Huawei MateBook 13 vs Asus Zenbook 13: Which to Buy?

This is the comparison between the Huawei MateBook 13 and Asus Zenbook 13.

Huawei MateBook 13	Asus Zenbook 13
BUY NOW	BUY NOW
PROS	PROS
Can play most 3D games. Good keyboard. Great build quality. Compact design with 3:2 display.	High contrast, full sRGB coverage. Attractive yet distinct design. Strong all-round performance. Optional GeForce MX150. Upgradeable M.2 SSD.
CONS	CONS
No Thunderbolt 3 support. Screen is a bit dim. Short battery life. No Thunderbolt 3 support.	Still reliant on proprietary AC adapter for charging Thicker than many Ultrabooks Lacks Thunderbolt 3 support Weird keyboard layout

SPECIFICATIONS:

Experts Reviews for Huawei MateBook 13

By techguysmartbuy.com
We haven’t toyed w/ the X Pro so this is our initial experience on Huawei’s laptops since the original MateBook back in 2016 and a lot has changed. Mainly, in regards to design for the most part. They’ve gotten a lot better w/ the design and features as…

By Gizmodo
The MateBook 13 isn’t flashy, and it doesn’t have the brand appeal or pedigree of systems like the MacBook Air or XPS 13. But it’s well built, well equipped, and a refreshingly straightforward take on what a portable, mainstream laptop should be. And the fact that it’s pound-for-pound one of the best values for a $1,000 laptop doesn’t hurt either.

By Ars Technica
The Matebook 13 is a solid laptop, and its higher-end model may be compelling enough to sway customers away from Huawei’s more expensive device. However, it may not be enough when faced with other manufacturers’ competitors. The year of 2019 is still young, so those looking for a new 13-inch Ultrabook should wait until competitors like Dell, HP, and Lenovo release their newest devices before going all-in on the Matebook 13.

By NotebookCheck
A GPU beast. Don’t let its diminutive size fool you — this 3:2 13.0-inch laptop is equipped with a much faster GPU than your typical Ultrabook. Huawei’s latest offering is supposed to be a mid-range product, but its unique build and specifications are…

By techadvisor.co.uk
Is the MateBook X Pro worth paying an extra few hundred for then? Realistically it’ll come down to how much you value the slightly larger display, (probably) longer battery life, optional extra RAM, and the addition of a USB-A port.Those are…

Experts Reviews for Asus Zenbook 13

By IndianExpress
Absolutely. The ZenBook 13 is an incredible laptop with superior design, a solid chassis, a great display, and the latest Intel processor. At Rs 88,990, Asus ZenBook 13 is a great laptop, and this is a fact. Sure, Dell XPS 13 is a great laptop too, but…

ByLaptopMag
Asus’ ZenBook 13 offers great performance and long battery life for a very good price.

By nasilemaktech.com
As seen from the table above, the ZenBook 13 (UX333F) we have just reviewed is officially priced at RM4,499. I personally think that ASUS itself is the main competitor with the same series ZenBook 14 (UX433). The ZenBook 13 is RM100 more expensive than…

By NotebookCheck
Smaller footprint than the XPS 13. The “ErgoLift” design is a visual delight as it allows for a strong lid with narrow bezels on all four sides of the screen. Nevertheless, some cut corners prevent the system from being a must-have against its…

By frandroid.com
L’Asus ZenBook 13 est un ultrabook performant et bien conçu. Il va a l’essentiel, ce qui lui permet de garder un tarif très compétitif. On retiendra son écran borderless qui accueille quand même un module caméra capable de faire de la reconnaissance…

DESIGN

Huawei MateBook 13:

Huawei mate book 13 builds off the small and mighty make book Expo which, I’m personally not upset about it features an aluminum build and comes in three different colors there’s silver deep gray and cherry powder the unit that, I have is the deep gray color which almost has a dark blue shine to it depending on the lighting condition,the overall design is incredible and rivals the build of Apple’s laptops.terms of its size when compared to the 12 inch macbook it’s only a hair bigger but it’s also heavier for giggles when compared to the 12 point 9 inch iPad pro the 13 inch MacBook is again only a tiny bit larger and of course the 15 inch MacBook Pro.

