Honor may not be the first name you think of when you think of high-end laptops, but at this year's IFA, the company introduced the all-new MagicBook Art 14, a laptop that feels like a true breath of fresh air in terms of design. In fact, the design alone is what drove me to write this very article. On top of top-tier performance, particularly when it comes to the Snapdragon variant, this is looking to be a fantastic laptop to both look at and use, and I'm very curious to see more.

Disclaimer: Honor sponsored my trip to IFA 2024, including lodging and transportation. The company did not require nor request the production of this article.

It's thin, light, and surreal to hold

It doesn't feel like a real laptop, and that's a good thing... I think

Let's start with the big thing here, which is the design and how light this laptop is. As is typical with the thinnest and lightest laptops around, the Honor MagicBook Art 14 is made of a magnesium alloy, but even with that in mind, this is a very light machine. It weighs just over 1kg, and the company touts 10mm thickness, but the spec sheet indicates that it's actually 11.3mm in thickness, which is still very thin.

That's not necessarily impressive by itself, but then you realize this thing has a 14.6-inch display. For such a large display, that kind of weight is basically unheard of, and it's super impressive. It helps that the laptop has minuscule bezels, with a screen-to-body ratio of 97%.

So, yes, picking up this laptop is very impressive right away for how light it is, but what makes it really interesting is how it feels. Touching this laptop, especially in the Sunrise White version, feels totally surreal. It's so incredibly soft to the touch, and it almost feels rubbery. That applies to every surface, too, including the lid, palm rest, touchpad, and even the keyboard. It almost doesn't feel like a real laptop, and more like a fake or a toy. I frankly don't know how to describe it, and I also don't know how I feel about it. I love how unique it is, and if you feel that metal is a bit uncomfortable or cold to use, this definitely changes all of that. It feels super smooth and more welcoming. But in my brief hands-on time, I couldn't shake off how strange it felt. I like it, but it's hard to say if I'm really going to love it in the long run. The Emerald Green model has a different feel, which is a bit more textured, which I didn't like as much. The touchpad on this model also feels more like a standard one.

Regardless, I'm very annoyed that all the fun colorways and surface treatments on this laptop are exclusive to the Intel version. I haven't had the chance to touch the Snapdragon version, but seeing it on stage, it just looks like a standard grey metal laptop. It's very frustrating, because the Arm laptop is what I want, and it sucks having to settle for a boring look and feel.

The magnetic webcam is really cool

The right way to do tiny bezels

I remember a few years ago when companies were hellbent on having bezels as tiny as possible, and Honor was a part of that. At the time, the solution Honor used was to have a webcam in the keyboard, and it was terrible, to put it mildly. Since 2020, companies have been putting the webcam back where it belongs, but Honor now has taken a new approach that's kind of awesome.

The laptop comes with a magnetic webcam, which is stored away inside the laptop's base. Press it in, and it pops out so you can pull it out and snap it at the top of the display. When you're done, snap it back in place.

The simple ingenuity of this idea is the kind of idea I love to see companies try. I'm curious to see people's thoughts on this, but I can totally see how this is a good idea. Having such tiny bezels definitely makes for a futuristic-feeling design, and truth be told, most people don't use their webcams that often, so this is fine.

Honor makes it even cooler by letting you remove the camera and snap it in the reverse position, so that the lens points backwards. It's a clever way to make it possible to show the things around you. The laptop also seems to respond pretty smoothly to removing and attaching the webcam, with a small animation on screen letting you know the camera is connected or disconnected. I suspect apps will also have to know how to handle this smoothly, though the Windows Camera app at least seems fine with it, and you don't need to close the app and re-open it or anything like that.

I do have some questions around durability, whether that's for the magnetic connector or the mechanism to pop out and store the webcam, but Honor seems to be confident that it won't be a failure point.

The Snapdragon version is more exciting

Except for the design

Launching the Honor MagicBook Art with Intel Core Ultra Series 1 processors alongside the Snapdragon X Elite was an interesting choice. Intel just announced the Core Ultra Series 2 models, which seem to be a very big leap forward, and the Snapdragon X Elite is also up there in terms of performance and efficiency. It almost feels like Honor launched two different generations of this laptop at the same time, considering the Snapdragon X Elite seems like the clear winner here.

This makes it all the more upsetting that the Snapdragon version doesn't have the cool design options. Having this laptop just come in a standard silver colorway when the beautiful Sunrise White model is right there is very upsetting. Hopefully, Honor will reverse that decision at some point and release a Snapdragon model in this colorway.

Regardless, I'm very excited to try out the MagicBook Art 14, and I'm expecting a review unit of the Snapdragon model in the near future. I can't wait to spend more time with it.