Huawei MateBook 16s

A luxurious and powerful big-screen laptop for an affordable price, with only intense gaming off the menu

- TIM DANTON

Without wishing to rewrite history, I'm pretty certain that it was 16in laptops Harold Macmillan was thinking of when he said "you've never had it so good". In particular, I believe he was referring to the likes of the 1.2kg LG Gram 16, the £999 Dell Inspiron 16 Plus and Huawei's own budget offering, the MateBook D 16.

So what does Huawei hope to bring to such a crowded field with the MateBook 16s? The answer is quality and power for a competitive price. Its all-metal chassis catches the light beautifully, while even after a day of gazing at the screen you'll be impressed by its clarity and whites.

The screen also seems to stretch ever upwards, with a 3:2 aspect ratio that may feel odd if you're moving from a 16:9 laptop but soon becomes natural. It helps that Huawei packs in the pixels, with 2,520 X 1,680 to give it a 189ppi pixel density. You don't get a wide colour gamut - it covers 89% of the sRGB space and 64% of DCI-P3 but colour accuracy is strong and it reached a peak brightness of 335cd/m². And while the touchscreen may seem like a tickbox feature, it's useful to have the option.