Honor Announces MagicBook 14 & 15: AMD Ryzen Inside
by Anton Shilov on December 3, 2019 5:00 PM EST
Right on the heels of the MateBook D announcement, Huawei’s daughter company Honor has introduced its own MagicBook 14 and MagicBook 15 notebooks. The eye-catching machines look very similar to Huawei's machines, however they exclusively use AMD's Ryzen APUs.
Honor often favors stylish designs for their products, and MagicBook 14 and MagicBook 15 laptops are no exception. Both machines come in similar aluminum chassis with Mystic Silver or Space Gray finish as well as blue accents on the edges. As the names of the notebooks suggest, the systems feature 14-inch and 15.6-inch IPS display panels, with both panels offering Full-HD (1920x1080) resolutions. Meanwhile, since the bodies of the new MagicBooks are very similar to the chassis used by Huawei’s MateBook Ds, the dimensions of the machines actually end up being the same: the 14-inch model is 15.9 mm thick, whereas the 15-inch model is 16.9 mm thick. As for the weight, the MagicBook 14 weighs 1.38 kilograms, while the MagicBook 15 weighs 1.53 kilograms.
Inside the new laptops from Honor are AMD’s quad-core Ryzen 5 3500U and Ryzen 7 3700U APUs. The processors are paired with 8 GB or 16 GB of DDR4 DRAM, as well as a 256 GB or 512 GB PCIe SSD. As far as connectivity is concerned, the new MagicBooks are equipped with Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.0, one USB 3.0 Type-C port, two USB 2.0/3.0 Type-A ports, an HDMI output, and a 3.5-mm jack for headsets. Just like the more expensive Huawei-branded analogues, these notebooks also have a fingerprint reader, a webcam that hides in a key, stereo speakers and a microphone array.
For some awkward reason, Honor decided to equip the MagicBook 14 with a 56 Wh battery, but install a lower-capacity 42 Wh battery into the larger MagicBook 15. In case of Huawei’s MateBook D15 the tradeoff was explained (in part) by the presence of a 1 TB HDD inside the machine; but in case of the MagicBook 15 the design decision is a complete mystery at lease for now.
| Honor's 2019 MagicBook 14 & 15 | |||
| MagicBook 14 | MagicBook 15 | ||
| Display | 14-inch 1920×1080 | 15.6-inch 1920×1080 | |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700U - 4C/8T, 6 MB, 2.3 - 4.0 GHz, 15 W AMD Ryzen 5 3500U - 4C/8T, 6 MB, 2.1 - 3.7 GHz, 15 W |
||
| Graphics | AMD Radeon RX Vega 10 - 640 SPs at 1400 MHz AMD Radeon Vega 8 - 512 SPs at 1200 MHz |
||
| RAM | 8 GB or 16 GB | ||
| SSD | 256 GB or 512 GB PCIe SSD | ||
| Wi-Fi | Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) | ||
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5.0 | ||
| USB | 1 × USB 2.0 Type-A 1 × USB 3.0 Type-A 1 × USB 3.0 Type-C |
||
| GbE | - | ||
| Card Reader | - | ||
| Other I/O | HDMI, microphone, stereo speakers, audio jack | ||
| Battery | 56 Wh | 42 Wh | |
| Dimensions | Width: 322.5 mm Depth: 214.8 mm Thickness: 15.9 mm |
Width: 357.8 mm Depth: 229.9 mm Thickness: 16.9 mm |
|
| Weight | 1.38 kilograms | 1.53 kilograms | |
| Additional Information | ? | ? | |
| Price | ? | ? | |
Honor did not reveal pricing or availability dates for its 2019 MagicBook laptops, but it is safe to say that they will hit Chinese stores first and will cost less than Huawei’s MateBook D notebooks featuring similar configurations.
Related Reading:
- Huawei Unveils MateBook D14 & D15 Laptops: AMD Ryzen or Intel Comet Lake Inside
- Honor Announces MagicBook Pro with 16.1-Inch Display
- Honor’s Thin-and-Light MagicBook with AMD Ryzen Mobile Listed
Source: Honor
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airdrifting - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
So are those Zen+ or Zen 2? If it's still Zen+ I will wait.ragenalien - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
+. There are no Zen 2 APU's yet.nandnandnand - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Expect Zen 2 mobile announcement at CES 2020, Jan 7-10.Santoval - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Yeah, that's when Zen 2 based APUs should be (pre-)announced. I just hope that the rumor of them still having Vega iGPUs -despite the cores switching to Zen 2 along with the switch to TSMC's much tighter 7nm(+) node- will turn out to be invalid.AMD can differentiate discreet vs integrated Navi via numbers of SPs and dedicated graphics memory vs utilization of system memory. They really don't have to prolong Vega/GCN's retirement needlessly.
ET - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Vega seems like a solid enough rumour.Spunjji - Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - link
Sadly so. It's a big disappointment, given the serious performance per watt benefits of RDNA.lightningz71 - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
So far, what we have is solid evidence in the driver commits in Linux that Renoir will have VEGA CUs (specifically, the same mildly revised ones that were in VEGA VII, which was also made on 7nm.) This makes sense for how AMD approaches the mobile/APU market as more of a "lets put these pieces together and sell into a high volume space" kind of product. It also looks like it will have an updated media-encoding engine as well, which will be very welcome.Sttm - Thursday, December 5, 2019 - link
Zen+, 3000 mobile chips are worse than Intel, really no reason to get one except great pricing.azfacea - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
renoir will finally solve intel's supply issues. until now the ppl who had reason to switch to ryzen were mostly DIY PC and HEDT PC builders which are small even if AMD took 50%.renoir will give huge reasons for enterprise it and consumer laptops to switch (7nm power efficiency, pcie4, better security) and switch they will in droves and a large enough market to finally let intel off the hook for their supply issues. this will be a scalabale supply because TSMC unlike intel, has moore's law contributing to their transistor output.
cheer up intel you might finally have enough supply after losing 50% of laptops.
Santoval - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
That would be a very pyrrhic supply issue resolution. I am sure AMD would love that, though Intel would dread such a thing. When everything else fails Intel will resort to good old marketing and PR. It almost looks like they are spending more money on them nowadays than for R&D. And they surely have a lot more money to burn on FUD campaigns against AMD.