Mi 10 Pro Mi Note 10

TechRadar Verdict

The Mi Notebook Pro is a cracking laptop – an phenomenal piece of tech, in fact. It uses cutting-edge components and can be had for far less than rival machines. Some key issues remain, though.

Pros

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Exceptional performance
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Great value for money
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Stunning design
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Groovy battery life

Cons

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US keyboard
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Chinese Windows installation
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No touchscreen display
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Noisy nether load

Xiaomi has fingers in a lot of pies. The Chinese company is ameliorate known for its smartphones just also manufactures a host of other products, from electric rice cookers to air purifiers. Its laptops, withal, accept been the real head-turners over the by 18 months. Following the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air xiii.3 (2017) and the Xiaomi Air 12, come across the new kid on Xiaomi's block, the Mi Notebook Pro.

Where to buy?

Online Chinese retailer, Gearbest (opens in new tab), sent united states the sample and sells the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro for simply over £868 ($1,140) at the time of writing.

(ed: Use the coupon MTPro to bring downward the price to only £687.71. The coupon expires midnight on 31/12/2017)

Note that, while this price includes delivery, it is exclusive of whatsoever taxes that may exist levied by HMRC or the courier companies on behalf of the vendor. Want to purchase tech from online Chinese retailers? Read this first.

Design

Ruthless postmodernism is how one might define the design of the Mi Notebook Pro – the chaps in charge at Xiaomi opted for a darker color scheme compared to its smaller sibling. 'Deep gray', every bit they call information technology, is an attractive alternative to the silver brushed metallic designs that most thin-and-slim laptops sport.

There's no significant tapered profile here. Instead, y'all have an nigh perfectly rectangular slab of metallic alloy – with some curves hither and there – that weighs just under 2kg, with its dimensions (360 x 244 ten 15mm) making information technology inappreciably portable; that's the price to pay for a larger brandish.

In comparison, the Mi Notebook Air, which sports roughly the same configuration, is more than a third lighter and costs less. The biggest differences are the size and fewer ports.

With the Notebook Pro, yous get i HDMI port, two USB Type-A connectors and an sound jack on the left side, with 2 USB Blazon-C ports and an SD card reader located on the right. Note that one of the Blazon-C connectors is used as a power port.

The power push is located at the height right-hand side of the device, non our favorite location.

Equally is normally the example with Xiaomi laptops, there's no logo on the top of the device. Flipping it over exposes a large flat surface with a Mi logo, a removable sticker, 5 safe feet, a pair of speaker grills and a multitude of air vents.

Open up the laptop and y'all'll see the 15.6-inch brandish, which is covered by a Corning Gorilla Glass canvas, an odd pick given that the display is not touch-capable.

The long, single hinge, is reminiscent of Apple'due south notebooks, so is the layout of the keyboard. Remember, this is a 15.6-inch model so it has enough space for a numeric keypad. You won't find one here, though, and instead Xiaomi engineers opted for full-size keys with a low activation force, short i.5mm travel (to give better sense of confirmation), a 0.3mm thick hyperboloid keycap (rather than a flat one) and a noticeable absence of whatever double-part keys (at least on the chief depository financial institution of keys).

And yes, this is a backlit keyboard and different some competitors, it only offers an on-off option. The touchpad is big and houses a fingerprint reader. Information technology doesn't accept physical right and left buttons which might put off some folks.

Spec Sheet

Here is the Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro configuration sent to TechRadar Pro for review:

CPU: Cadre i5-8250U quad-cadre iii.4GHz

Graphics: Nvidia GeForce MX150; Intel UHD Graphics 620

RAM: 8GB DDR4

Screen: 15.6-inch 1920 10 1080 resolution display

Storage: 256GB Samsung PM961 SSD

Ports: 2 x USB Type-A, two x USB Type-C, 1 ten HDMI, audio jack, microSD

Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth iv.2

Camera: 1MP front end webcam

Weight: 1.99kg

Size: 360 x 244 x 15mm (Westward x D 10 H)

Battery: 61Whr

Specifications

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro is ane of the very few laptops to characteristic Dolby's Atmos sound technology, which is used in conjunction with Harman Kardon Infinity speakers; at that place'south a pair of the latter on-board (2.5W models).

Information technology is too one of the first to offering an 8th-generation Intel Core CPU. Our review sample came with the Core i5-8250U, which is far superior to previous Cadre i5 processors for one skilful reason: it is the first time that Intel has opted for a quad-cadre model for that range, and 1 that supports multi-threading.

Then it has 4 cores, 8 threads, a base of operations frequency of 1.6GHz and a Turbo frequency of 3.4GHz. Add in 6MB cache, support for DDR4-2400 and a new graphics subsystem (Intel UHD Graphics 620) and you take a compelling processor that should easily surpass even a Core i7-7600U CPU in multi-threaded tasks.

The Nvidia GeForce MX150 discrete GPU which is equipped with 2GB GDDR5 memory is based on the Pascal compages and should evangelize upward to effectually a third extra performance compared to the GeForce 940MX. The MX150 besides supports Optimus technology which allows applications to switch seamlessly betwixt integrated (UHD Graphics 620) and dedicated graphics to relieve battery life when the latter isn't needed.

Besides check out our review of the Xiaomi Mi Laptop Air 13.three (2018)

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Désiré has been musing and writing most applied science during a career spanning four decades. He dabbled in website builders and web hosting when DHTML and frames were in vogue and started narrating about the bear on of engineering science on society just before the start of the Y2K hysteria at the turn of the concluding millennium.