Honor’s First Gaming Laptop: The Hunter V700

With all the political wrangling going on with Huawei and Honor, one product line that both companies seem to be able to push is the laptop and notebook business. Both Huawei and Honor have announced devices powered by the latest Intel and AMD processors, and despite the first few years of some really nice designs, like the Matebook X Pro or the Magicbook 14, the two companies are now starting to get a bit more adventurous. Enter the first gaming laptop, the Hunter V700.

The Honor Hunter V700

This new product line from Honor starts with an interesting concept which takes advantage of the strong identity and product design team that the company has. The Honor Hunter brand can use a single H to identify the marque, and in this instance they put it onto a full bodied gaming laptop.

The standard ‘15.6-inch chassis’ size actually holds a 16.1-inch display, enabled by the 4.7 mm side-to-side bezels. This is a 1080p IPS panel that offers 144 Hz refresh rates, albeit at only a 300 nit maximum brightness. Inside the chassis is what we would normally consider a ‘standard’ gaming notebook setup. There is an Intel 10^th Gen Comet Lake processor, up to the Core i7-10750H, paired with an NVIDIA graphics card up to the RTX 2060 6 GB. The top model comes with 16 GB of DDR4-2666, which can be user upgraded to 32 GB, and there are two NVMe M.2 slots, one of which comes preinstalled up to 1 TB.

The chassis itself is an aluminium magnesium alloy, which should prove to be extremely light, as well as assist with cooling. Based on Honor’s own testing, the company states that in full power virus mode (AIDA64 FPU + Furmark for 72 minutes), the CPU will consume 45 W sustained, and the GPU will consume 101 W sustained, peaking at 77ºC, enabling a consistent minimum gaming performance regardless of the title.

This is partly enabled by the ‘wind valley channel’ created when the laptop is opened, providing an 8.5mm intake for two 12 V fans which Honor says increase airflow volume by 40% over a conventional design - you can see the little extra 'feet' that provides this opening. In Honor’s press release, they call the way the chassis opens to help this airflow as a ‘rotating shaft of the wind’, which is one of the more amusing word parings in a laptop press release of late. Honor states that the maximum audible noise from the fans for a user is 49 dBA, and the cooling keeps the WASD area below 31ºC.

In line with the gaming theme, the keyboard is a 4-zone RGB back-lit implementation, and features 1.8mm key travel on the chiclet design. The WASD area has its own highlight, the space bar has been widened, there is a full number pad, and the arrow keys have been moved down slightly by almost half a key to make them stand out. The motif on the lid of the notebook is also RGB, with control software provided. On the audio front, Honor has licenced Nahimic’s audio software toolkit, enabling 5.1 and 7.1 audio simulation as well as optimized EQ profiles for specific games.

Connectivity starts with Wi-Fi 6 but also includes 3.5mm audio, one USB 2.0 port, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, a Type-C port with DisplayPort, and a HDMI 2.0 output.

In line with other Honor and Huawei laptops, inbuilt NFC allows users to connect up the laptop to their smartphone to enable features such as screen recording for PC games, live streaming for mobile games, file transfer, and call migration. The screen recording and live streaming sections are certainly interesting features.

Availability

As always with new design ideas like this Honor is starting with the Chinese market first. The Hunter V700 will be available in the Chinese market from September 27^th, with three different configurations:

i7-10750H, RTX 2060, 16 GB, 1x 1 TB, 144 Hz: RMB 9999 ($1300)
i7-10750H, RTX 2060, 16 GB, 512 GB, 144 Hz: RMB 8499 ($1100)
i3-10300H, GTX 1660 Ti, 16 GB, 512 GB, 144 Hz: RMB 7499 ($999)

*RMB prices are quoted with China 13% sales tax. US prices quoted without sales tax.

I think something might be mislabelled with that middle option, as charging another $200 for extra storage seems extortionate – it is perhaps an i5, or the GTX graphics. As always, Honor is doing a deal for the first few buyers on launch day, with savings of 500 RMB.

We’re unlikely to see the Hunter V700 in the west, but it marks the first step in what could come over to us. I’ve been impressed with the Honor laptop designs I’ve tested so far, so if they can launch a worldwide model at the right price, it should be an interesting product.

Source: Honor VMall