Asus Zenbook 13:

Now let’s talk about the built in design on the right hand side you get the micro SD card slot the USB slot 3.5 mm jack and a power indicator and it’s quite lightweight at the back there are the cooling vents which cool the laptop and we will get to that part later about the cooling and on the left hand side there’s the DC input HDMI port a USB port along with the USB type-c port. design it’s very lightweight at just around one on one 9 kilograms smaller than an a4 paper and it’s a very compact laptop.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Huawei MateBook 13:

I think is really nice it doesn’t weigh very much about 1.3 kilograms which means that it’s like to carry around it also means that it’s great if you want to put it in a bag a backpack a laptop bag whatever it doesn’t have that bulk to it the other thing is that you have this tapered design it’s about 0.5 9 inches at the thinnest.

Asus Zenbook 13:

The laptop which is really lightweight and you get the power adapter cable for this one with charge is it really fast in you get the documentation etc.

KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD

Huawei MateBook 13:

The keyboard was going to be cramped that being said I’ve been using it consistently for two weeks and all my worries are gone the typing experience is excellent and easily one of my favorite keyboards on any laptop this is due to the chiclet style keys it’s spacious easy to find layout the tactility with its 1.2 millimeters of key travel.I’m not a fan don’t get me wrong they do sound great and thanks to the Dolby Atmos support you do get a premium speaker experience on a laptop however bottom firing speakers on laptops easily become muffled and distorted when they’re covered like when you use them on your lap hence the name laptop I don’t like it the OneTouch fingerprint reader and power button combo sits nicely right above the keyboard and offers a clean aesthetic and great functionality. it’s a good trackpad and thanks to the support for windows precision drivers it delivers an excellent responsive and accurate experience it’s easily one of the best track pads that, I personally use on a Windows laptop.

Asus Zenbook 13:

The keyboard and trackpad experience it was really good considering how compact this laptop is and the trackpad also comes with dedicated number input

PORT SELECTION

Huawei MateBook 13:

the poor selection on the mate book 13 is probably its biggest weakness in my personal opinion on one side you have a headphone jack in a USB C port and on the other side you have another USB C port neither one of these support Thunderbolt 3 which is the first issue the other issue is you don’t get identical functionality out of both USB C ports in other words the left supports data transfers and charging while the right side supports data transfers and DisplayPort this may not seem like a big deal to you but I’ve been in several circumstances where I really could have used the right side to charge the mate book it just doesn’t work when I first heard about the 13 inch mate book I was a little worried.

Asus Zenbook 13:

The port selection on the inside it comes with an Intel Core i5 8 to 6 5u processor and this laptop comes with 8 gigabytes of pre-installed memory and Intel HD graphics 620 and nvidia geforce MX 150 dedicated GPU, if you talk about the benchmark performance the cpu and this one comes close to Intel Core i7 6700 K or the 479 0 K Devil’s cannon CPU in terms of performance but if we really talk about sustained performance on that we will talk about later the SSD on the inside is really fast 512 Geeks SSD an has a Reedy good read/write speed and you can also see the Geekbench scores over here and it comes with gigabit class Wi-Fi which means that the Wi-Fi performance on this one was really good no packet loss whatsoever while gaming etcetera.

DISPLAY

Huawei MateBook 13:

3k display the 13-inch MacBook is rocking a 2k display which still looks and and supports touch input and 100% of the srgb color gamut the downside is that with the max of 300 nits for brightness combined with the glossy display you’re not going to be using this outside under the Sun or in extremely bright situations. I should say a lot but other than that the display is excellent viewing angles are on point and it provides a kick-ass media consumption experience speaking of content consumption.

Asus Zenbook 13:

For, the display on this one is an almost bezel s1 with a 95% scheme to body ratio and a frameless nano edge design it’s a 13.3 inch display with really good pillars one of the major cons for this displays the fact that we are so used to displays with bezels that it feels kind of awkward it has a 100% srgb color gamut support and a 178 degree wide view angle which is really good for a laptop like this one.

