How common are the issues plaguing the MateBook X Pro? And how many users have taken solving them into their own hands? This past month, I surveyed 309 visitors of Reddit.com/r/MatebookXPro and BradsHacks.com about their experience with the critically acclaimed Huawei laptop.
The majority of the surveyed users reported having a loose or rattling touchpad. Based on my understanding of how the touchpad is installed into the frame, I suspect that all units actually have this issue to some degree and some users just don’t perceive it as an abnormality. After all, loose trackpads are quite common in laptops.
Subjective Perception
Similarly, the issues with temperature and various types of noise are inherently subjective. For example, the same laptop can be considered too hot or loud by one user yet be completely acceptable for another. Some people are more sensitive to the buzz of coil whine and work in quieter environments, so they could notice the coil whine much more than others.
With such a high return rate, Huawei and its retailers must be losing a lot of money!
This is the most telling graph. The fact that all except one return solved the touchpad rattle supports my aforementioned suspicion that virtually every unit has it. The heat and noise issues, which result from poor thermal and electrical engineering, are also not solvable by replacements, as expected. Fortunately, we know the speaker distortion can be mostly eliminated by getting a late-model replacement unit.
With 27% of users having modified the laptop’s hardware, the MateBook X Pro is likely the world’s most commonly modified laptop! By far the most popular mod is the touchpad rattle fix invented by yours truly. Other popular mods include my cooling and speaker mods.
I’m humbled to be the most popular modding resource!
Sample Bias
I posted the survey link on both r/MatebookXPro and various pages of BradsHacks.com. The demographic that these sites attract are obviously biased toward dissatisfied and/or tech-savvy users. But still, pretty impressive results!
