Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro [Review]: A Well-Built MacBook Pro Clone

Xiaomi is known primarily for its phones, with the Chinese manufacturer now amid the five largest smartphone brands in the world.

In China, still, phones are just 1 part of a larger ecosystem that includes everything from robot vacuum cleaners to LED bulbs, smart shoes, and backpacks. You can fifty-fifty buy Xiaomi-branded screwdrivers, comforters, and baggage from its Mi Home retail stores in Prc, and the brand is increasingly looking to the lifestyle segment as a growth commuter.

And so it stands to reason that Xiaomi would venture into the notebook segment. The first Xiaomi laptop was the Mi Notebook Air, which made its debut dorsum in 2022. Equally the name suggests, the Mi Notebook Air was targeted at MacBook Air, offering a similar gear up of features equally Apple tree — and edifice on the MacBook Air in a few areas — but at a significantly lower price point.

With the Mi Notebook Pro, Xiaomi is looking to do the same to the MacBook Pro. The laptop shares a like design aesthetic to the MacBook Pro, but retails for $1,150. For that price, you get a 15.6-inch Full Hard disk drive panel, 8th-gen Kaby Lake Intel Core i7-8550U CPU clocked at 1.8GHz, NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB M.2 SSD, Wi-Fi air-conditioning, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB-C ports.

On paper, the Mi Notebook Pro sounds like an interesting suggestion — yous're getting a notebook with the same design as the MacBook Pro and decent hardware for less than one-half the toll. Permit's come across if the laptop manages to concord its ain in this segment when information technology comes to existent-globe usage.

Ticking all the right boxes

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro

Starts at $1050

Bottom Line: The Mi Notebook Pro has seriously impressive hardware, but availability is a major issue and yous'll have to fence with a Chinese build of Windows x.

Pros:

• Peak-notch pattern and build quality
• Fantabulous operation
• Decent bombardment life
• Discrete GPU

Cons:

• Availability
• Runs Chinese Windows 10 out of the box

What you'll beloved most the Mi Notebook Pro

The Mi Notebook Pro is inspired by the MacBook Pro, and every bit such you'll notice a similar design aesthetic — down to the Deep Gray colour scheme. The entire chassis is machined out of magnesium blend, and the build quality is correct up at that place with the best that Apple has to offer. Unlike most MacBooks, nevertheless, yous won't encounter whatsoever logos on the front fascia — the simply branding is a Mi logo that'south located below the display.

Category	Specs
Class cistron	Clamshell laptop
Display	xv.six-inch Full Hd IPS (1920 x 1080)
CPU	1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce MX150 with 2GB of DDR5 memory
RAM	8GB DDR4
Storage	256GB M.2 SSD (second SSD slot available)
Ports	Ii USB 3.0, ii USB-C, HDMI, 3.5mm jack, SD card reader
Battery	Li-ion 8000mAh battery
Connectivity	Wi-Fi air-conditioning, Bluetooth 4.1
Size	0.59 inches (front edge) x fourteen.17 inches x 9.61 inches (14.98mm x 359.9mm x 244mm)
Weight	4.38 pounds (i.99 kilograms)

The notebook mirrors the 15-inch MacBook Pro's dimensions besides, and at 0.59 inches it is slightly thinner on the leading edge. That said, the Mi Notebook Pro doesn't accept the same tapered forepart as the MacBook Pro, so what you essentially get is a more than angular design. Furthermore, at 4.38 pounds, it is heavier than the MacBook Pro, which comes in at iv.02 pounds.

1 area where the Mi Notebook Pro outshines the MacBook Pro is with regards to connectivity — you get a full 7 ports on the notebook. The left side has two USB iii.0 ports and an HDMI port forth with the three.5mm jack, and on the right you'll notice two USB-C ports and an SD card reader. The first USB-C port is used for charging, and it takes slightly nether two hours to fully elevation up the battery using the 5V/3A charger bundled in the box.

The Mi Notebook Pro isn't the all-time laptop around when information technology comes to battery life, just you shouldn't have any issues getting eight hours' worth of bombardment life consistently. NVIDIA's energy-efficient MX150 GPU assists in eking out the nearly from the 8000mAh battery, turning over to the congenital-in Intel HD 620 chipset for low-power tasks and kick in only when required.

