#Marmoset hexels pro
#Marmoset hexels windows

Technically the Xiaomi's backlit keyboard is hard to fault.

That's a much more versatile offering, in my opinion. Rather than four Thunderbolt ports, Xiaomi offers two USB Type-C and two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI connector and an SD card reader. Thankfully Xiaomi has punched more holes in the side of its notebook than Apple is willing to do.

#Marmoset hexels pro

The Mi Notebook Pro has a decent array of ports: two USB Type-C, two USB 3.0, HDMI, 3.5mm audio and an SD card reader. The Chinese machine is slightly heavier though, weighing 1.99kg compared to the MacBook Pro's 1.83kg. Made in China' strapline.Īt 36cm wide by 24.4cm deep by 1.5cm thick the Notebook Pro is so close to the MacBook Pro 15's dimensions that sleeves designed for the latter fit perfectly. The Notebook Pro is a model of discretion, with the only Xiaomi badging located in small print on the underside - along with a cheeky 'Designed by Xiaomi in Beijing. Make no mistake, the Xiaomi Notebook Pro looks and feels every inch the premium laptop even if the styling looks a bit slab-like next to Apple's more curvaceous design. That body is attached to a magnesium alloy chassis, making the Notebook Pro as very solid and durable bit of kit. Its laminated (non-touch) IPS screen is excellent, while a deep cutout makes it easy to open and close the laptop.Īll that technology is wrapped up in a very smart gunmetal (or 'deep grey' in Xiaomi-speak) alloy body. Like all Xiaomi notebooks, the Mi Notebook Pro ships with Chinese Windows. The resolution is some way below the 2,880 by 1,800 pixels that Apple offers (Apple's panel can also manage 500 nits), but it's sufficient for the majority use cases. The screen itself is good, with excellent colour saturation and, at 300 nits maximum, a decent level of brightness. Why don't Xiaomi's laptops have touchscreens? Because Apple's don't - that's how seriously, or slavishly, Xiaomi takes the 'China's Apple' epithet. The Notebook Pro's display is a full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixel) Gorilla Glass 3-covered IPS panel without any touchscreen functionality. That said, with some tweaking both Doom and Battlefield 1 ran at decent frame rates (around 50fps) at the native screen resolution. The graphics scores were unsurprisingly a little less impressive: the 3DMark Fire Strike test threw up an average of 2,987, but you don't buy a machine like this to replace your PS4. Given the impressive performance of the i5 I couldn't justify spending the extra. There are a Core i7 versions of the Pro available for around £200 more depending on the amount of memory you opt for. In many tasks the new i5 chips are barely any slower than 8th-generation Core i7 components, and they beat 7th-generation i7 chips hollow. That's the benefit of two extra cores and a higher Turbo Boost clock speed. Those results are nearly double what you'd expect to see from a similar specification 7th-generation Core i5 system. Running Geekbench 4 I got very impressive scores of 4,136 (single-core) and 13,874 (multi-core). This is the first time I've benchmarked an 8th generation i5 system. That lineup gives the Notebook Pro some serious speed and power for a thin-and-light. Storage comes courtesy of a 256GB Samsung PM961 PCIe NVMe SSD. Solid, powerful and easy on the eye: for the money (£640 in the UK) it's hard to beat the 15.6-inch Xiaomi Notebook Pro.įor the money Xiaomi offers a very decent system running on an 8th-generation Intel Core i5-8250U processor with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU with 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 video RAM. An entry-level MacBook Pro 15 will set you back £2,349. At the time of writing, GearBest - who supplied our review unit - is offering the Core i5, 256GB Notebook Pro for £640 (inc. Also, their specs are no match for Apple's machines, which generally have faster chips, larger-capacity SSDs, more memory and higher-resolution screens.īut Xiaomi's notebooks are a lot cheaper.

#Marmoset hexels windows

To start with, they run Windows rather than macOS.

Of course these Chinese imports are not really direct competitors to Apple's laptops.

The new 15.6-inch Mi Notebook Pro heads up Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi's Apple-aping range of laptops: the Mi Notebook Air, which comes in 12.5-inch and 13.3-inch models, is pitched against the MacBook and MacBook Pro 13, while the Mi Notebook Pro has the MacBook Pro 15 in its sights.