Honor launches the MagicBook Pro 16, a versatile notebook with a hunter pedigree, marking its debut as the first AI PC. How many users still recall the Honor Hunter V7700 gaming notebook from 2020? It was hailed as mid-range pricing with an almost high-end experience. A commendable debut for Honor’s gaming notebook lineup.
Now, we have the sequel, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16. This is also Honor’s maiden voyage into the world of AI PCs. Positioned as a versatile notebook blending sleekness with gaming prowess. With a power consumption of 140W, the sequel to the Hunter Bloodline is unleashed! Let’s dive into the review of the Honor MagicBook Pro 16: A sleek all-rounder powered by AI.
First up, is the Core Ultra 7 155 processor. We’ve put the emerging Meteor Lake processor through its paces before. Featuring a modular architecture, allowing modules like media, graphics, display, and input/output to be activated on demand. It boasts 6 P-Core, 8 E-Core, and 2 LP E-Core, totaling 16 Cores and 22 threads.
Enter the dessert-level RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, the talk of the town. With 3072 CUDA stream processors, 8GB 128bit GDDR6 video memory, and an impressive AI computing power of up to 686 TOPS.
Despite housing the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, Honor has employed innovative weight-reduction techniques. The result? A svelte 17.9mm thin and 1.86kg light body. Despite its slim profile, it can handle a whopping 140W of power consumption, ensuring seamless performance for demanding tasks like 3A masterpiece games and 3D modeling.
Design
We received the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 in Yunni color. Side A consists of metal but adopts a new color scheme, abandoning the anodizing process for a 3D colorful spraying process. This change presents a warm color shift, creating a unique texture. Moreover, it has undergone 21 test cases, ensuring durability.
The new process results in a thickness of 17.9mm and a weight of 1.86kg, making it the thinnest and lightest yet. The integrated display version is even lighter at 1.79kg. The 16-inch IPS screen boasts a 16:10 ratio and ultra-narrow 2.36mm side frames, achieving a 93% screen-to-body ratio.
In terms of specifications, the screen offers a resolution of 3072×1920, a 165Hz refresh rate, and a 3ms response time. It covers 100% sRGB and DCI-P3 color gamuts, supporting 1.07 billion colors with a brightness of 500nit and HDR400 certification.
The screen features Oasis eye protection technology for extended comfort during long sessions. Additionally, it has passed various eye protection certifications. Moving to the keyboard, it’s backlit and island-style with a large touchpad below. Speakers flank the keyboard, offering immersive sound with Honor’s spatial audio. The power button integrates a fingerprint sensor for seamless authentication. Vents are present on both sides.
Main ports are on the left side, including a 3.5mm audio jack, USB-C, and Thunderbolt 4. The rear houses HDMI 2.1, 2 USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports, and the power adapter interfaces. Ventilation grilles dominate the D side.
The laptop features a new cooling system with a large heat pipe, gaming-grade fan, and thin cooling fins. It utilizes multiple air outlets to maintain performance while minimizing noise. A 75Wh battery powers the device, and it supports additional SSD installation. The package includes a 200W power adapter for charging.
AI
Honor introduces new interactive AI subtitles and Magic text to boost office productivity. As the first AI PC from Honor, the MagicBook Pro 16 integrates the Magic AI workbench, featuring human-computer interaction and a multi-terminal ecosystem powered by platform-level AI.
Moreover, the super workbench enhances user experience by enabling global information management and supporting smart interconnection, global collection, Honor Notes, and Honor Calendar functionalities. The YOYO AI super assistant utilizes advanced AI semantic understanding to perform tasks like intelligent search, document summarization, and intelligent recommendations.
To validate its effectiveness, we conducted tests on an article. With YOYO AI’s assistance, tasks such as generating article summaries or creating outlines become remarkably efficient, with improved accuracy, ensuring reliable support for users’ work.
Its intelligent search is notably efficient, utilizing AI fusion and deep learning algorithms for OCR recognition of picture text and semantic analysis. For instance, simply entering the keyword “cat” prompts accurate search results, even without relevant file names or descriptions, making it highly convenient.
An advantage of the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 is its proactive provision of AI subtitle service based on user usage scenarios. For instance, when watching videos lacking Chinese or English subtitles, the AI subtitle feature swiftly provides real-time text conversion, enhancing the viewing experience.
