Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
- The Huawei MateBook 13 laptop offers great specs for a great price.
- A drawback is that it only has two USB-C ports, and no traditional USB ports.
- I could live with it if the MateBook 13 supported the Thunderbolt 3 standard, which allows you to plug multiple accessories into the same USB-C port - provided you have the right accessories.
- The MateBook 13, astoundingly, does not support Thunderbolt 3, in what could be a major dealbreaker.
I'm making the switch from Apple MacOS to Windows 10, and I'm on the hunt for the perfect Windows 10 laptop.
After seeing Huawei's MateBook 13 at CES this year, I thought it could be a good contender. In the wake of the conference, the laptop had garnered a ton of buzz from show attendees and journalists who named it among the best in show.
But lo, in my own usage, the MateBook 13 has a massive deal breaker that made it hard for me to live with, and might rain on other people's parades, too.
The MateBook 13 has only two USB-C ports, and no other USB ports at all, which is fine. I can live without regular USB ports, which is something I've suffered through with my current 2016 MacBook Pro.
And Huawei also includes a USB-C adapter with the laptop itself, for connecting regular USB accessories to the MateBook 13, which is a nice touch. But, somehow, the company didn't grace the MateBook 13 with one of the only reasons for USB-C to exist: Thunderbolt 3.
Here's why the MateBook 13 is a great laptop, and why the lack of Thunderbolt 3 is a dealbreaker: