Author: batteryforpc

There has been some fierce competition for the coveted spot of Tech Advisor’s laptop of the year. But in the end, it came down to the best balance of features and cost – and no device does it better than the Honor MagicBook 14, which comes in at the very affordable price of £549.99.

The original MagicBook 14 was launched at the beginning of the year, and was the company’s first big step into the Western laptop market. Later in the year we also saw a re-released version with some upgraded specs and a few minor tweaks to justify its slightly higher £669 price tag.

Both generations of the laptop feel premium, with a 14in display (though there’s also a 15in model available too), a 1080p IPS LCD screen, and very slim bezels. The exterior aluminium finish both looks and feels high-end, and the device is lightweight enough to be easily portable. The keyboard also features a hidden pop-up webcam, allowing for that extra layer of privacy for users.

Battery life is great on this laptop, lasting an impressive 13 hours of continuous video playback in our internal tests. This means that it will easily handle a full day’s worth of work, and then some, in real day-to-day use.

Performance is just as impressive, as the refreshed MagicBook 14 packs a powerful Ryzen 5 4500U processor, paired with 8GB RAM and 512GB storage. This makes it a great all-round device for work and productivity whilst still being capable of running the odd game or heavy-duty programme such as Adobe software. 

Of course, if you would prefer slightly lighter performance and a cheaper price, you can still opt for the cheaper original version, which has a previous-gen Ryzen 5 3500U processor and 256GB storage. Despite being an older model, it is still a great device that shares most of the same standout features of the updated MagicBook.

If you want to get your hands on the Honor MagicBook 14, here are all the places where you can pick it up from right now:

We also loved…

Whilst the Honor MagicBook 14 was our favourite pick of the year, there are a few other devices that deserve mentioning.

The Pixelbook Go is arguably the best Chromebook on the market right now, complete with a classy and refined design and an easy-to-use Chrome OS interface. However, the higher-end models are on the expensive side.

Apple’s MacBooks have also had a change in the processors, moving from Intel to Apple’s own M1 chip. This switch has boosted the battery life, graphics, speed and performance of both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, and could be the biggest shake-up to the laptop industry in years.

Finally, there’s the Huawei MateBook 14, which is essentially a more premium take on Honor’s MagicBook 14. It comes in slightly more expensive, starting at £689 at the time of writing, but for that you’re getting stronger processor options and a slimmer, more premium build.

We’re still announcing the rest of our 2020 award picks, but so far we’ve revealed the best TV, tablet, and audio tech of the year so far, so make sure to check them out.

While we are waiting for the full review to come out (or maybe check out the existing review of the not-so-different Xiaomi Mi 10T), it would be a good idea to take a closer look at what seems to be one of the major flaws of the Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro. Before moving on, I have to highlight that this is my personal experience with a handset that I purchased and it could be a hardware problem that only affects my unit or a certain batch.

In most cases, mobile phone photography tests involve night shots of various buildings and landscapes, without focusing on shots that involve a single light source. Last night, when I decided to take out my new Mi 10T Pro for some night shots I wasn’t expecting to bump into such serious issues. The video embedded below should say it all, but earlier today I also discovered the presence of the ominous green dot in day shots.

The image embedded at the end of the article should say everything about the daylight impact on the camera problem. To sum it all up, I should point out the following:

The problem surfaces both when shooting videos and still images.

The ultra-wide and macro cameras are not affected by it.

Using the Pro mode does not help much, as long as the camera in use is the main shooter and not one of the two secondaries mentioned above.

The green dot is not the only artifact that I noticed, as you can see in the image above and in the movie (there is that diagonal line in both, although it only shows up briefly in the video).

The video/still image resolution has no noticeable impact on the artifact(s).

To make it all as clear as possible, I will conclude this article by saying that the phone runs the latest MIUI version available (Global 12.0.6 Stable, based on Android 10), the camera assembly looks all right and is perfectly clean, the phone has not been subjected to any shocks, and the usual night shots without powerful light sources come out nice, although some minor artifacts show up sometimes in the average “street at night” photos as well. Am I the only one facing this problem or we should start a club?