BATTERY

Huawei MateBook 13:

The battery life is pretty decent on the mate book 13 wall waste states that you’re gonna get 10 hours of 1080p playback but really this is gonna come down to where you have your brightness set for me personally. I typically keep the brightness all the way up at 100% because 300 nits is just not that bright and, I averaged between 6 to 7 hours of battery life doing things like emails and web browsing and watching some YouTube videos the good thing is the 65 watt charger that is included in the box does support quit charging huawei states that you can get roughly about two and a half hours of office use off a fifteen minute charge for me this is very doubtful for my workload but if you’re just doing basic office tasks and you have your brightness that, I like 50% I could see that this could be possible.

Asus Zenbook 13:

For the battery life correct me if I’m wrong but the main reason why people buy an ultrabook is one because it’s portable. I – because it keeps you away from the charge oh well a soos claims that the Zenbook 13 can offer you 10 hours of battery life and well that’s never true in fact in my testing I never got that value but, I did manage to get a respectable 8 hours of battery life which to be honest is pretty damn good this is largely possible due to the 50 watt hour battery on this thing.

PERFORMANCE

Huawei MateBook 13:

performance to find out what exactly you can consume the model that I have features in Intel whiskey like 85 65 u quad-core processor 8 gigabytes of RAM and the NVIDIA MX 150 2 gigabyte GPU with a TDP of 25 watts for storage it’s equipped with a 512 gigabyte nvme SSD in terms of its upgrade ability you can open up the laptop by removing these 6 screws located on the backside and then popping off the rubber feet very carefully and removing four more screws it’s important to note that each of the rubber feet have like a sticky adhesive on them you can remove the adhesive once you’re finished or you can replace it with something like top stick. the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard which is a bummer but the SSD can be upgraded and you can also upgrade the Wi-Fi card if that’s something you’re into my particular model has a Samsung SSD and an Intel Wi-Fi card, so I think unless you’re just trying to bump up your storage taking this laptop apart is pretty much useless.

Asus Zenbook 13:

Asus has done some compromises in the audio department because other than that that machine is absolutely amazing and it performs just as well yes performance now before we talk about numbers let me spell out some specs for you guys the Zen book 13 comes in two variants of the Intel i5 and i7 processors based on the new of whiskey Lake architecture as for RAM you get 8gb of LP ddr3 RAM and for storage there’s a PCI Express slot that houses either 256 GB or a5 and 2 GB stick depending on your preferred configuration there’s also a higher-end version with Nvidia’s MX 150 graphics onboard.

CONCLUSION

Huawei MateBook 13:

I would say for the money the biggest competitor is the razor blade stealth one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of these competitors including Apple’s MacBook Air include Thunderbolt 3 they might be less respect and more expensive they do have the, Thunderbolt 3 option I really think Huawei missed out by not putting that on the 13-inch MacBook especially when they could have done it on one port only truthfully even Huawei’s own mate book X Pro, when it’s on sale for $1200 could potentially be its biggest competitor because yeah it does have dated specs you are getting Thunderbolt 3 you’re getting a better display and you’re getting a better sound experience and a form factor that’s only slightly bigger ultimately. I think the maple 13-inch is  great value for what you’re getting and, I think if you can hold off for little bit prices will start to come down as soon as suppliers get more stock and they go on sale if you’re a student or a business person this is option because you can walk into class or a meeting pull this out and not look like a clown and be able to do all of your work comfortably but on the flip side if you’re a gamer or a graphic designer that deals a lot with 3d modeling and compositing or someone that does intensive video editing outside of just 1080p this is definitely not the computer for you it’s just gonna disappoint you so just skip it in any case what do you guys think of the 13-inch make book me personally I really like the form factor of this computer.

Asus Zenbook 13:

So to conclude the Zen book 13 actually worth it the way I see it it’s worth every penny the Zen book 13 series is priced starting at rupees 72,000 and goes all the way till 1 lakh which puts it directly in front of the Dell XPS 13 they expressed 13 series still available in India runs on the older cabling chipsets the newer dell XPS 13 series was announced back at CES 2019 and are still a couple of months away before it actually makes it wake to India now obviously. I’ll be reviewing that series but in the meantime the Zen book 13 is definitely the best option.