First Impressions: Honor MagicBook Pro 16
Hands-on with Honor's new Core Ultra and RTX 40-series-powered laptop
First Impressions
Honor’s “Pro” laptop has devices like the Apple MacBook Pro and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Ultra in its sights, with strong CPU and GPU specs. The Honor MagicBook Pro 16 offers an interesting lid design and some AI features unique to this Honor device to catch the eye too.
Key Features
- Made for graphically-intensive tasksIntel Core Ultra and Nvidia RTX 4060 team up
- AI capabilitiesSmart Picture Search, Smart Document Summary and more included
- 3D colour spraying technologyLid design features near-pearlescent-effect metallic design
Introduction
Over the last several years, Honor’s laptop range has regularly offered impressive value for money. It’s cheap as chips offerings have reduced but higher power has been welcomed in. That’s most true with the new Honor MagicBook Pro 16, a creator and gaming-friendly powerhouse.
For me, the peak of Honor laptops was during the company’s time as an Huawei sister brand. Both manufacturers produced laptops that were stunning cheap for the solid productivity power, with the Honor MagicBook 14 and Huawei MateBook D 14 being the epitome of this a good number of years ago. These were similar laptops that both came in at under £600 yet had MacBook-esque looks.
Now, with its independence allowing further branching out, Honor is going after users who require graphical power. The new MagicBook Pro 16 comes with the latest Intel and Nvidia chips along with an interesting take on design that is half gaming laptop and half something far more interesting. If this device comes to the UK and/or EU it’s appeal will likely come down to price, which we don’t know quite yet. Either way, here are my first impressions.
Design and Screen
- 3D colouring spray design
- 3K 16-inch Honor FullView display
- Relatively light weight
The first thing you’ll notice about the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 is the multicoloured design on its lid. On first look, you might think its a pearlescent-like effect, as I did, which is something that Honor has utilisied on its devices before. But, it’s completely static and is what Honor calls “3D Colouring Spray” technology. Pearlescent or not, it makes this an interesting laptop to look at, especially in the White shade model that I’ve spent some time with – one that stands out from the crowd. You can also get it in a Purple hue.
When you open up the laptop, you’re greeted by a 16-inch high resolution display, coming in at 3072 x 1920 165Hz. There’s no fancy Mini LED or OLED technology here, so you’re not going to be flawed by lush colour, but Honor reports 100% DCI-P3 and 100% sRGB colour accuracy, making it likely a decent choice for creatives – though we’ll have to test that for ourselves during the full review. It also can reach up to a strong 500 nits of brightness, and the 16:10 aspect ratio makes it versatile enough for gaming and productivity work.
The Honor laptop comes with some pleasingly portable specs for a device that have a dedicated GPU. At 1.86kg and just 17.9mm thick, it isn’t amazingly lightweight but, in the short time I’ve used it, feels doesn’t feel like a burden to lug around.
My first impressions of the keyboard and trackpad are mixed. The keyboard offers plenty of travel and a solid amount of feedback, meaning it should suit casual gamers as well as creatives. But, the trackpad seems less impressive, with an almost excessive amount of travel, making it feel slow. Both of these will require further inspection as we spend more time with this device.
In terms of ports, you’re getting one Thunderbolt 4, one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, one HDMI and a headphone jack. There’s a fingerprint login button too. Interestingly, the ports are spread across the side and the rear in gaming laptop-esque fashion, making them extra accessible. The onboard speakers are dubbed Honor Spatial Audio by the brand and touted as the first Windows laptop with spatial audio, with six speakers included, while there’s two built-in microphones as well.
Specs and Performance
- Latest Intel and Nvidia chips
- Plenty of RAM and storage
The Honor MagicBook Pro 16 is set up well for versatility with its combination of specifications. It isn’t aiming for the very high-end but should still serve serious creatives and gamers well, while the self-imposed limits may keep battery life reasonable.
The specs comes in at an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics chip, 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD storage. It’s then supported by a solidly-sized 75Wh battery which, according to Honor, can manage up to 10 hours in the PCMark 10 Modern Office benchmark – but we’ll have to test this ourselves.
The capabilities on offer, as well as the relatively timid-yet-stylish design, sets ths MagicBook Pro 16 up well to compete with lower-end MacBook Pro models and creator-focused devices like the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2. However, the RTX 4060 is a capable gaming chip and the looks, which do have a hint towards gaming, should allow it to serve gamers well too.
Outside of raw specs, and because it’s 2024, Honor is keen to tout its ecosystem and artificial intelligence capabilities with this device. It features the company’s MagicRing, Device Clone, Share, Connect and Portal software, all either allowing you to move from another machine to this one in simple fashion or allow for handy connectivity and collaboration with other Honor device, like its tablets and phones.
On the AI side, I haven’t had the chance to put its AI assistant through its paces yet but the key features Honor is touting are Smart Picture Search, Smart Document Summary, Text Comprehension, AI Subtitle, and Magic Text. Keep an eye out for a full review to see just how these all work.
With that all said though, we don’t yet have information on when the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 and its AI capabilities will be launching outside China (coming in Q2). There’s also no word on pricing quite yet.
Early Verdict
The Honor MagicBook Pro 16 is an intriguing laptop that looks to be an all-rounder for those in need of a dedicated GPU-powered machine. It’s reminscent of some of the creator-focused devices from Asus such as the Zenbook Pro and Vivobook Pro ranges, but with a slight skew towards more typical gaming laptop looks. As such, it’ll all come down to performance to see just how viable this machine is come our full review. The price is going to be pivotal too, as always, with Honor often providing very competively priced machines in the laptop space. This doesn’t feel like a luxury device like some of the aforementioned laptops it may be competiting with, so if that means this Honor ends up being competively priced then I can see it being a sleeper hit of 2024 but a high price may see it struggle.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
