Huawei MateStation S: New mini PC with spectacularly compact dimensions

Huawei has had to swallow a few toads in the past few months. The once celebrated whiz kid in the smartphone market is practically irrelevant there because of a trade dispute between the USA and China. That’s why new products have to come from completely different areas.

Huawei now also offers its own desktop computer.

With the official announcement of HarmonyOS , Huawei announced the Huawei Watch 3 Pro , in-ear headphones and premium monitors, among other things . Also new notebooks Mate Book series are part of an ongoing hardware offensive. And now there is another new release. And that is quite surprising. Because it is an equally small and light PC based on Windows 10 Home. Can be used, for example, in the home office or in the office: only 9 centimeters wide and only 29 centimeters high.

THE PRELUDE FOR MORE PC MODELS FROM HUAWEI?

The so-called MateStation S is the first desktop PC to be manufactured under the direction of Huawei. The name allows speculation that other models (M, L, XL etc.) could follow soon – with higher quality equipment. Because that is to be classified as rather average with the S variant presented now. For example, the AMD Ryzen 5 4600G is used as the processor. This central processing unit has 8 MB cache and six cores with 3.7 GHz base or 4.2 GHz turbo clock.

This is joined by 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage space. A dedicated graphics card is missing. Instead, Radeon on-board graphics are used. Huawei also promises a low noise level and quiet cooling, which is to be achieved, among other things, via the angled openings on the front. Dual WLAN (2.4 & 5 GHz) and Bluetooth 5 are also integrated. At the front there is a USB- C port that can be used, for example, to charge a smartphone. At the rear there are four USB ports (2 x version 2.0 and 3.2 each). In addition, a LAN connection, an HDMI port and a VGA interface.

On the back of the Huawei MateStation S there are, among other things, four classic USB ports.

Pre-orders are now possible on the Huawei homepage. The gray Huawei MateStation 5 with a weight of 4.2 kilograms costs 599 euros there . Deliveries will start on August 3, 2021. A good price? Strictly speaking, not. Because comparably equipped computers from HP or Lenovo are available from online retailers for prices starting at 429 euros. And paying a high surcharge just for the slim design is probably not the last word either. Huawei is therefore also including a wired ultra-slim keyboard with a metal design and an integrated fingerprint sensor in the package.

According to the manufacturer, this keyboard normally costs 99 euros extra. A wireless mouse can be booked for 9 euros, a PC monitor in the form of the Huawei Display 23.8 can be ordered for 99 euros. Further optional accessories: A WiFi 6 -capable WiFi router (+19 euros) and a WiFi mesh system (+109 euros). It is important to mention at this point: The MateStation S itself is not able to process WiFi-6 signals.