Huawei Matebook 16

[thering1975]

So my trusty 13 inch macbook has come to the end of it's useful life, with no new OS update and a processor long in the tooth (2016 dual core lol) it was time to search for a replacement machine.

I did run linux on the macbook and whilst it ran faster than osx has been lately there is too many gotchas like sound hacks etc, so i decided a replacement was needed.

My main goal was a machine with a bit of oomph, but a screen that can be compared to that of the macbook range, some decent specs withoput having to pay for every upgrade going (looking at you default 8gb ram apple)

I had read the review of the matebook 16 in PC Pro who to be fair gushed over the machine, it was only when i looked on online reviews i realised it was universally praised at it's £1K asking price. Anyways on Prime Day Curry's of all places had it reduced to £749 with £30 quid cashback from quidco.

Initial impressions are very good, screen is stunning and loving the ratio, keyboard is a joy to type on and the touchpad is good but not macbook good takes a bit of getting use to after the macbook trackpads. Speakers are on par but not as spatial as macbooks but front firing so thats ace

Under the hood is Amd Ryzen 5800H,16GB ram, 512Gb WD Black SSD.

Currently have Windows on one partition and Fedora 36 Workstation on the other. And boy does Fedora 36 work, feel and look great on this lappy, in fact i would go as far as saying it's like using a mac for the first time, a joy to behold. And in some aspects i think it works better than osx which to me has become a bit stale.

Already had the bottom of the unit off to see what upgrades can be done and so far have planned

1. 1tb Samsung 980 NVME
2. Ax210 Wifi 6E Card

Total upgrade cost of circa £100 (no apple tax lol)

I do have a 1tb Crucial NVME spare in my hackintosh but alas thats dual sided and despite the space Huawei went with some silly mounting position where it wont fit

Anyways tweaked the hell out of it to look like OSX at it's prime, but couldn't be happier it's an absolute beast, Windows will only ever see the light of day for Adobe Apps otherwise im finally all in on a linux OS (although i use Linux server OS's daily so i know the what not to do's lol)

After setting up the machine and using for a few days a couple of points regarding software which in no way compare to OSX

Touchpad in windows is usable but what an absolute cluster feck of a setup and this applies to all touchpads, Windows forces the trackpad AND any mice to share a single mouse control setting for scroll speed, you have to use out of date old software hacks to have them show as two different devices making it impossible to get a decent scroll

And in Linux its the same when you step outside of Wayland based apps. For example in Edge and Chrome there are no 2 finger gestures no pinch to zoom etc. Also 2 finger scroll is limited to a slower than natural speed with no adaptive fling speed. Switch to FIrefox which is obviously native and boom pinch to zoom working and scroll speed is on steroids.

So now it's time to see if opencore hackintosh could work although i doubt it with amd integrated but a project for a weekend of messing about. As much as i like linux it will never be mainstream for many reasons especially with newbies but im sticking with it cos it's leagues ahead of windows

 

[gilikindie]

Hello @thering1975

Seems you're having a great time with the matebook, and I do have one too which I love, and got the idea to install fedora. I'd like to ask how you overcame with the audio and suspend issues, out of the box I have no audio and cannot wake from suspend.

Thanks in advance!

 

[thering1975]

To be honest I have had no issues on fedora 36 with sound at all fully updated it worked out of the box.

I rarely use suspend from what I read it's hit and miss on many laptops fixed one kernel broken the next mines does lock out after a while of no use and wakes fine but don't think it's fully suspended. To be honest it takes like 2 seconds to shutdown and about 10 to boot so I tend to switch off

Only issue I face which is random is trackapad will stop responding maybe once a week.

I did upgrade the nvme drive and WiFi card however so it's not stock

I just tested suspend and it worked fine from the power menu, it suspended and then after a few minutes a hit the power button and it started fine, i also adjusted the /etc/systemd/logind.conf file to suspend when lid closed and that also worked fine.

For info i am on kernel - 5.18.13-200.fc36.x86_64

And yes i am loving this machine and fedora mix it really is as fluid if not more fluid than mac osx and i never thought i would say that about any linux distro. Been daily driving now for a few weeks and with some good tweaks its as close to osx as i can get it including advanced gestures through most apps, best scrolling experience with tweaks in all browsers. It's the first OS i have ever used where i dont actually need a desktop icons or even a dock as the desktop really is just there for when i switch and organise screens.

I will note however the placement of the wifi cards and or aerials is not the best, When viewing stats on my Unifi Dream Machine router its amazing how the TX rate of the device drops by 50% when the latop is on my lap or cushion if i raise it up at 45 degrees suddenly it goes back to 800mbps tx rate

And finally i am quite suprised how the 5800H and onboard GPU actually performs, i have PS2, Gamecube and Xbox emulation running at full speed all bells and whistles and absolutely loving it