HONOR MagicBook X16 Plus Review: an office laptop with a rare AMD Ryzen 7 processor. What is it capable of?

In this review, we take a look at a stylish yet understated laptop (or rather, ultrabook) from HONOR, positioned as a premium office solution. The model is BRI-721 in "Space Gray", although this shade is usually called "wet asphalt" (silver versions are also available). But what's more interesting here is the processor: an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8 cores/16 threads; 3.8–5.1 GHz). Most work laptops come with Intel chips, either 13th-gen Core or Core Ultra, while HONOR decided to go its own way and picked an AMD chip. Was that the right call? Let's find out.

As we mentioned, the laptop has an overall understated design, so it will look right at home on the table during a hypothetical "board of directors meeting." The body is made of metal, but since the lid is as thin as possible, it still flexes a little diagonally when pressed. You also can't open the laptop with one hand without holding down the base. On top of that, the uniform look of the chassis means you constantly get confused about which way to set the laptop down before you start working: you instinctively place it with the HONOR logo facing you, and then you can't open it. You have to remember that the correct orientation is with the text upside down, so that everyone around can read the logo once it's open. On the one hand, it makes sense; on the other, by the tenth time you start cursing under your breath.

On the plus side, the left and right plastic bezels around the screen are very thin, just 4.5 mm. The top bezel houses a completely standard 720p@30 FPS webcam and is only 7.5 mm wide. The 16:10 display has a 2.5K resolution (2560x1600), a 120 Hz refresh rate and a decent pixel density (189 ppi), which is a very good figure. Working on this laptop in bright conditions is a pleasure: good color temperature (6800 K), excellent contrast (1350:1) and high brightness (420 nits) let you read text on the screen even outdoors. The designers also thought about fighting glare and gave the display a semi-matte coating. All in all, the screen gets a thumbs-up.

Moving on to the keyboard: it's a membrane type with a numeric keypad. It also deserves praise for its very quiet, crisp and soft key travel (1.5 mm). It's nice to see that the arrow keys aren't shrunk but full-size, and in general all the keys are larger than usual (16.5×16.5 mm); on laptops they're typically smaller. If you're just learning to touch-type, this keyboard is the perfect training ground. The right Shift could have been a bit longer, though, but that's nitpicking.

Those who glance at the keyboard while working will appreciate the large legends: huge Latin letters and Cyrillic ones that are smaller but still sizable. The backlight is white with two brightness levels and turns off after 20 seconds of inactivity to save battery. In the top right corner is the power button with a fingerprint sensor: it works precisely and flawlessly, and we didn't notice any false triggers. All the keys also have a special coating to protect them from stains and premature wear.

The touchpad is far from the biggest in the industry, but it's not tiny either: 120×72 mm. In line with current trends, the left and right buttons are invisible, but clicks are crisp yet soft. The touchpad supports gestures, and the Honor PC Manager utility has plenty of related settings, so there's a lot to play around with.

The bottom of the chassis is minimalist: two rows of ventilation grilles and a single rubberized foot along the top edge. Notably, it doesn't wobble or fall off like on our recent test subject, the DIGMA PRO Fortis M. Here everything is done properly! A pair of stereo speakers is hidden behind two vertical slots: they're only 2 watts each, but they're mounted inside the chassis on vibration-damping suspensions, which adds volume to the sound. There's nothing else to see underneath, and you can't quickly get inside either, as there are no screw-on access hatches. To add a second SSD (there is room for one inside), you'll have to remove the entire bottom panel.

The ports aren't as impressive: much like Apple, HONOR's engineers implemented only the bare essentials. On the right side there's a USB Type-A port and a 3.5 mm audio jack. On the left are HDMI, USB Type-A and two USB Type-C ports, one of which is 3.2 Gen 2 and the other the latest USB4. On the one hand, we get speeds of 10 and 20 Gbps; on the other, one of these ports will usually be occupied by the charging cable, since the laptop has no dedicated DC power input. There's also no RJ45 port for an Ethernet cable, no card reader and no Kensington lock slot.

The laptop has a classic 75 Wh (4880 mAh) battery and comes with a 65 W power adapter. A full 0–100% charge takes less than 2 hours. In a "web browsing, typing, YouTube and work calls" scenario, the computer lasts 6–7 hours on a single charge. In games (undemanding ones!) it holds out for about 4 hours.

Now for the most interesting part: the internals. Inside is an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS. The engineers' unusual choice comes down to this chip's speed. With 8 cores and 16 threads on the Zen 4 architecture and a maximum clock speed of 5.1 GHz, the processor performed admirably in our synthetic tests.

Graphics are handled by the AMD Radeon 780M with 12 compute units on the RDNA 3.0 architecture, one of the most powerful integrated GPUs available. System RAM is used as video memory.

Speaking of RAM: the ultrabook comes in three configurations: 16 GB/512 GB, 16 GB/1 TB and 32 GB/1 TB. We reviewed the top-tier version, which has 4 LPDDR5X modules running at 6400 MHz.

For the SSD, the manufacturer went with a drive from Kioxia, a Toshiba spin-off. The drive is fast: 5 GB/s read and 3 GB/s write speeds.

All in all, this lets you play undemanding games between work and those board meetings we joked about earlier. The MagicBook X16 Plus won't handle demanding AAA games, but online battles in "Tanks" are always welcome.

We tested the HONOR MagicBook X16 Plus in the synthetic benchmarks Cinebench R23, Cinebench 2024, Geekbench, CPU-Z, CrystalDiskMark and CrystalDiskInfo. All results are shown in the screenshots.

We also used 3DMark and ran our test subject through the following benchmarks: Time Spy, Time Spy Extreme, Sky Diver, Port Royal, Steel Nomad, CPU Profile and Storage Benchmark (a test of game loading speed from the SSD). The results are in the screenshots.

This time, for the gaming tests, we picked two undemanding online games, as well as two single-player titles that the MagicBook X16 Plus clearly isn't designed for, but we were curious to see the device's limits. Here's what we got.

World of Tanks. Almost every modern laptop handles this game without any trouble, and the MagicBook X16 Plus is no exception. FPS sometimes climbed as high as 250, with an average of 150. Either way, these are good numbers. CPU temperature ranged from 68 to 79 degrees. The verdict: perfectly playable.

Fortnite. Another game the MagicBook mostly handled, though it was already pushing its limits. This is probably thanks to the fast processor, quick RAM and one of the strongest integrated graphics solutions out there. An average of 40 FPS is far from a dream result, but the gameplay stayed smooth and at least wasn't frustrating.

The Witcher 3. 8–10 FPS: adventures in a fantasy world are hardly possible with numbers like these. And that's with all graphics settings dropped to the minimum. Sorry, Geralt, but this laptop isn't built for games like The Witcher.

The HONOR MagicBook X16 Plus is definitely one of the strongest office laptops on the market in 2024. It has plenty of durability and power headroom, plus an excellent keyboard for tackling a wide range of work tasks throughout the entire workday (thanks to the long-lasting battery). Its understated, stylish look will also feel at home in any setting. Of course, you won't be able to play much on it, but HONOR's engineers never intended it as a gaming laptop.

Designer's Choice. Clean lines, the striking "Space Gray" finish, large keys and thin display bezels: the HONOR MagicBook X16 Plus is truly minimalist, and that's exactly what makes it good.