The MagicBook 16 takes the design of its predecessor, the MagicBook Pro 16.1. Therefore, the case is still made of aluminum and decorated with the Honor logo in the middle of the lid – previously it was off-center on the left. Aside from refocusing the logo, the chassis has retained its silhouette, with a rectangular hood with rounded corners, while the bottom is thinner forward.
When the hood is opened, the 16.1-inch panel reveals a matte finish and relatively thin bezels. The black piano keyboard in the body color is clearly reminiscent of the Apple brand. Note the presence of two speaker blocks through the keyboard; The right button integrates the start button with a Windows Hello-compatible fingerprint sensor.
The keyboard seems to lack stiffness and typing is relatively noisy relative to a membrane keyboard; The slight strumming of the keyboard mechanism and the lack of stiffness in the center of the piano are certainly not alien to her.
The touchpad offers a nice glide and all Windows gestures are well taken into account. On the other hand, performing drag and drop by pressing is complicated. For left and right clicks, the bottom of the touchpad sinks with each click, leaving open space for potential dust.
Connectivity consists of two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports with USB3.2 Gen1 standard (5 Gbit/s); USB-C ports support charging and DisplayPort. An HDMI port and a jack complete this connection, which is only lacking in a memory card reader.
Wireless connectivity consists of wifi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 thanks to a chip from Qualcomm. The webcam has returned to its usual place above the screen and is no longer in a retractable key on the keyboard. However, the quality of the 720p HD sensor leaves something to be desired; The image lacks detail and worsens under unfavorable lighting conditions.
The MagicBook 16 cooling system is great. Includes two fans, two radiators and one heat pipe. So the temperature is well controlled and does not exceed 41 degrees Celsius at the level of the slots in front of the screen, while the keyboard remains below 31 degrees Celsius.
After 15 minutes of stress, the MagicBook 16’s noise pollution settled at 42.8dB, which is a perfectly acceptable level. However, we note activation of ventilation for no apparent reason.
Disassembly requires removal of 10 torx bolts. The panel opens very easily and provides access to removable and replaceable items (battery, wifi card, SSD). The RAM is soldered directly to the motherboard.
The Honor MagicBook 16 is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H processor accompanied by 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, it does not ship the latest generation of Ryzen, and for good reason, the MagicBook 16 was released. While in China, before the announcement of the Ryzen 6000 from AMD is a long time coming, hence the delay. However, the Ryzen 5 5600H has nothing to be ashamed of since its six Zen3 cores averaged 3.79GHz and 4.25GHz during our encoding process.
Obviously, with a processor with a 45W thermal envelope we find it especially in computers the gamesIt’s no surprise to see the MagicBook 16 achieve a performance index of 110 that places it between the HP Victus 16’s Core i5-11400H and the Dell Inspiron 16 Plus’ Core i7-11800H.
In practice, MagicBook performs office tasks with ease and can even be assigned to heavier tasks such as image processing and video encoding. However, in the absence of a dedicated graphics card, don’t rely on GPU acceleration capability or play the latest 1080p games in full detail.
A word about the SSD, which offers decent speeds (1.8 GB/s, read and write). We didn’t notice any slowdowns during fast video transfers.
With a 16.1-inch panel, the MagicBook 16 stands out for its width above all else (36.8 cm). Its 16/9 format allows its depth to be limited to 23.6 cm. Its 1.82 cm thickness and 1.8 kg weight makes it an easy to transport model as long as you have a bag that adapts to your measurements. Note that Honor has kept the 65W USB-C charger at 200g.
No miracle in terms of independence. With its battery of only 56 watts, the MagicBook 16 struggles to exceed 6 hours and 45 minutes under our usual protocol (Netflix in continuous reading under Chrome, screen set to 200 cd/m²). We thought the monitor’s default 144Hz frequency was responsible for this low, but lowering it to 72Hz provides “only” 30 minutes. So it will be necessary to lower the brightness to below 200 cd / m² (67% under Windows) hoping to reach 8 hours.
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