Honor MagicBook Art 14 Review

Verdict

The thin and lightweight nature of the MagicBook 14 Art is impressive, especially with a high-end 14.6-inch screen and pretty powerful internals packed within. It all hinges on the pricing, really.

Introduction

Honor’s latest ultralight laptop, the MagicBook Art 14, is a lightweight treat.

Measuring in at just 10mm thick and a smidge over 1kg, the pixel-packed 14.6-inch laptop looks to be the ideal portable workhorse, especially when combined with the Intel Core Ultra 7 SoC alongside ample RAM and storage. There’s also a huge focus on AI, with a dedicated CoPilot button and a collaboration with Microsoft to bring a suite of AI tools to the laptop experience.

It also has a pretty cool modular webcam design that lets you remove the webcam completely when not in use, allowing for impressively slim 2.2mm-thick bezels on three of the four sides of the screen while also massively boosting privacy. 

So, it’s safe to say that the MagicBook Art 14 is an interesting ultralight laptop – but should it be your next purchase? Keep reading to find out.

Editor’s Note: Honor has yet to announce UK/EU pricing for the MagicBook Art 14, restricting our ability to rate its value right now. As such, until pricing is revealed, we’ll be holding off on delivering a star rating. 

Design and Keyboard

• Impressively thin and light
• Variety of ports to use
• Detachable webcam

I don’t think it does the Honor MagicBook Art 14 any justice to simply say that it’s thin and light; you really have to see it and pick it up for yourself to understand just how mind-bogglingly lightweight it is for a 14.6-inch laptop, let alone one that packs in a plethora of high-end tech.

In fact, at just 10mm thick and 1.03kg, it’s an absolute joy to carry around, even one-handed. It’s a laptop you won’t notice in your rucksack, which should be ideal for both work and school purposes, with its new svelte dimensions representing a 15% slimmer and 30% lighter build than the regular MagicBook 14. 

However, like other ultralight laptops such as the LG Gram 16, there’s a fair bit of flex with the MagicBook Art 14’s chassis, particularly the lid, which can be bent with one hand and, honestly, not a lot of effort. I’m not sure this laptop would survive more than a slight drop unscathed, but that’s just pure speculation on my part. 

Upon opening the laptop, you’ll likely notice just how slimline those screen bezels are – so thin, in fact, that Honor couldn’t fit a webcam there. Rather than opt for an annoying in-keyboard camera like Huawei did a few years back, Honor uses something far more innovative. 

On the left side, you’ll find an indented space just above the twin USB-C ports. That’s actually where the camera lives. Whenever you need to use the webcam, you just press in to pop it out and place it on top of the screen, where a combination of magnets and POGO connections hold it in place and bring it to life. 

What’s more, you can flip the webcam to show your surroundings, making it more versatile than your average laptop webcam. I also like that I can just get rid of it whenever it’s not in use, negating the need to use a webcam cover. 

The keyboard is pretty much full-size aside from the inclusion of a dedicated number pad, and it has offered a pretty satisfying typing experience during my time with the laptop, with great sizing and a nice actuation that also helps dull the sound of the keys when typing. I’m sure that’d be appreciated in a busy office environment. 

The trackpad, which lives just below the laptop, is absolutely huge. In fact, Honor claims that it’s the biggest trackpad of any 14.6-inch laptop available right now, complete with gesture support control and haptic feedback for satisfying click feedback and a matte finish for extra grip. You can also swipe up and down on the left side of the trackpad to control brightness, and the right controls volume.

I’m not usually a huge fan of trackpads, but I’ve found myself using this one more often than not during my time with the device, with ample space to swipe my way around Windows 11, though its substantial size has also resulted in a few accidental swipes when typing. 

For such a slim laptop, the MagicBook Art 14 comes with a surprisingly varied selection of ports. Along the left side, you’ll find a regular USB-C alongside a Thunderbolt 4 port, while the right side houses a full-size HDMI port, a USB-A port and a 3.5mm headphone jack – no need for a USB dock here! 

Honor has gone all-out on colour options too, sporting a nice Emerald Green finish, as well as an understated Starry Grey and Neon White, the latter of which I’ve been using for the past few weeks as my main laptop. It’s a nice, almost pearlescent effect with slight pink and purple highlights, but it’s very much a static design, not one that’ll shift in the light as a proper pearlescent finish would. 

Display and Sound

• 14.6-inch OLED touchscreen
• 3.1K resolution
• 4320Hz PWM dimming

Despite the svelte dimensions of the MagicBook Art 14, Honor has packed in some pretty impressive display tech. 

The lid houses a 14.6-inch OLED panel, with a super smooth 120Hz refresh rate, touch screen support and even Honor’s 4320Hz PWM dimming tech usually seen on its flagship smartphone collection to help reduce eye fatigue over longer periods of use. 

The sheer size of the laptop lends itself well to work and play, comfortably able to display multiple windows within its 14.6-inch canvas with room left to spare. It feels super spacious, while still maintaining a lightweight, portable design. 

