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Xiaomi notebook Pro - endurance test of the best Chinese notebook

Xiaomi notebook Pro - endurance test of the best Chinese notebook

Exclusive, high-end machine for a mid-range price.

Xiaomi notebook Pro - endurance test of the best Chinese notebook

 

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro - Introduction

I never liked classic tests. They are sterile and say nothing about what a particular device is like in real life. We get a lot of numbers from the test results, they measure the same programs in a thousand and one articles.

The problem is that if you want to write a real test, you have to use the hardware for weeks because it takes so long for the errors to come out and the opinion to be grounded. In the old days, when I was still writing classic tests, there was never time for that because the stuff I got for the test had to be passed on to the next newspaper. Now, however, to decide for myself what I want to write about when I assign test subjects to myself, it works completely differently.

The Xiaomi Notebook Pro has been in use with me for over a month now. But not as a second machine, because I ordered this for myself too, so when it came I replaced my old notebook. My sixth week is my ring, I write articles on it, I watch movies on it. He’s there next to me in the car in the mother seat, and he’s on my back in his backpack when I go somewhere with a motorbike. So we are inseparable.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 2

I definitely wanted to write a few sentences about why I ordered a notebook from China. The first reason is simple, I'm a Xiaomi fan. I’ve ordered a lot of things from them already, and so far I haven’t had to be disappointed with anything. Everything works, everything does its job as prescribed. True, these moths cost a little more than buying them from an emerging brand, but in return they are infinitely reliable, high quality.

For the second reason, we need to go back a little further in time. I have been doing IT, testing, article writing for two decades now, and during that time I have had a lot of portable machines. I’ve tested it in the past and now I just have to install them or service some of them and of course there was a lot I bought for myself. When I started racing my head early last year that a new machine should be I decided it was pretty mediocre. After many years, I want another high-end machine, a real business-class notebook. Anno I bought a gamer note from ASUS, it burned myself ugly with it, so I wanted a quality, powerful and externally special machine rather than a gamer note sharpened to the extreme.

The processor should be i7, but at least i5. Memory is a minimum of 8 GB and storage is an SSD of at least 120 but rather 256 GB. And the battery life should be long!

I looked at the domestic offer, and I had to realize that the category I wanted starts somewhere at an altitude of HUF 350. I knew it wasn’t going to be cheap, but I didn’t spend that much money on a new machine, so the project got into the parking lot. Until last fall, when Xiaomi introduced its new 15,6-inch machine, the Notebook Pro. By then, I already knew this machine was going to be what I was going to buy.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 10

I waited a few months, collecting the seeds. Meanwhile, spring has come. Over the past few months, I have chewed through all the pros and cons of buying a notebook from China. When the machines got into the cart in the store, they ran through my brain once more. The saving of at least HUF 100 compared to domestic prices, the problem of warranty service, the quality of Xiaomi products experienced so far. In the end I came across, each time, to have more of the positives and I need such a machine. I clicked the button, I used Pay-Pal to pay, for sure, which is sure to get my money back if it gets mixed up during shipping.

It’s been a little over three weeks of delivery time, but I’ve been really living with my Xiaomi notebook since it came. Basically, I’m always with me because I can have anywhere from 10-15 minutes anywhere to write or continue an article or shape something on a website in the making.

 

 

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro - Packaging and Outer

The machine arrived in a large carton, inside which, using foam spacers, was the ordinary, “ornate” box. It is cat-clawed because there is no ornament on it. On the white cover there is a photo of the machine, on the side Chinese punctuation and the Xiaomi logo, and at the bottom is just a sticker that probably contains the details of the machine, but since the machine name is in Chinese and the weight of the notebook can be interpreted for me.

So the packaging is pretty puritanical, but really, if I think about it, business boxes don't usually have a box, it's more of this restraint.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 1

Lifting the roof, we already see the machine. Highlighted below is an envelope made of cardboard, but we can’t find anything substantial in this either, just the quick set-up help, of course in Chinese as well. The pictures show where to turn on, where to plug the charger and the like. Below the envelope you will find a plethora of accessories. Okay, that was a joke, only the charger is here.

As you can see in this attraction the machine will be the point. Unfortunately, the days when manufacturers added gifts to a gamer or business machine in this category, such as a bag, backpack, or the like, are long gone.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 3

But let's not be bitter about this, because the point here is the notebook! I would try to describe what it felt like to hold hands at first, but it’s hard to go. Unfortunately, I am far from being able to compose with the sensitivity of a novelist, but I am making a timid attempt.

