During the laptop portion of AMD’s Computex press conference early Wednesday morning, Huawei’s Michael Young came on stage to present a 14-inch version of the company’s MateBook D laptop packing AMD-based hardware. He didn’t say when the device would ship, but instead said the company set out to design a stylish, powerful, and efficient notebook packing AMD’s hardware to deliver an “unparalleled” experience.
We don’t know all the hardware specifics for the moment, but a slide provided by Huawei, shown above, shows it will be powered by AMD’s Ryzen 5 2500U all-in-one chip packing four “Zen” cores with a base speed of 2.0GHz and a maximum speed of 3.6GHz. It will also include eight “Vega” graphics cores clocked at 1,100MHz and sip a mere 15 watts of power.
Outside the AMD processor, the upcoming Huawei MateBook D will sport a 14-inch IPS display with a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution promising wide viewing angles and rich colors. Other details disclosed on the slide include four speakers powered by Dolby Atmos with a split frequency arrangement and a USB-C port used for charging the device. It will measure just 0.622 inches thick and weigh 3.19 pounds.
The current version of the MateBook D you can purchase right now is a bit larger with a 15.6-inch IPS display backed by a seventh-generation Core i5-7200U processor and discrete GeForce 940MX graphics (2GB). It’s also slightly thicker and heavier too measuring 0.66 inches thin and weighing 4.19 pounds. Completing this package is 8GB of system memory clocked at 2,133MHz and a 1TB hard drive.
Outside Huawei’s partnership, other laptop makers supporting AMD’s Ryzen-branded hardware include Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo. Models that specifically use AMD’s Ryzen 5 2500U all-in-one chip include the HP Envy x360 (15M-BQ121DX) starting at $749, two Lenovo Ideapad 720s 13 Platinum editions starting at $699, the Dell Inspiron 17 5000 starting at $859, and many more. The MateBook D 14-inch laptop is the first device from Huawei to sport AMD-based hardware.
In North America, Huawei is typically known for its family of smartphones. But the company entered the notebook market in early 2016 with the launch of its first MateBook followed by the MateBook X and MateBook D laptops, and the MateBook E 2-in-1 PC in 2017. The MateBook X Pro made its debut this year during the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona.
AMD said during its Computex presentation that its Ryzen all-in-one chips are the world’s fastest processors for ultra-thin notebooks. According to one of the slides, the Ryzen 7 2700U chip delivers 28 percent better performance in Cinebench R15 than Intel’s Core i7-8550U chip. In 3DMark 11, AMD’s chip shows 103 percent more graphics performance than Intel’s integrated graphics in the Core i7 chip.
Part of AMD’s Computex notebook presentation also showcased HP’s just-launched Envy x360 13-inch notebook. According to AMD’s Kevin Lensing, it “has enough graphics performance to out-perform some notebooks with discrete graphics.” Other manufacturers that took the stage to reveal AMD-backed laptops included Dell, Asus, and Lenovo.
