Huawei MateBook 14s review – compact and stylish device with 35W CPU and great batery life

How about a 35W CPU fitted in a laptop with a 16.7 mm profile? The Huawei MateBook 14s is a compact and stylish device that can be configured with Intel Tiger Lake H35 CPUs. This means its cooling solution should be under great stress during load because of the device’s slimness.

If we put the hardware specs aside, this machine looks modern and reminds us of some Apple laptops but overall, the design is neat and up to date. Interestingly, the Huawei MateBook 14s is riding the new wave when it comes to displays – its panel has a 3:2 aspect ratio which can be appreciated by a lot of users that are using their devices for Web browsing or office documents. Oh, yes, and this display has a touch functionality which is a handy extra when someone is lazy enough not to use a mouse or the trackpad.

Like many other thin and powerful machines, this one isn’t very affordable but at the same time, it offers some features like a fingerprint reader, USB-C ports with power delivery (charging), good build quality, and a backlit keyboard. On paper, this machine looks like a decent offer but let’s see if that is true.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/huawei-matebook-14s/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Huawei MateBook 14s - Specs

  • TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420)
  • Color accuracy  5.5  3.2
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 1000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro
  • Battery
  • 60Wh
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 313.82 x 229.76 x 16.7 mm (12.36" x 9.05" x 0.66")
  • Weight
  • 1.43 kg (3.2 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-C
  • Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
  • HDMI
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.1
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • 4x Microphones
  • Speakers
  • 4x Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

The laptop comes in a small good-looking glossy box. Inside, you’ll find the laptop itself, a compact  90W USB Type-C charger (that can be used for smartphone charging as well), a protective cloth for the device, and the usual manuals.


Design and construction

We have a compact machine that is thin and light at the same time. The Huawei MateBook 14s scales at 1.43 kilos and the profile is just 1.67mm – not bad for a laptop with a 35W CPU. The build quality is top-notch because of the aluminum build. Here, we have two color options – Spruce Green and Space Gray. The device we’ve bought is in Space Gray color – the base doesn’t attract a lot of smudges but the lid is a fingerprint magnet. We tried to twist the body on purpose and it seems that the build is sturdy – almost no bends whatsoever.

The lid can be opened with a single hand and it seems stable enough. The bezels around the display look great because they are so thin (and covered with glass) and we have a Web camera in an orthodox position.

As we said, the base is sturdy and now we can have a look at the keyboard with its big and comfortable keycaps. The travel is long enough and the feedback is clicky – this is a good unit for typing and if you like to spend some time with your laptop during nightime, there is a backlight as well. The fingerprint reader is integrated into the Power button. Some drawbacks – no NumberPad and the “Up” and “Down” Arrow keys are half-sized.

The big-sized touchpad has a comfortable glossy surface and it is fast and accurate at the same time.

The bottom plate looks normal for such a small laptop – it houses a ventilation grille, bottom-firing speakers, two big rubber feet, and the hot air has been exhausted through the back of the laptop.

Ports

On the left side, you can see two USB 3.2 Type-C (Gen.1) ports that support charging and Display Port capabilities, an HDMI port, and an audio combo jack. Interestingly enough, only the top-end version (with Core i7-11370H, 16 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, and Space Gray color) supports Thunderbolt 4 on the second Type-C port. The right side has just one USB 3.2 Type-A (Gen.1) port.


Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

Removing the bottom plate isn’t that hard – you have to undo 10 Torx-head screws. After that, you have to pop the bottom panel with a plastic pry tool and that’s all.

The cooling looks good for such a thin laptop – it has two decently-sized fans, two heatsinks, one plate, and two heat pipes.

Unfortunately, the notebook has just one M.2 slot, and the memory is soldered to the motherboard but at least it works in dual-channel mode.

The battery is a 60Wh unit and that sounds like enough capacity for this kind of laptop.


Display quality

Our Huawei MateBook 14s has a Full HD IPS display, model number TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420). Its diagonal is 14.2″ (36.1 cm), and the resolution – 2520 х 1680. Additionally, the screen ratio is 3:2, the pixel density – 231 ppi, their pitch – 0.12 x 0.12 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 41 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

Its viewing angles are comfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.

The maximum measured brightness is 464 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 455 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 11%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6340K (average) – slightly warmer than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.

In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 45% Brightness (White level = 141 cd/m2, Black level = 0.09 cd/m2).

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is great – 1600:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is an essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Huawei MateBook 14s’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 92% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of Huawei MateBook 14s with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 26 ms

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Huawei MateBook 14s display isn’t PWM-modulated which is making the display comfortable for long hours of work and safe for your eyes in this aspect.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusions

Huawei MateBook 14s has a hi-res IPS touchscreen panel with comfortable viewing angles, a very good contrast ratio, relatively wide color coverage, and it’s PWM-free.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Huawei MateBook 14s configurations with 14.2″ TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420) (2520 х 1680) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Huawei MateBook 14s speakers produce a crisp and relatively loud sound with good quality. Moreover, its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be downloaded from here: https://consumer.huawei.com/ph/support/laptops/matebook-14s/

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. The laptop is equipped with a 60Wh battery that delivers 12 hours and 30 minutes of Web browsing and 10 hours of videos. This is a respectable result.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

Not much to say regarding the processor options, you can choose between two Intel Tiger Lake H35 variants – Intel Core i7-11370H and Core i5-11300H.


GPU options

No dGPUs here. Depending on the CPU that you have configured, you can get one of the following iGPUs – Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (96EU) and Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80EU).


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS169 fps116 fps62 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS127 fps92 fps57 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i5-11300H (35W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Huawei MateBook 14s3.44 GHz (B+11%) @ 74°C @ 40W3.36 GHz (B+8%) @ 92°C @ 40W2.93 GHz (B-5%) @ 74°C @ 28W
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i (15″, 2021)3.99 GHz @ 84°C @ 59W3.99 GHz @ 92°C @ 60W3.87 GHz @ 94°C @ 56W
Acer Swift 3 (SF316-51)3.38 GHz @ 94°C @ 38W3.22 GHz @ 93°C @ 35W3.00 GHz @ 93°C @ 30W

Well, the thin profile comes with some sacrifices. In short and medium loads, the CPU boost above its base clock, but under serious stress, its frequency drops to 2.93 GHz which is 5% down compared to the official base frequency of the Intel Core i5-11300H. At least the temperatures are okay in this situation.

Comfort during full load

Good news, the laptop’s fans aren’t loud when you apply some heavy load. You can hear the fans but the noise is far from intrusive. The palm rest area remains comfortably cool as well as the WASD section. The center of the keyboard gets hot under stress but not too much.

Verdict

Overall, the Huawei MateBook 14s is a good compact device loaded with features and power. Let’s start with the design. The machine looks stylish, it has a premium aluminum build, thin profile, thin bezels around the display, and low weight. It’s hard to ask for more in this section.

CPU-wise, you can choose between the Intel Core i7-11370H and Core i5-11300H. Our laptop is equipped with the latter and the performance is definitely there – Web browsing, 4K videos, office documents, light gaming – everything is running smoothly without any hiccups. One of the few drawbacks is the soldered memory but that’s the price that has to be paid for such a thin profile.

You can configure the laptop with 8GB or 16GB RAM and we can definitely recommend the bigger capacity because future upgrades are a no-go here. Oh, yes, and there is just one M.2 slot – if you need more space you can buy a bigger NVMe or you can hook an external SSD or HDD to one of the USB ports. In most cases, this may not be an optimal solution for most people.

Light gaming? Sure, why not. Our machine has an Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 (80EU) and it achieved 169 FPS in CS:GO on Low settings which is a great result for an integrated graphics solution. Other light titles like League Of Legends, Dota 2, Team Fortress 2, Minecraft, etc, are running just fine at least on Low details. So, yes, light casual gaming is definitely possible with this device.

The keyboard is a nice unit – it has a backlight, big keycaps with good travel and “click”. Well, it lacks a NumberPad, and the “Up” and “Down” Arrow keys are too small but generally, this unit is great for typing. In addition, the Power button has an integrated fingerprint reader and the touchpad is fast and accurate.

The port selection is a bit weird. The laptop has two USB 3.2 Type-C (Gen.1) ports with charging and Display Port capabilities, which is great but there is just one USB 3.2 Type-A (Gen.1) port. If you need more Type-A ports you have to buy a separate USB hub. If you need Thunderbolt 4 support, you are forced to buy the top-end configuration with the Core i7-11370H, 16 GB RAM, 1TB NVMe, and Space Gray color which may be a bit more salty-priced for a lot of buyers.

Battery life is a pleasant surprise – 750 minutes of Web browsing and 600 minutes of videos is a really good score for a 60Wh battery. It seems that the Intel Core i5-11300H isn’t too power-hungry when it comes to casual tasks. Speaking of CPUs, the 35W processor is a bit of a hard cookie for the cooling solution – in longer and heavier loads, the CPU frequency is 5% down compared to the official base clock. In reality, it’s not a big deal, the machine is snappy all the time and it achieves some good scores when it comes to light gaming.

The TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420) display panel has comfortable viewing angles, good sRGB color coverage, and a 90Hz refresh rate. In addition, this screen has a 3:2 aspect ratio (very comfortable for Web browsing and Office work), 2520 х 1680 resolution, and it’s PWM-free so you don’t have to worry if you need to use your laptop for longer periods.

At the end of the day, the Huawei MateBook 14s is a compact, well-built machine with great battery life, snappy performance, and a great 90Hz 3:2 touchscreen display. Expectedly, the price is on the high side but the device is a solid offer with a lot of pros.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/huawei-matebook-14s/

Pros

  • Snappy performance
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Comfortable keyboard and touchpad
  • Great battery life
  • Hi-res 90Hz touchscreen with 3:2 aspect ratio (TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420))
  • Has comfortable viewing angles and good sRGB color coverage (TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420))
  • PWM-free display (TL142GDXP02-0 (TMX1420))


Cons

  • Soldered RAM
  • The CPU throttles below its base clock during heavy stress
  • Only the top-end configuration comes with Thunderbolt 4 support
  • Modest I/O

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