When I picked it out of the box, my first thought was that it was amazingly thin and surprisingly heavy for its size. I was also surprised by it, but I weighed it, it was really only a pound and a half, so we are just being fooled by our eyes, we don’t expect such a weight from such a slim machine.

The machine's metal housing snuggled coolly in my palm. It’s weird that I always feel cool for some reason, even when I put it away after work. The touch of the house is like that, and it all somehow creates a sense of reliability. The lines, the edges on it, are as if someone had carved them out of a large block of metal with a knife. The edges are almost not sharp.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 7

The exterior is completely unadorned anyway, if I took the stickers off the bottom, only a modest Mi logo would tell the manufacturer. Nothing on the cover and just a big and two smaller grids at the bottom. The former is for cooling, the latter for the sound of the speakers coming out of the house. On one side are two USB Type-Cs and a card reader, on the other side are two standard USB connectors, an HDMI output and a headphone output.

The workmanship of the machine is amazingly good. The joints are infinitely precise, the housing does not bend despite its thinness, and is even surprisingly rigid. Based on first impressions, there will be no problem here!

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 8

When the lid is opened, the miracle continues. The cover containing the display is very thin, but its stability is not felt, it can't really be twisted or bent. Because the bottom of the machine must be removed for mounting, there are no fitting gaps on the side of the keyboard, a large metal surface throughout. The size of the touchpad is plentiful, and even a little big. The keyboard is what you can expect in this category, the keys have a definite pressure point, and I can say based on usage that typing on them is very convenient. Of course, this also requires that they be large in size, giving you a button size that is essentially the same as a desktop keyboard. Of course, this comes at a price, we can't find a numeric keypad on the machine, although notebooks of a similar size usually fit on it.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 9

The display on this machine is not matte but bright, more precisely in front of the panel we find a thin sheet of glass. The visible frame is extremely thin, but this will of course not be the real frame, after turning it on, it looks like a not-too-thick black stripe is framing the visible image.

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro gives us the fuss we feel we want when we spend so much money on something, even before we turn it on. We need that tiny emotional feedback, confirmation that we didn’t give our money out for stupidity. We get this here, so there is nothing wrong with that!

 

 

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro - Inside the machine

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro is currently available with two different processors. These are the Intel Core i5-8250U, which is quad-core and has a clock speed of 1,6 to 3,4 GHz, depending on the load, and the Intel Core i7-8550U, which is also quad-core and has a clock speed of 1,8 to 4,0, 8 GHz. Both processors are Intel’s 14th generation solution, built on the Kaby Lake core and built to a XNUMX-nanometer bandwidth.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 12

You need to know about these processors that both are among Intel’s ultra-cost-effective solutions. This means that you can expect good long battery life, in return the performance will be lower. There was an opinion that these are exhausted processors, you shouldn’t buy such a machine, but that’s the way it’s stupid. It is just that the upper limit of consumption is severely limited, so the clock cannot be raised to the sky. For the i7 processor working in the present test, 4 GHz is still available, which is capable of executing eight instructions simultaneously using 4 physical cores and two threads per core.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 16

The speed of the machine is further increased by the fact that it is not a traditional hard drive, but a 256 GB capacity MD format SSD mounted on a PCI-Express bus. Of course, this is not only unusual due to lack of space, it would be difficult to squeeze a traditional SSD into this thin housing, and it would also reduce the performance of the machine, let's not talk about how harmful it would be in terms of uptime. The good news is that when you unscrew the back cover, you can also find an empty PCI Express bus, so if you don't have enough storage space, you can expand or, in extreme cases, use RAID in the machine to increase data security or data transfer speeds.

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro line currently consists of three machines. The cheapest of these is the version with an i5 processor, 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. The only difference between the middle and the most expensive machine is the amount of memory. The cheaper one carries 8 and the more expensive 16 GB memory on its motherboard. You read that right, the memory is on the motherboard. Due to lack of space, these thin machines can no longer accommodate a conventional memory module or the rail that receives the module. This is problematic due to the subsequent expansion of the machine, so anyone who thinks that 8GB of memory will be low for him should buy the 16GB machine from the outset because there is no possibility for later expansion.

