Xiaomi RedmiBook 14 Ryzen Edition [RedmiBook 14 Ryzen 5 8/512GB/Vega 8]

Won't let you down

A modern student has to carry a laptop in a crowded subway, jump up the stairs between classrooms, push in line at the canteen or read notes, sitting under the door of a lecture hall. RedmiBook 14 withstands such tests with dignity: the aluminium case will protect against poke in the line in the dining room, the battery lives for about 8 hours at an average brightness of the display, just enough to return home for recharging without carrying an extra power bank in your bag. Well, with a weight of 1.5 kg, this is almost the lightest laptop in this class.

Thin and light laptop with a comfortable keyboard and a good IPS screen

Light weight is justified by the fact that the screen size here is not the standard 15.6", but exactly 14. That is, this is not yet a full-fledged ultrabook, but quite close to it. At the same time, smaller dimensions do not affect convenience in any way: the keyboard with a standard layout and regular keys does not require getting used to when typing, the touchpad has optimal dimensions, and the display diagonal is enough for normal readability of text, diagrams and images. By the way, the display here is surprisingly good, instead of a low-cost TN-matrix, the Chinese used a very sensible IPS, which produces a rather juicy and contrasting picture. At the same time, its minimum brightness is rather high, which can make it difficult to work in the dark. And so the display is good for work tasks, and in the evening to watch a movie.

Rugged and stylish solid aluminium body

Unlike most inexpensive smartphones, the Xiaomi / Redmi laptop looks solid and presentable. The silver cover looks expensive, and the “Redmi” and “Designed by Xiaomi” logos embroidered in grey letters seem to hint that the Chinese have grown up and no longer want to stand in the shadow of Apple. Although, the analogies with the design of the MacBook are still obvious to anyone who has eyes.

Power with a margin

In a thin case, quite performant components were hidden by the standards of this class: a Ryzen 5 processor with 4 physical and 8 virtual cores, 8 GB of RAM, a 512 GB SSD and an integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics card. The latter surprises with muscles hidden under the shirt, like that ticket beggar from the series "Rick and Morty" about the passage. It literally tramples on the built-in rubbish from Intel and leaves its main competitor, the GeForce MX250, far behind. For example, we managed to squeeze a solid 25 frames per second out of it in Battlefield 5 at medium graphics settings and FullHD resolution! If you make the requirements more modest, then you can quite comfortably play Dota, CS: GO, Fortnite, WOT, FIFA and past generation toys like GTA 4 and The Witcher. Against the backdrop of a performant filling, some solutions on the periphery look a little strange. For example, the rejection of a webcam and the absence of at least one USB C port. As compensation, there is fast charging and dual-band Wi-Fi, which allows you not to suffer from a clogged Internet channel in a crowded auditorium.