The Magic

Product Information

Honor says that six temperature sensors and a cooling-fan motor with higher spin rates helps cool the laptop more effectively. A memory card reader would also be appreciated as well as the inclusion of Thunderbolt 3 as a universal connector.

The pleasant experience continues on to the screen: the display is a 300nits model with a 1000:1 rated contrast ratio and a 100% sRGB color gamut. inch laptop ever built, it is even lighter than the smaller Apple’s MacBook Pro 13-inch albeit with a much larger footprint.The difference is even more marked once you include the integrated GPU, a Radeon RX Vega 6, one of the beefiest on the block.

The keyboard keys are almost apple-sque, almost nearly flush with the surface and backlit while the touchpad is generously proportioned but without any physical buttons. We understand Honor’s desire to have a faceoff with Apple’s MacBook Pro but we have to question the wisdom of adding yet another screen size, one which is after all only half an-inch diagonally bigger than most of its peers. Doing so means you can get a proper numeric keypad - surely a must at this size - in and move the speakers above the keyboard.It is a six-core processor with a base CPU speed of 3GHz, 11MB cache, 12 threads, six graphics cores running at 1. The combination of a very fast processor, a capable graphics subsystem, ample system memory and a nippy SSD means that this is a supremely capable laptop that will easily take on the mantle of a mobile workstation. While it does cost more than the Honor MBP, the Gram 17 has a bigger battery capacity, a higher screen resolution, Thunderbolt 3 ports and a numeric keypad. it doesn’t aspire to be the lightest or the thinnest although a screen-to-body ratio of 90% means that it is not much bigger than a 15.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the fastest non-workstation laptop we have tested to date, conceding defeat on compute benchmarks to the almighty and undisputed king of the hill, the 16-core XMG Apex 15. It is mightily quick, has a good battery life and overall provides a very rounded and polished computing experience. Now there’s a good reason why a hexa-core model was chosen and that has to do with the fact that the base MacBook Pro model has a 6-core CPU, the Intel Core i7-9750HF, a CPU launched last year with a comparable 45W TDP. Use a 16:10 panel - just like Apple’s - which will allow for more room above and below the keyboard.

One thing that is immediately noticeable is the lack of holes on the bezel which means that the camera sensor and the microphones are located elsewhere. The rest of the configuration includes two 8GB memory modules (a total of 16GB, soldered), a 512GB WD SN730 PCIe NVMe SSD and a Realtek 8822CE 802. The HD webcam - based on the Omnivision OV9734 - is a pop-up type that resides inside a key between F6 and F7 and don’t worry, it won’t damage your screen if you happen to close the display without remembering to push down the webcam. The keyboard is likely to divide opinions as always; it has a much shorter travel which in turn impacts on the feedback, which feels sharper and less noisy.