Furthermore, it offers foreign language translation, instantly converting foreign content into Chinese, facilitating easy comprehension, and eliminating language barriers. Post-testing, its response speed, and accuracy prove commendable, ensuring a seamless viewing experience.
In cases where web pages are difficult to copy, Magic Text swiftly extracts text, including support for media recognition such as pictures and videos, enabling convenient operations like copying, reading aloud, and translation.
Additionally, the built-in application recommendations include various AI-supported programs for documents, images, videos, translation, and programming, indicating a promising future for AI integration.
Hardware
The Core Ultra 7 155H outperforms the Ryzen 7 7840HS in both single-core and multi-core performance.
To optimize the performance of the Honor MagicBook Pro 16, we switched the performance management to “HUNTER mode” and set the system power plan to “Best Performance” in Honor Computer Manager.
Let’s begin with Hardware Dog.
Hardware Dog, a professional tool by Driver Home, offers a comprehensive PC analysis. It utilizes fast technology algorithms and renowned test modules like 3DMark to assess processor, GPU, memory, and hard disk performance. Through global rankings, users gauge their equipment’s performance effortlessly.
The Honor MagicBook Pro 16 scores 556438, outperforming 99% of notebook users. The evaluation ranks it among hardcore players. The Core Ultra 7 155H scores 188972, the RTX 4060 Laptop scores 267310, the memory scores 95859, and the hard disk scores 47640.
Now, let’s delve into CPU-Z.
In the CPU-Z benchmark, the Core Ultra 7 155H achieves a single-thread score of 745.6 and a multi-thread score of 8407.2.
Next up, CINEBENCH R15.
The single-thread score hits 272, with a multi-thread score of 2903.
Moving on to CINEBENCH R20.
The single-thread score records 712, with a multi-thread score of 6901.
Now, CINEBENCH R23.
Here, the single-thread score tallies 1849, with a multi-thread score of 17477.
Next, CINEBENCH 2024.
The single-thread score is 110, with a multi-thread score of 1029.
Now, let’s talk about Chess.
The Core Ultra 7 155H demonstrates a relative performance multiple of 69.48 with 16 threads and 33,350 thousand steps per second.
In terms of single-core performance, the Core Ultra 7 155H leads the Ryzen 7 7840HS by 10.8% and shows a 6.9% performance boost over the previous generation Core i5-13500H. Regarding multi-core performance, it maintains its lead, surpassing the Ryzen 7 7840HS by 6.8% and exhibiting a 21.2% improvement compared to the Core i5-13500H.
With the YOYO AI super assistant’s aid, article summaries and outlines can be generated swiftly, enhancing information processing efficiency and accuracy. The AI’s smart search feature efficiently extracts key information from text materials, offering users substantial work support.
Honor MagicBook Pro 16’s AI subtitle service is a standout feature. It seamlessly provides subtitles for videos lacking Chinese or English subtitles, translating foreign languages into Chinese within seconds, enhancing user accessibility.
The MagicBook Pro 16 also offers Magic Text for quick text extraction from web pages, images, and videos, streamlining operations. Built-in application recommendations encompass various AI programs for documents, images, videos, translation, and programming, hinting at AI’s burgeoning potential.
Graphics performance
Now let’s delve into the results.
Theoretical test:
Time Spy:
Firstly, let’s discuss Time Spy.
The RTX 4060 Laptop scored a total of 10649 in 3DMark’s Time Spy project, with the GPU graphics score at 10607.
Fire Strike Extreme:
Moving on to Fire Strike Extreme.
In 3DMark’s Fire Strike project, the total score reached 12858, with the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU graphics score recorded at 13566.
Game test:
Now let’s evaluate its performance in various games.
Borderlands 3:
With 2K resolution and default high villain image quality, plus DX12 image quality, Borderlands 3 achieved an average frame rate of 54.78 FPS.
Cyberpunk 2077:
In Cyberpunk 2077, at 2K resolution with default superb image quality, the average frame rate stood at 52.39 FPS.
Assassin’s Creed: Hall of Valor:
Assassin’s Creed: Hall of Valor, running at 2K resolution with default high-quality settings, maintained an average frame rate of 69 FPS.
Far Cry 6:
Far Cry 6 delivered an average frame rate of 75 FPS at 2K resolution with preset ultra-high quality.
Horizon: Zero Dawn:
Horizon: Zero Dawn, set at 2K resolution with default ultimate quality image settings, reached an average frame rate of 88 FPS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, operating at 2K resolution with DX12 and the highest image quality settings, achieved an average frame rate of 122 FPS.
