Xiaomi's Mi Notebook Pro has a lot going for it, but one unfortunate flaw

Xiaomi wasn’t shy about calling out Apple when announcing the new Mi Notebook Pro here in Beijing today, and on paper the company has a point. Xiaomi’s 15.6-inch laptop has a similar design, allegedly superior performance, and a more practical array of ports — two USB-A, two USB-C, full-size HDMI, and an SD card slot. Most impressively, it comes in at well under half the price for a comparably specced model.

Well, mostly comparably specced.

In person, the build quality seems to hold up pretty well, though it’s not quite as thin as Xiaomi’s pictures make it seem next to the MacBook Pro. The biggest surprise is the trackpad, which works similarly to Apple’s Force Touch designs and actually feels far better than the vast majority of comparable Windows machines. There’s also a fingerprint reader built into the trackpad’s top-right corner, and the keyboard is sturdy and satisfying.

Unfortunately, one element of the Mi Notebook Pro is likely to turn off a lot of prospective users weighing it against the MacBook Pro: the screen. Color reproduction seemed fine, but the panel is ultra-glossy and the resolution is just 1080p, which looks pretty pixelated at this size, without the option for anything higher. The new MacBook Pro might not have an SD card slot, but I know which machine I’d rather edit photos or video on — for certain tasks, it's hard to go back once you've used a Mac with a Retina display or a PC with a similarly high-res monitor.

That said, many people probably won’t care and would prefer to save more than $1,000 on Apple's offering. Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun said today that last year's Mi Notebook Air was ranked number 1 among slim laptops in China, so the brand does have some momentum in the space.

You’ll be able to pick the Mi Notebook Pro in Xiaomi's home market soon; the starting price is 5599 yuan (about $850) for an i5 model with 8GB of RAM, going up to 6999 yuan (about $1070) for an i7 model with 16GB of RAM and Nvidia's entry-level GeForce MX150 GPU.

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