumes at a brightness of 150 nits, how often the fan kicks in when loading more demanding webpages etc. etc.
We did update the GPU driver to the latest version to see if it would make a difference (it didn't). A BIOS update down the line might take care of the problem.

Thanks,

Bernie

[dthrp]

"Maintenance
We experienced difficulties trying to remove the bottom panel - there are no maintenance hatches - even after removing the visible and hidden Phillips screws. One of the screws under a rubber foot is covered with a seal, so breaking it might void the warranty. We stopped our efforts after a while to avoid damaging the notebook."

Hang on, so are you saying nothing is user-upgradable/serviceable? Like MS Surface lineup memory and storage all soldered on, non-replaceable battery, and hatch that isn't designed for any access, is that correct?

[Bernie Pechlaner]

"Maintenance
We experienced difficulties trying to remove the bottom panel - there are no maintenance hatches - even after removing the visible and hidden Phillips screws. One of the screws under a rubber foot is covered with a seal, so breaking it might void the warranty. We stopped our efforts after a while to avoid damaging the notebook."

Hang on, so are you saying nothing is user-upgradable/serviceable? Like MS Surface lineup memory and storage all soldered on, non-replaceable battery, and hatch that isn't designed for any access, is that correct?

No - just that the panel didn't want to come off easily (sometimes there's a trick to prying it off). Since we couldn't find a hardware maintenance manual online and didn't want to risk damaging a loaner system, we stopped.
This is a regular laptop, so in all likelihood there's at least one open RAM slot as well as accessible hard drive slots (although it's conceivable that a unit shipping with SSD doesn't have the interface for the 2.5-inch drive installed and vice versa).

Thanks,

Bernie

[Mahmoud]

Can ram be upgraded to 16 gb ? What is the maximum supported ram? Doses it has one slot for one physical ram or 2 ?