If you’re a creative type, software applications like Adobe’s Photoshop and Premiere will be pinned to your taskbar and a regular part of your workflow. If your more of a developer type, then Visual Studio may be more your style. Either way, you can never have enough screen real-estate, as these pro-level applications offer an array of toolbars to get the job done.
Having a device like the Huawei Matebook X Pro laptop is the perfect antidote, offering a massive resolution of 3000 x 2000 pixels, arranged in a 3:2 aspect ratio. This offers substantially more vertical space than a traditional 16:9 display, making it easy to fit your application panels, and still leave plenty of space to see your content.
Take something like Adobe Premiere, or After Effects, the timeline at the bottom of the screen consumes the bottom 1/3rd on most displays, however on the Matebook X Pro, that’s only around 1/5th of the screen real estate.
If you have decent eye sight, you can also drop the scaling in Windows 10, down from the default 200%, to 150% and fit even more on the screen. Thanks to the display being 13.9″ this is actually still very usable, a subtle, but important increase over the fairly standard 13″ displays found in most laptops.
Whether it’s editing photos, creating visual effects or developing applications, your job as a creative professional is almost certainly mobile. When transiting between your office and your client meetings, or travel to events and training, you’re going to want a device that’s thin and light, so it’s easy to take with you, wherever your work takes you.
In the past, I’ve found myself doing work in the back of an Uber, on a plane, in a bus, the back seat of a car, at a coffee shop, and yes, of course the office. Thankfully the Matebook X Pro is well suited to virtually all locations.
Many laptops with this level of performance come with a weight penalty, so much so, that creatives often add another device to their life, at great expense. Instead of buying a tablet to take to client review meetings, you’re much better served by having the actual device with you that you can tweak and edit designs based on feedback. Not only is it a better workflow for you, but your clients will be delighted with your improved responsiveness.
Something I love about this device is the massive 1TB SSD. While I backup to the cloud, having a large capacity drive inside your machine, is often under-rated. Many laptops in 2020 are still shipping with 256GB drives, but at 4x that size, you have greater flexibility to install all the apps you want, store your files and have room for some games as well.
My regular setup includes most of the Creative Cloud suite, along with Visual Studio, Office 365 client applications and several utilities. If I find some downtime, adding a couple of games from Steam is also fun.
With all those demands of productivity (and some entertainment), you’ll need a level of performance that can keep up with your work. Thankfully inside this body, lies a 10th-gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a dedicated Nvidia GPU.
With so many of the applications used by creative professionals, now leveraging GPU-acceleration, moving past on-board graphics really sets this laptop apart.
Finally, there’s the challenge of battery life. Thankfully Huawei have included a large battery, 56 Wh lithium polymer battery that will get you through an 8-hour work day, even when being used by power users.
When you do run low on power, Huawei have included a 65W Type-C charger, making top ups a matter of minutes. If you’re like me and also run an Android phone, having a USB-C charger on-hand also gives you the convenience to take a single charger for both devices.
Between the display, the performance and battery life, the Huawei Matebook X Pro may be the best laptop for Creative Professionals.
The MateBook X Pro is available online and in store now for $3,299 from Huawei directly, or JB HiFi, MobileCiti and eBay. As we approach the end of financial year, don’t forget about the tax deductions available for electronics or just be on the lookout for great deals in the leadup to July 1st.
If you purchase the Huawei Matebook X Pro before June 17, you’ll score a bonus pair of Huawei Freebuds 3 active noise cancellation Bluetooth earbuds, valued at A$299.
Huawei is also celebrating the EOFY with some deals on MateBook D 14 and 15 where you can save up to 25% until the end of June.
To find out more about these offers, you can head to the Huawei website.