There’s a pixel-packed 3.1K (3120 x 2080) resolution that makes everything look super detailed – it has been a joy to use it over the past few weeks. I also like the rounded corners of the screen, which again leans more into traditional smartphone design than what you’d usually find on a laptop. 

The screen also scored pretty well in benchmark testing, with the OLED panel delivering pretty decent colour coverage with 99.6% sRGB, 83.8% Adobe RGB and 96.6% DCI-P3, though that does fall slightly behind what you’d get from the likes of the competing Huawei MateBook 14. 

It is a tad brighter than the Huawei alternative, at 498 nits compared to 442 nits, though you likely wouldn’t enjoy using either in direct sunlight with rather reflective, glossy screen finishes. 

Performance

• Powered by the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
• 32GB of RAM and up to 1TB SSD
• Rapid performance in everyday use

Like most ultralight laptops released in 2024, the MagicBook Art 14 sports the 14th generation of Intel Core processors – the 4.8GHz Intel Core Ultra 7 155H to be specific. This is notable not only because of its overall performance, but also because it boosts the AI smarts of the laptop, complete with a dedicated Copilot button in place of the right CTRL key often seen on keyboards.

The chip powers the CoPilot AI assistant that can help with real-time transcription and summarisation, generate images and answer general knowledge queries, though it’s not quite up to the standard of ARM-based CoPilot Plus alternatives. Still, improved AI performance is a handy addition that will likely increase in value as more AI-powered apps become available. 

Aside from the Intel Core Ultra 7, my sample is specced out with 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage split across two drives, and as you’d expect, the laptop performs pretty well in benchmarks with this configuration. 

It’s pretty much in line with what you’d get from the similarly specced Huawei MateBook 14 (2024) in the CPU department, and manages to keep pace with the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, our current favourite ultralight laptop. 

The laptop proved rapid in real-world use as my main work machine, whether running 10+ tabs in Google Chrome split across three desktops or simply being used to stream videos on YouTube. 

It’s aided by that super smooth 120Hz refresh rate that helps everything feel smooth and responsive, and though I did occasionally hear the fans kick into gear when really pushing it to its limits, performance remained solid with nary a stutter in sight. 

However, the lack of a dedicated GPU – it sports the Intel Arc eGPU for graphical prowess – means that it’s not quite up to powering particularly graphically intensive workloads, whether that’s video editing or gaming. It can still run less demanding titles like Fortnite without much issue, but you won’t be running games like Starfield or Returnal on this machine. 

The latter isn’t really a surprise given the lightweight dimensions of the laptop, but the former may give some pause for thought, with the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark showing performance that trails behind even similarly specced alternatives like the Huawei MateBook 14, let alone options with a discrete GPU. 

It’s a similar story in the storage department; while a 1TB offing is generous, SSD speeds are a little slower at 3,970.51MB/s read and 2,984.78MB/s write compared to the best ultrabooks we’ve tested. I don’t think it makes much of a difference to day-to-day use, but if you regularly work with large files then it could be a dealbreaker.

Software

• Windows 11 out of the box with Copilot support
• Handy Honor ecosystem features
• No third-party bloatware

The Honor MagicBook Art 14 comes with Windows 11 out of the box, with bonus ecosystem features available if you’ve got another Honor product handy. 

The smattering of Honor-exclusive features include Workspace which lets you use your Honor Magic V3 (or supported Honor tablet) to extend your laptop’s display, as well as the ability to quickly transfer files between Honor products and even access your phone apps via your laptop. 

It worked very well when paired with the Honor Magic V3, and I especially enjoyed the ability to remotely access my desktop from the foldable’s larger inner screen, but it does remain a rather niche feature.

Elsewhere, aside from the Honor PC Manager and Honor WorkStation apps powering those aforementioned features, there’s very little in the way of pre-installed bloatware here, so there’s no need to go on a mass deletion spree after setting it up for the first time.  

Battery life

• 60Wh battery
• Lasts for 10.5 hours in productivity benchmark testing
• Fairly fast charging

Despite its slim dimensions, Honor has managed to pack a 60Wh battery within the MagicBook Art 14, with claims that it can deliver up to 9.5 hours of battery life when combined with Honor’s AI scenario recognition and real-time optimisation tech.

To Honor’s credit, it was actually downplaying just how long it could last – according to our benchmark tests anyway. In the PCMark 10 benchmark that loops productivity workloads to simulate a day’s work (loading spreadsheets, joining video calls, that kind of thing) it lasted an impressive 10 hours and 27 minutes. 

That beats the competing Huawei MateBook 14 by 31 minutes despite it having a larger 70Wh battery, and should be more than enough for even intense days of work. 

The MagicBook Art 14 comes bundled with a 65W charger in the box that delivered a respectable 44% charge in 30 minutes in testing, while a full charge took 98 minutes. Again, this is more than double the MateBook 14’s 20% in 30 minutes, showcasing Honor’s prowess in this segment. 

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