Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020) review – aluminum chassis in a low-price machine

Quite honestly, Huawei is far from being a big player on the laptop market. With the likes of Lenovo, Acer, Dell, HP, ASUS, and to some extent MSI dominating the Windows game, the Chinese manufacturer feels like a newcomer. However, with 100% reported annual growth in 2020, things seem ever so bright for them.

One of the key selling points of their notebooks is the price, as well as the simplistic design. Today, we have a notebook that can be an epitome for the aforementioned sentence, and it is called MateBook D 15 (2020). Our particular version of the model features AMD Ryzen 3000U from yesteryear, and this is probably the key to its mild price tag. Another cool feature is the Huawei Share system, which enables quick connections to Huawei smartphones via NFC.

Let’s waste no more time and dig inside this surprisingly low-priced notebook, and see what is it made of.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/huawei-matebook-d-15-2020/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020) - Specs

  • BOE TV156FHM-N41 (BOE0872)
  • Color accuracy  4.4  2.8
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 512GB SSD + up to 1000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 8GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, Windows 10 Pro
  • Battery
  • 42Wh, 3-cell, 42Wh
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 357.8 x 229.9 x 16.9 mm (14.09" x 9.05" x 0.67")
  • Weight
  • 1.53 kg (3.4 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 2.0
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • HDMI
  • Card reader
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.0
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • 2x Microphones
  • Speakers
  • 2x 2W Speakers
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

Inside the package, there are some paper manuals, as well as a 65W power brick, and a USB Type-C cable.


Design and construction

To answer the last question of the intro section, the notebook is predominantly made out of aluminum. Nevertheless, the material is quite thin, which enables thin chassis (16.9mm) and lightweight (1.53 kg). Sadly, though, this results in a bit bendy body, and twisting it creates gaps on either side of the touchpad. A bit unpleasant, but not harmful to the device.

On the other side, the lid is pretty strong, mainly thanks to the aluminum cover that supports it. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to open it with a single hand.

And similarly to the 14-inch version, the camera is not located where it should be (above the display), but it’s embedded into a dedicated key, onto the top row of the keyboard. No comment. Speaking of the keyboard, our unit lacks a backlight and it has very shallow travel. Thankfully, it’s clicky, which kind of saves the situation.

Beneath it, we have a pretty large touchpad with a Mylar surface (plastic imitating glass), which has good gliding, but the tracking isn’t perfect. Don’t get us wrong, it is not bad, but we’ve definitely worked with better units.

Traditionally, the speakers are firing downwards, while the cool air enters the machine from the bottom panel and exits from in between the lid and the base.

Ports

On the left side, you will find a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, used for charging and data, then there is a USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port and an HDMI connector. And if you look to the right, you’ll see two USB Type-A 2.0 ports, as well as an audio jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options, and maintenance

Prior to getting inside of the machine, you need to undo 10 Torx-head screws. Then just pop the bottom panel with a plastic tool, and that’s it.

The cooling design here is very reminiscent of the one on the 14-inch version of the model. There is a rather long heat pipe, attached to a decent heat sink and a pretty beefy fan in terms of diameter.

Here, we see two storage options. There is an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, which is currently occupied on our unit, as well as a 2.5-inch SATA drive bay. Interestingly, we didn’t find any connectors inside the packaging, so you need to buy them separately. By the way, as you can see, the memory is soldered to the motherboard and comes in 8GB and 16GB variants.

Last and a bit confusing, is the battery. Instead of the 56Wh unit, we saw on the 14-inch model, there is a 42Wh pack on this device.


Display quality

Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020) has a Full HD IPS panel with a model number BOE TV156FHM-N41 (BOE0872). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness of 250 nits in the middle of the screen and 240 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 7%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6370K – slightly warmer than the sRGB standard of 6500K, which is great.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

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. The contrast ratio is good – 1460:1.

