The new HONOR MagicBook 14 is only different with its predecessor in the CPU.
Monitors and Keyboards
Just like its name, MagicBook 14 has a 14-inch display. The IPS LCD screen has matte processing and classic 1920x1080px resolution. Honor ads have a brightness of 250 nits and a contrast ratio of 800: 1.
We measured 277 nits of screen brightness for the first edition of MagicBook 14. It is quite considerable. The upgraded version measured a higher actual brightness of 294 nits. It is better than Honor claimed. The frame of this panel is thin with 84% of the screen-to-body ratio. The indoor experience of using the screen is good. The effect of non-reflection matte is good. The color of screen is good and powerful. The brightness is suitable for all environments except the sunny outdoor.
The full-size keyboard is as easy to use as the original MagicBook 14 keyboard. The keys are very large, well-spaced, smooth and not sticky. The touchpad has a good size. It is a little wider than most other machines of this size. The plastic surface is smooth and sensitive. The multi-touch gesture is perfect. The power key is also a fingerprint scanner. It supports caching with one pressing. It will start Windows and log in with your fingerprint without verification.
Performance
This is the most exciting part. The original MagicBook 14 uses Ryzen 5 3500U processor. It has 4 physical cores and 8 threads. They are built on 12 nm nodes of AMD and run on 15W TDP. The upgraded version uses Ryzen 5 4500U, 6 physical cores, 6 threads. It adopts the AMD's new 7 nm node. The Ryzen 5 4500U has 8 MB cache twice that of L3 and retains 15W of TDP.
We use Geekbench 5 to make a test. Ryzen 5 4500U CPU scores 20% higher than Ryzen 5 3500U on single core. 30% higher than Ryzen 5 3500U on multi-core.
We tested a 512 GB M2 NVMe SSD through SSSTC. We got good sequential read speed of 1,947 mb and write speed of 1,381 mb. It means performance is reliable.
We conducted stress tests on CPU and Vega GPU to evaluate thermal performance. Test it under the temperature of 1397Mhz and about 27 degree centigrade. It rises to 75 degrees Celsius and 3443Mhz before throttling to 65 degrees Celsius and 3143MHz. We found no differences between the normal mode and the performance mode. GPU only reached 62 degrees.
During the stress test, the fan was working to reduce the temperature. We hardly heard it whistle. MagicBook 14 is a very quiet machine. It has no noise under normal load. Even better, the chassis show no heat anywhere. Only the top right corner at the bottom of the screen gets a little hot. The heat dissipation performance is excellent.
Summary
The HONOR MagicBook 14 costs 549.99 pounds now. Its configuration has 12 nm Ryzen 5 3500U, 8 GB of memory and 256GB of storage space. The upgraded 7nmRyzen 5 4500U model costs 669.99 pounds. The upgraded version has 512GB of storage space. There is a 70-pound coupon for November purchase. This is cost-effective for twice the storage space. The CPU performance is improved by 20%-30%. The higher efficiency brought about by the updated manufacturing process is evident. The upgraded HONOR MagicBook 14 is worth it.