crystal disk info

What else is common in machines is a dedicated video card, or more precisely a GPU. It comes from the NVIDIA workshop, a GeForce MX150 by type. There are two versions of the GeForce MX150. One focuses on higher speeds and the other on longer operating times. This ability is, of course, manifested in the clock, since the two tiles are the same anyway. I don’t know if I should classify the good or bad news as Xiaomi choosing the longer uptime. This means that the 1D12 chip runs on 1469 and 1532 MHz clocks instead of the 1252 MHz core and 1341 MHz boost clocks of the faster version, at least according to GPU-Z. Honestly, this is an advantage for me, as I use the machine as a portable in most cases, rather than plugged into an electrical outlet. In addition to the NVIDIA GPU, we find 2 GB of GDDR5 memory, the clock of which, again, is only 1253 MHz according to the GPU-Z.

gpu z

In addition to the “fast” NVIDIA chip, there is of course Intel’s integrated solution, the Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU for the Kaby Lake CPU. Its performance is much more modest, about a quarter to a fifth of the performance of the NVIDIA MX150. Of course, its power consumption is also much lower, so for applications where NVIDIA does not need power, the integrated GPU gives the picture.

Let's stay a little longer with the iron! As I mentioned several times, the machine is extremely thin. This is obviously advantageous in terms of portability and obviously disadvantageous in all other respects. As you may have read above, for example, you can’t increase the amount of memory, but you can’t replace a processor that way, and a VGA chip is eternal unless you’re looking for someone to take it off, rewind, and re-solder.

What is even more problematic due to the small size is the cooling. At least that's what I thought. Then it turned out that this was handled extremely cleverly at Xiaomi. The system is not cooled by one, but by two fans, so thanks to the doubled cooling capacity, I have not yet been able to heat the machine housing.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 14

After last year’s presentation, I’ve read in many places that this double cooling will be problematic because even smaller machines with a simple solution will be loud when intensive cooling starts. The double will obviously come with double noise. Well, now either I haven’t been able to put enough strain on the cooling to go at maximum speed, or it’s just not loud even if it really starts up. Sure, there’s audible noise compared to completely silent operation, but it’s far from disturbing, as far from the unbearable as Mako is from Jerusalem.

Speaking of iron, it’s a good idea to pack some test results at the end of this chapter.

 

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro Tests

Mark 3D

3dmark 2

3dmark 1

3dmark 3

3dmark 4

 

I thought that even though it was a business machine, I would still look with the 3D Mark to see if the machine would perform in games. I ran the tests available in the free version and the result was as expected. The MX150 isn’t a powerhouse, but it performs decently, so if we’re not going to be able to run the latest games in full graphic detail, we can achieve a whole usable FPS with some fuss.

PCMark

PCMark

This is the program this machine needs. It tests the machine in essentially every area it is intended for, and even includes photo and video editing. The scores are appealing here too, certainly not compared to a bull desktop. My own experience also shows that the hardware copes with larger Excel spreadsheets as well as the challenges posed by Photoshop, in fact, I cut smaller videos myself sometimes, and while I’m not dizzy about the speed, the performance is perfectly adequate. You can find the PCMark results here: Xiaomi Mi Notebook test - PCMark results

Crystal Disk Mark

cristaldiskbench

I only put this program here because of the really cubes. Samsung’s SSD works well, so it was clear that it wouldn’t be this component that would hold the machine back at higher loads.

Cinebench

Cinebench

The program we have been measuring for 10 years has changed almost nothing. However, we are still the perfect partner for graphical rendering tasks if we are curious about the performance of our machine.

Based on the measurements, I have to say that the machine didn’t cause any surprises. Since I have been working on it for quite a few weeks, I was expecting these results. Sure, there will be a bit of a bit of a bit, but once again, it’s a business-class machine, not an extreme-sharpened gamer machine. To do this, we also need to measure the results, which I think have been very fair in today’s field.

 

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro Summary

We talked about the outside, we talked about the inside, it’s time to tell you a little more about the machine, that is, what it’s like to live with it!

If you expect me to write badly, you must be disappointed. Never, but never in the last 20 or so years have I had such a good notebook since I used laptops, including the horrible money already mentioned in the article, the ASUS ROG note, which crumpled itself about a month after the warranty expired. I’m not saying it was bull compared to the machines of the age, but in return it was heavy like mud, warmed up like a short-circuited firefly, and loud like a seed-fed vacuum cleaner. True, the edge of the display was lit here and there, and there was a text-message bar on it that had the caption burned in for two months. So, it didn't work.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 5

What came in even more was the company DELL notim, I replaced it with this Xiaomira now. In it, a second or perhaps third generation i7 worked with 4GB of memory, later with a 120GB SSD. I didn’t take care of the battery, so it broke, but other things have worked flawlessly for years. Needless to say, it wasn’t for home use either, but for a business-class machine. Maybe it was also because I wanted this category from the start.

