Why I traded my MacBook Air for a laptop you’ve never heard of

I’ve been using the M2 MacBook Air since its launch, and it has been a reliable laptop. It’s not perfect though. I wish the display was better and that the laptop was lighter as I’ve had experiences where my carry-on luggage ended up being heavier than expected. And both of these are things even the M3 MacBook Air doesn’t address.

What I didn’t know, however, was that those wishes could come true in a more feature-packed laptop most people have never heard of. I’m talking about the Honor MagicBook Art 14, powered by the Snapdragon X.

Honor introduced it earlier this year at IFA 2024, but it only went on sale a couple of weeks ago in Europe. It’s priced higher than the MacBook Air (and isn’t available in North America), but after using it for three weeks, I haven’t looked back since.

Surprisingly light and strong

Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

The Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon features a notch-less OLED display that’s 14.6 inches in size and offers a 120Hz refresh rate in a laptop body that weighs just 2.25 pounds (1.02 kilograms).

That’s 0.5 pounds (220 grams) lighter than the 13-inch MacBook Air and 1.1 pounds (490 grams) less than the 15-inch MacBook Air. The difference is noticeable as soon as you pick it up. It’s surprisingly light for its size and can easily slide into the slimmest laptop pockets, thanks to its 0.45-inch (11.5 mm) thickness. That makes it nearly as thin as the MacBook Air, surprisingly.

The slim and light profile doesn’t mean compromises on other aspects. You get a 14.6-inch OLED touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 3120 x 2080 pixel resolution, making for a 3:2 aspect ratio. The taller shape of the screen is still fairly uncommon, and only used on options like the Surface Laptop 7th Edition. It’s sharp, vivid, and supports 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. Honor has also included a much-loved feature from its phones — 4,320Hz PWM flicker-free dimming to reduce eye strain. There isn’t another laptop that offers that kind of portability in a laptop this high-end.

Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

The screen is also plenty bright, going up to 700 nits in HDR, making for some very enjoyable Netflix and Prime Video watching. The only slight inconvenience I faced was when working outdoors because the display is very reflective. This issue can be mitigated to an extent by turning the screen up to maximum brightness, which is higher than that of the Apple laptop. However, a less reflective display would have made it perfect.

That said, it’s fantastic for working indoors, in cafes, or in airport lounges. I love having a bigger, brighter, and bolder display in a lighter design.

The elephant in the room

Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

According to the company, the MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon offers a 97% screen-to-body ratio. One of the first things you’ll notice is the lack of a webcam. It’s not on the top, bottom, or hidden inside a function button — instead, it’s a separate module altogether. This is something many laptops have attempted to get around, but Honor’s solution is very unique.

The 1080p modular camera is a detachable unit located inside the left side of the laptop, right next to the ports. In terms of quality, it’s serviceable. It pops out with a press and magnetically attaches to the top of the laptop.

I had my doubts about its functionality when I first saw it at IFA, but the software recognizes the webcam instantly, and the process is smooth — just ensure you’ve given the necessary permissions. The experience is better than expected. I remain skeptical about it being the best solution, but primarily because I’m clumsy and tend to lose modular tech. Despite this, it’s a smart design choice, and I’ve loved having a notch-less display that’s a joy for consuming content.

The Snapdragon X Elite Experience is great

Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

The Honor MagicBook Art 14 is powered by the Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100 processor. It features 12 physical cores, 42 MB of total cache, a 3.42GHz multi-core frequency, and a 4.0GHz peak clock speed, paired with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. It runs Windows 11 and supports Microsoft’s Copilot.

My three weeks with it have been good. I haven’t encountered problems with app installation, even though most Windows software is built for Intel chips running on x86 code. Apple’s switch to Arm faced similar challenges, which were mostly resolved through emulation. Qualcomm is addressing these issues similarly with its Snapdragon X chipset.

My use case involves apps like Chrome, Teams, Asana, Slack, Photoshop, and Lightroom. The latter two initially had issues running through Creative Cloud, but after reinstallation, they worked fine. If you rely on specific independent software, it’s worth checking if the company supports Arm laptops before investing in one. We’ve done plenty of testing to show how good the Snapdragon X chips are, even compared to Intel’s latest.

Overall, my experience with the Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon has been delightful. I haven’t experienced lag or crashes, even while running the above-mentioned apps simultaneously with at least 10 Chrome tabs open. The device is quick to wake up and unlock with the built-in fingerprint sensor, and it doesn’t consume much battery on standby, which is a major win.

Honor also offers an Apple-like ecosystem called Honor MagicRing, which allows seamless connectivity between Honor devices. I connected the laptop to my Honor Magic V2 and MagicPad 2, and like Apple’s ecosystem, you can use the keyboard and trackpad across devices. It works well in real-life usage.

For what it’s worth, Honor also sells an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 version of the same laptop.

The rest of the hardware and battery life

Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

As someone who types for a living, I find the MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon keyboard reliable. The 1.5 mm key travel feels perfect, and the soft-to-the-touch keys are great. The large trackpad supports gestures and is precise in usage.

You can also scroll on the left and right sides of the trackpad to adjust brightness and volume, respectively. It’s a nice touch, but it takes some getting used to, and I’ve accidentally triggered these actions multiple times while typing.

The Honor laptop features a slew of ports, including two USB-C (3.2) ports on the left, which can also be used to charge the device. On the right side, there’s a USB-A 3.2 port, an HDMI port, and a headphone jack.

The MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon packs a 60 watt-hour battery that’s rated to last up to “9.5 hours of daily office work.” In my experience, it consistently lasted around seven hours with Chrome, Asana, Slack, and Teams running in the background. My usage was mostly on Balanced Power Mode with 50% screen brightness and a 120Hz refresh rate.

You can extend the battery life by lowering the refresh rate to 60Hz and using dark mode, of course. However, I expected it to last longer, as my M2 MacBook Air gives me about 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. Howver, I can’t have as many Chrome tabs open or apps running in the background on my 8GB model.

The MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon’s battery life will likely last you an entire day, but a little extra headroom would have been better.

Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon price and availability

The Honor MagicBook Art 14 Snapdragon is now on sale for 1,700 euros ($1,770) in several European countries. However, you can claim a 200 euro ($208) discount coupon to bring the price down to 1,500 euros ($1,562). This also includes a free Honor Pad 9 (8GB/256GB) alongside Microsoft 365 Personal or Honor X6 earbuds, depending on the region.

As of now, the MagicBook Art 14 isn’t available in the U.S., which is a shame. But for me, I couldn’t be more happy to continue using this in place of my old MacBook Air. The combination of the high-end screen and MacBook Air-like portability make it the perfect laptop for me — and I don’t think I’m the only one.