Original article below (written 13 March 2020): HONOR is preparing to bring its MagicBook into Malaysia. The China-based smartphone maker and sister brand to Huawei had recently informed us that its thin and light notebook will be making its way into the country sometime before March ends. Unfortunately, there is a small catch to this announcement and the upcoming launch. Instead of the new 14-inch and 15-inch models that we saw back in November last year, HONOR will instead be bringing in its first generation MagicBook, which launched back in 2018.
There’s also a difference in the machine’s hardware as well. Instead of an Intel Core series CPU and NVIDIA discrete GPU, the model HONOR is bringing in is powered by AMD’s 2nd generation Ryzen mobile processor. Specifically, the Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon graphics cores. The amount of memory is still the same at 8GB, but has double the PCIe NVMe SSD storage capacity at 512GB. Further, the display measures in at 14-inches, and has maximum resolution at Full HD only. Also, it isn’t a touch display, which is limiting, given than the later models do have touch displays.
A key difference between this MagicBook and its successors is the camera placement. Instead of having its built into the keyboard, the 1st generation MagicBook employs the more traditional approach of having it right above the display. At the time of writing, HONOR did not provide us with a local price for the MagicBook, but did say that such information will be announced during the product launch.
