Huawei's best laptops get a 13th-gen upgrade – unless you're in America

(Image credit: Huawei)

published 10 May 2023

Two of the best laptops for Windows users just got a big upgrade: the Huawei MateBook X Pro and Huawei MateBook 16S are now available with the latest 13th Gen Intel Core CPUs – and unlike some rivals, Huawei hasn't upped the price. The X Pro is still £1,799 and the 16S is £1,499.

The processor improvement should address one of the few niggles we had about the current-gen MateBook X Pro, which was its battery life; more efficient processors should result in better stamina.

Unfortunately for US readers, these particular laptops aren't officially available to you: Huawei is not allowed to work with companies based in the US due to the government's ban on the company, although no doubt they'll turn up on the likes of eBay fairly soon anyway.

What's the difference between the Huawei MateBook X Pro and the MateBook 16S?

The MateBook X Pro is the Apple rival, a very lightweight and powerful laptop that's very similar to Dell's all-conquering XPS. As we said in our review of the 2022 model, "The Huawei Matebook X Pro (2022) can do almost everything well - the 14.2-inch screen is bright, sharp and colourful, the performance is fast and reliable, it’s loaded with up-to-date connectivity and it definitely looks the part too." The new version can be configured with processors up to the Intel Core i7-1360p.

The 16S is the touchscreen model, with a very large 16-inch display. It's now available with up to the Intel Core i9-13900H, delivering a speed boost of up to 30%. It was already one of the best large laptops around, and the new processors bring it bang up to date.

These aren't the only new Huawei products to be revealed this week. The firm has also shown off the Huawei P60 Pro, its new and photography-focused flagship phone with an extremely large lens and what our tech ed Mike Lowe describes as a macro mode "unlike anything I've ever used in any phone to date."

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).