Forza Horizon 5:
Forza Horizon 5 ran smoothly with an average frame rate of 70 FPS at 2K resolution with default extreme image quality settings.
Screen Test
The screen of Honor MagicBook Pro 16 boasts exceptional quality, covering 99% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, along with 100% sRGB and 88% Adobe RGB. Moving to specifics, in SDR mode, it delivers a brightness of up to 380 nits and a contrast ratio of 1020:1.
Even at 0% brightness, it maintains a minimal luminance of only 0.8 nits. When tested separately for brightness, SDR mode hits 380 nits, while HDR peaks at 456 nits. Switching to color accuracy, measurements reveal a maximum Delta-E value of 1.12, a minimum of 0.28, and an average of 0.61.
In terms of memory, Honor MagicBook Pro 16 comes equipped with 32GB of LPDDR5x-6400 memory, boasting impressive read, write, and copy bandwidths of 76362MB/s, 73381MB/s, and 81523MB/s respectively, with a latency of 139.4ns. Turning to the hard disk, it’s built-in with the SN740 model, supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 speed.
During CrystalDiskMark testing, it achieves impressive sequential speeds of 5.2GB/s for reading and 4.9GB/s for writing, with 4K random read speeds at 84MB/s and 4K random write speeds at 246MB/s.
Battery Test Results
In the single-bake CPU test with the Core Ultra 7 155H, the oven reached a PL2 power consumption of 108W. After 10 minutes, power consumption stabilized at 75W. Temperatures ranged between 90 and 96°C, with P-Core maxing at 4.2GHz, E-Core at 2.8GHz, and LP E-Core at 2.2GHz.
Moving on to the single-baked GPU, using FurMark on the RTX 4060 Laptop at 1080P resolution with anti-aliasing off, GPU power consumption stabilized at nearly 115W after 10 minutes. The frequency held at 2055MHz with a temperature of 76°C.
In the double roasting phase, combining GPU and CPU burners, the Core Ultra 7 155H stabilized at 42W power consumption. P-Core frequency settled at 2.9GHz, E-Core at 2.7GHz, and LP E-Core at 2.5GHz. Temperature leveled at 82°C.
Meanwhile, the RTX 4060 Laptop’s GPU maintained a power consumption of 100W, with the frequency at 1890MHz and temperature at 76°C. The Honor MagicBook Pro 16 exhibited an overall performance of about 140W.
Moving on to the endurance test, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16, equipped with a 75Wh lithium-ion battery, underwent PCMark 10’s modern office test for battery life assessment. Switching system performance mode to “Best Energy Efficiency” and performance management to “Smart Mode” in Honor Computer Manager, with display output set to Ruixuan Core Display.
The Honor MagicBook Pro 16 demonstrated outstanding endurance, lasting 13 hours and 54 minutes from full charge to 2% remaining battery. This performance ranks it among the top for independent graphics notebooks.
Verdict
After three and a half years, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16, boasting a hunter pedigree, surprises us anew. From its sleek appearance to its deeper essence, this AI-focused notebook offers a range of conveniences. Seamlessly integrated with the magic AI workbench, it simplifies tasks like text, graphics, and audio-video processing.
Moreover, Honor’s smart interconnection feature effortlessly links mobile phones, tablets, and notebooks. With a mere finger’s movement, documents, images, and videos can be swiftly transferred among devices.
Performance-wise, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 impresses with its efficient power consumption and temperature management. Achieving a dual-baking power consumption of 140W with a temperature of only 80°C is a feat unmatched by many thin and light notebooks.
Thanks to Honor Turbo support, stable performance is ensured. The Core Ultra 7 155H can unleash a maximum release of 75W, while the RTX 4060 Laptop GPU reaches 115W.
Whether undergoing theoretical tests or handling demanding 2K AAA games, its performance rivals that of dedicated gaming notebooks.
But what truly astounds me is the battery life. Unlike most thin and light notebooks, which struggle to surpass 5 hours, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 easily delivers nearly 14 hours of usage with its 75Wh battery.
This exemplifies the prowess of Honor Turbo technology, providing users with both extended battery life and exceptional performance.
In terms of user experience, the Honor MagicBook Pro 16 transcends the label of a mere thin and light notebook. It’s more aptly described as an all-encompassing notebook with AI support. With a starting price of 6,199 yuan, it’s a compelling option for interested buyers to consider.
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