Business machines are strong, but not sharpened to infinity. The use of materials is first class, but not ostentatious as with a gamer machine. Not coincidentally, I don’t even mention notebooks for home use, they then represent a completely different world with plenty of plastic, their loud cooling and other weaknesses.

So the point of seeing, falling in love was a moment, but the purchase dragged on for a while. Now, after more than a month of use, I dare say it’s worth every penny. Of course I hope it won't go bad, but luckily there is a service at home where most things can be repaired, and if there is such a thing as a motherboard failure, especially after the warranty period, it won't matter if I bought it at home or from China the repair will not be worth it either way.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 15

Using the machine is a real experience anyway. Not only because it’s good to work with it, but also because when I take it out of the bag in a strange place, the air stops and everyone looks to see what the beauty I’m just turning on can be. When I say yeah, it’s just a “Chinese” notebook, then I really have to wonder. Okay, Xiaomi isn’t an average Chinese manufacturer after all, but still, many times I notice that mentioning the name means nothing, they don’t know what I’m talking about.

Battery life has been mentioned many times in the article. Well, if I work with the machine - that means 6-8 hours a day - I have to put it on a charger once a day. The charging itself takes approx. an hour and a half, so for normal work, Photoshop, sometimes with a little video cropping I can use for 5-6 hours. That, I think, is pretty normal uptime, which I’m perfectly happy with for my part. This is, after all, a portable machine, one of the most important aspects here is not to be plugged into an electrical outlet.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 4

You have to get used to the keyboard. Not because it is bad, but because on the one hand there is a lack of a numeric keypad, and on the other hand there is no Hungarian layout, only English (American). I don’t have to get used to this, I’ve been using an English keyboard for years, I don’t have to look for accented letters. Which requires a little habit of not having a 101-key keyboard, so you can use the Alt Gr + j keys to advance the long letter. For me, approx. the third letter Í was already automatic, but if you think of such a machine, calculate it! Of course, you can also sticker the keys, but because of the nice backlight, I would feel like a sin.

I have written several times in the article about what I use the machine for. In addition to normal Word, Excel office programs, I work on Photoshop, Adobe Media Encoder every day and cut videos with Hit Film. In addition, of course, I use several types of browsers, different word processors, such as notepad ++ for web work. So it can be said that I expect much more from the machine than the average office work, and so far I have had no reason to complain.

Finally, the most important question is, would I recommend this machine to others? I don’t think I need to explain in particular why, but yes, I would recommend it after what has been described so far. Of course, this keyboard thing, that is, the fact that there are no keys with Hungarian accented characters can cause problems for some, so you have to calculate with that.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro 6

However, if you don’t want to spend a lot and would rather choose a business machine for the price of a machine for home use, this machine will be yours. It is really true, you have to pay about 100 thousand forints more for notebooks of similar category and equipment in Hungary, and that is not a lot of money anymore. I would add that if I could buy the machine at home (from a well-known wholesaler), I would have bought it instead of an ASUS or an MSI for the same price. So the 100 price advantage is just icing on the cake.

For my part, I consider it a very good decision to put my vote down to Xiaomi, I didn’t regret it for a minute, and I even dare to encourage my close acquaintances to try to enter the world of Xiaomi with a premium notebook!

The price of the machine in a Chinese warehouse at the time of writing is $ 910, which is very good, so we could only buy it with great luck if we caught some coupon on it. Now that's all without a coupon. If you want this for yourself, make sure you choose Priority Line - EU Express, which is a bit more expensive, but the distribution company pays VAT and customs instead when the package arrives in the EU, so we have an extra cost does not burden.

I ordered from here: Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro i7 + 8GB + 256GB

If you want a smaller machine, we now also have a discount coupon for the two versions of the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13,3 ″. The difference between the two machines is the video card, the more expensive is Intel's integrated solution, the cheaper is NVIDIA's dedicated video card.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13,3 GeForce MX150 video card for $ 861 instead of $ 789, with a delivery time of 5-7 business days from European stock. Coupon code: GBsale182.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air 13,3 with Intel HD Graphics 620 video card for $ 869 instead of $ 799, plus 5-7 business days delivery time from European stock. Coupon code: GBsale184

Hthe coupon doesn't work, you might want a cheaper Xiaomi notebook, then write, we'll try to help with a coupon code!

About the Author

s3nki

Owner of the HOC.hu website. He is the author of hundreds of articles and thousands of news. In addition to various online interfaces, he has written for Chip Magazine and also for the PC Guru. For a time, he ran his own PC shop, working for years as a store manager, service manager, system administrator in addition to journalism.