Xiaomi Launches MacBook Pro killer - the Mi Notebook Pro

Earlier today Chinese tech giants Xiaomi launched its new lineup of laptops, Mi Notebook Pro. "We want to provide good and affordable products that are of high values, sounds very simple but it’s hard to do", said Xiaomi's founder and CEO Lei Jun while presenting the new laptop. 

The Mi Notebook Pro is one of the earliest notebooks to be powered by Intel's 8th generation i7 processor, and it has been claimed that they are 40% powerful and efficient than the last generation. Additionally, the 15-inch notebook has dual channel RAM up to 16GB and storage up to 1TB SSD, along with  NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card.

According to Lei Jun, the Mi Notebook features a special cooling system, with symmetrically distributed dual fans and the larger heat pipe, that will double the airflow. " We designed a special cooling system, in order to get temperature evenly distributed and maintained", said Lei Jun in his keynote.  

On the design side, the Mi Notebook pro has a clean, minimal design and come in a dark gray shade, which looks a lot similar to the latest MacBook Pro. Lei Jun said, " "many of the engineers in my company love MacBook Pro, that's why we looked at MacBook Pro when we designed Mi Notebook Pro." In fact, this special love for MacBook Pro can be seen in the whole presentation as Lei Jun kept comparing everything from benchmarks to keyboard to the MacBook Pro.

Few other specialties of the Mi Notebook Pro include a fingerprint sensor embedded in the top right corner of the track pad, a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection for the display and very narrow side bezels of just 6.25 mm. For connectivity, Mi Notebook Pro has an SD card slot, two USB Type-C ports, a HDMI port, and a headphone jack.

The Mi Notebook costs 6999 RNB in China, approximately 70,000 INR. However, availability in India is not clear at this point. 

Disclaimer: Xiaomi paid for TechRadar’s travel and stay to China for the launch event.

Jibu Elias

Jibu Elias is the lead AI researcher at NASSCOM, lending his wide knowledge and keen insight into artificial intelligence in currently working towards building a unified AI eco-system backed by the Govt. of India. Coming from years of experience in covering emerging technologies, Jibu has a knack for putting seemingly unrelated things in the context of AI with a focus on ethical and legal implications of AI.