Chinese consumer electronics outfit Honor has thought outside the clamshell by creating a laptop with a stowable magnetic camera.

The MagicBook Art 14 weighs approximately 1kg and is 1.3cm thick, although it curves and tapers down to 1cm at its thinnest point.

The light weight is attributed to use of aerospace-grade materials - a magnesium alloy body and titanium alloy keyboard and fan. To stay slim, it utilizes a mortise and tenon joints and an ultra-thin vapor chamber heatsink.

But the industrial design "pièce de résistance" is a stowable smart camera that is stored in a slot on the machine’s left edge, and uses magnets to connect to its case above the display. As shown off in the video below - the fun starts at the 86-second mark - the camera ejects from its slot and is then entirely untethered from the machine. It’s unclear how the camera connects to the laptop - but no indication it’s wireless, so perhaps there are small pins on the laptop to make a connection, an arrangement commonly used for clip-on keyboards sold with touch-screen laptops.

Honor specifies that the camera can be flipped 180 degrees.

The stowable camera alleviates some of the privacy concerns associated with many laptop cameras. However, it does introduce the risk of potentially misplacing this device - an item surely a pain to replace.

The camera is at least better than other recent quirky camera designs, such as the one in Huawei's Matebook X Pro.

That camera was literally hidden under a faux function key on the top row of its keyboard. While great in theory, it left our APAC editor with a less than flattering up-the-nose selfie angle and The Reg at large wondering if Huawei even bothered to consider privacy and usability.

The MagicBook Art 14's camera fits in with the overall aesthetic of the machine, which features tapered surfaces and rounded double tangent ends. The body has a velvet textured stain-resistant surface and is offered a Monet-inspired color scheme named "sunrise impressions" and the monochromatic Vincent van Gogh and nature-inspired "summer olives."

Even the 14.6-inch OLED touch screen carries rounded ends in all four corners and a narrow bezel. The display uses ultra-high-frequency Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) dimming technique to adjust the brightness of the screen. Meanwhile, the display's e-book mode is claimed to reduce blue light output by 31.6 percent.

Honor boasts that the screen will do "eye exercises" for you at any time - although The Reg is not sure what that entails, and the maker issued a disclaimer that the laptop isn't a "therapeutic device."

Under the hood, consumers can choose between an Intel Core Ultra 5 1125H or an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H processor. It also boasts 1TB storage, and up to 32GB of LPDDR5X memory.

The lithium polymer batteries boast 60Wh capacity with a claimed 9.5 hour life that can be achieved after minutes of charging.

The CPUs offered in the machine are both Meteor Lake silicon that includes a neural processing unit (NPU) and therefore qualify for Intel’s definition of an “AI PC”. The MagicBook Art 14 puts the NPUs to work with software billed as a “smart conference assistant”.

Pricing starts at about 8000 yuan, or $1,100 - putting it around the price range of Apple’s MacBook Air equipped with an M3 chip.

While presales have started, the laptop should be available officially on July 26.

Honor also debuted two new smartphones last week - the “foldable flagship” Honor Magic V3 and entry level foldable Honor Magic Vs3 - as well as its MagicPad 2 tablet.

The worldwide market for foldable smartphones grew 49 percent in the first quarter of 2024, according to data from Counterpoint Research. Huawei took the lead in the market - mainly with domestic sales - while Honor showed massive growth outside of China.

Readers may recall that Honor started life as Huawei's budget smartphone division. The brand ventured into laptops in 2018 and was sold off in 2020 - around the time the effects of US technology export restrictions began to bite. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/07/16/honor_laptop_with_removable_camera/