The big 15.6-inch IPS panel has slim bezels, and the display has authentic color reproduction. The ane downside is that it is a glossy panel, and equally such viewing angles aren't ideal — more often than not, you'll stop up catching your own reflection in the screen. The maximum brightness at 300nits is more than acceptable, but Xiaomi should have featured a higher-resolution panel. The Full HD brandish gets the task done, simply considering the 15.6-inch form factor, information technology would've made more sense to go with a QHD panel.

Where the Mi Notebook Pro truly shines is in terms of the performance — the Intel Core i5-8250U CPU coupled with the NVIDIA MX150 create a strong combination that handles everything you throw at information technology with ease. You get 8GB of RAM and a 256GB M.two SSD as standard, and if yous're looking to extend the storage, you tin unscrew the dorsum console and install a secondary Yard.ii SSD.

Typing on the Mi Notebook Pro is a delight: the laptop comes with total-sized keys with i.5mm travel and low actuation force. The keys are backlit every bit well, and the keyboard is more often than not great for extended typing sessions thanks to the 0.3 curvature of the keys. The 12.5cm ten 8.5cm trackpad takes up the lower third of the body, and information technology is i of the all-time I've used on a Windows laptop to date.

Information technology is a Microsoft Precision touchpad, and offers gesture support for Windows 10. There'southward a fingerprint sensor located at the top right corner for Windows Hello support. The Mi Notebook Pro also features dual ii.5W Dolby Atmos-certified Harman Kardon Infinity speakers at the bottom, and the audio coming out of the laptop is loud and detailed.

What yous'll hate nearly the Mi Notebook Pro

My main effect with the Mi Notebook Pro is the fact that it runs a Chinese build of Windows 10 out of the box. You'll take to rely on Google Interpret for the initial configuration, and then install an English language linguistic communication pack one time you lot kicking into Windows. The entire process is cumbersome, just with the notebook limited to China, in that location's no way of getting an English language language pack installed past default.

You tin can go ahead and install a fresh version of Windows x (provided you take an unused license fundamental), and if you lot're going down this route, know that you'll have to reinstall the drivers for the touchpad, Wi-Fi module, and others. Thankfully, Windows Update automatically downloads all the relevant drivers, but if information technology doesn't, you can download the entire commuter package directly from Xiaomi.

Coming in at 4.38 pounds and with dimensions of 14.17 inches ten nine.61 inches, the Mi Notebook Pro is big and bulky — information technology certainly isn't the virtually portable laptop around. Then there's the backlight for the keyboard — unlike the MacBook Pro, there's no way to accommodate the intensity of the backlight. You just get an on/off toggle, and more than once I found the backlight to be too intense when working on the Mi Notebook Pro in the dark.

The fans also get uncomfortably loud at times, particularly if you have a lot of tabs open up in Chrome. This isn't an outcome that's unique on the Mi Notebook Pro, nonetheless.

Bottom line

There's plenty to like in the Mi Notebook Pro — it is exquisitely designed and built to last, and you lot get elevation-notch performance forth with an eight-hour battery life. That said, information technology does have its shares of frustrations, mostly centered around the fact that you can't walk into a store and pick one up.

The Mi Notebook Pro is express to China, and information technology doesn't look similar that will change anytime soon. Xiaomi is aggressively expanding its portfolio in Republic of india, its second-largest market, but as of now it's unclear whether the manufacturer's notebooks volition terminate upwardly coming to the subcontinent. As such, your best choice of picking up the Mi Notebook Pro is via Chinese reseller sites similar Gearbest.

Going the reseller route has its ain drawbacks, as you'll have to pay customs duties. The duty varies from region to region, so you'll accept to check the local guidelines in your state for importing electronics. I concluded upwards paying over $200 in community to import the Mi Notebook Pro into India, and then you'll have to factor that into your purchasing conclusion as well.

Overall, the Mi Notebook Pro has a lot to offer, but availability issues and hassles with initial configuration brand it a non-starter. The hardware is certainly enticing, but there are much amend alternatives effectually.

See at Gearbest

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/xiaomi-mi-notebook-pro-review

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