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. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the 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 D 15 (2020)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 52% 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 D 15 (2020) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

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 = 29 ms


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 D 15 (2020)’s display uses PWM to adjust its brightness at all levels. On the bright side, the relatively high frequency of the flickers reduces the negative effect to some extent.

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.

Conclusion

Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and good contrast ratio. However, its budget nature leads to a narrow color coverage, as well as a flickering backlight (although the frequency is relatively high).

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020) configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS BOE TV156FHM-N41 (BOE0872).

*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 D 15 (2020)’s speakers produce a clear, loud sound with good quality. Its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities can be downloaded from here: https://consumer.huawei.com/en/support/laptops/matebook-d-15-amd/

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. This notebook’s 42Wh battery lasts for 6 hours and 54 minutes of Web browsing and 6 hours and 59 minutes of video playback.

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


CPU options

Our unit comes with one of two processor options – the Ryzen 5 3500U, or the Ryzen 7 3700U. By the time you are reading this review, there might be Ryzen 4000U CPU options, as well, so we would strongly advise going for one of them.


GPU options

Respectively, you can only get the notebook with the integrated Radeon Graphics, depending on the processor you get. Also, the Intel version of the device comes with the GeForce MX250.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS71 fps57 fps42 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS84 fps58 fps32 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.

AMD Ryzen 5 3500U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020)3.14 GHz (B+50%) @ 64°C3.00 GHz (B+43%) @ 71°C3.05 GHz (B+45%) @ 77°C
Lenovo V155 (15)3.18 GHz (B+51%) @ 63°C2.92 GHz (B+39%) @ 71°C2.73 GHz (B+30%) @ 74°C
Lenovo IdeaPad S540 (14″)3.24 GHz (B+54%) @ 60°C3.08 GHz (B+47%) @ 66°C2.95 GHz (B+40%) @ 72°C
ASUS ZenBook 14 UM4312.95 GHz (B+40%) @ 65°C2.92 GHz (B+39%) @ 68°C2.24 GHz (B+7%) @ 56°C

Not only were the temperatures completely under control, but the average clock speed never went below 3.00 GHz.

Comfort during full load

And while the fan was clearly audible, it was never too loud, and the left side of the keyboard got up to 40-41C.


Verdict

Another budget alternative. The laptop has its issues like shallow key travel, lack of a backlight, pathetic I/O (with two USB Type-A 2.0 ports), and average battery life (roughly 7 hours of Web browsing/video playback). Expect even lower numbers, when you’re doing productivity work with it. Also, the memory is soldered to the motherboard, which is not ideal, so if you want to future proof your notebook, go for the 16GB version, which happens to be the largest available option.

Huawei MateBook D 15 (2020)’s IPS panel has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and good contrast ratio. However, its budget nature leads to a narrow color coverage, as well as a flickering backlight (although the frequency is relatively high).

On the other side, the thermals seem to be good and if we have to give you advice, wait for the Ryzen 4000U models to hit the shelves, as they will provide a significant upgrade in performance while being a lot more efficient, thanks to the 7nm manufacturing process.

Since the market has seen the Lenovo Ideapad 5 (14) it is hard to recommend the MateBook D 15 (2020), but if you really like the brand, and you happen to own a Huawei smartphone, getting this machine is actually not a bad idea.

Pros

  • Decent performance and thermals
  • Rare aluminum built, despite the low price
  • Good viewing angles and contrast ratio
  • Optional fingerprint reader


Cons

  • Uses PWM for all brightness levels (although it’s not aggressive)
  • Covers only 52% of sRGB (AUO B156HTN06.1)
  • Lacks an SD card reader and a Thunderbolt port

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/huawei-matebook-d-15-2020/

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Martin
Martin
3 years ago

Ok when to expect ryzen 4000u and 16gb on this matebook 15 inch in Bulgaria?

Francis
Francis
3 years ago
  • You write in VERDICT: Lacks an SD card reader and a USB Type-C port, but in specifications laptop have USB Type-C????? Where You lie?