Video Transcript

When you’re looking into buying a laptop you will see that they can come in a lot of different sizes and price classes. There are laptops strictly for light apps such as word and surfing, and at the other end of the spectrum we have powerful laptops that are used for productivity such as video editing or gaming.

But what if you need something that has the perfect balance between portability, design, performance, and price..
Today we will be looking at the Xiaomi Notebook Pro 15.6 i7.

Let’s start with its design. The Xiaomi Notebook Pro features a sleek thin aluminium body with a large trackpad, backlit keyboard, and Glass finish screen with relatively thin bezels.
I’m very pleased with the aesthetics of this device as it looks just gorgeous. Nobody will notice this is a Chinese manufacturer, and thus you can use this laptop in practically any situation. In addition, the branding on this laptop is very minimal with only a small “Mi” right below the screen.

The battery on this laptop is so far one of the best that I’ve had so far. I can take it on the plane with me for a long international flight, watch some movies, do some light gaming, and do some work without having the battery die on me. Note that I do bring down the brightness and set the performance settings to “better battery” when I know that I  won’t be able to charge for a while. When comparing this to my surface pro 3, its day and night. 

Next up is the display.

It features a glossy 15.6 inch 1080p display which may not sound impressive, however text looks crisp and has really good color accuracy out of the box.

Like mentioned earlier, the glass finish makes this screen extremely pleasing to look at. However, when outside the glass will be very reflective and thus making it difficult to see anything, kinda like the same with your phone.

For ports, the laptop features a full size HDMI port, 2 usb 3.0 ports, and a headphone jack. On the other side we have a sd card slot (which is always welcome), and two USB Type C ports. One of the ports is used for charging which makes this laptop even more portable for users with a phone that also has a type C charging port. I currently bring one simple USB Type C charger with me that I can charge my phone, GoPro, and laptop with.

For performance, the Xiaomi Notebook Pro has a Nvidia MX150 build in. While this may not be enough to do all your heavy tasks on it, thanks to this gpu you will be able to smoothly edit your pictures in lightroom, do some light video editing, and even do some gaming. Compared to a laptop with no GPU, it’s a huge difference.

One thing I wasn’t sure about when I ordered this laptop online, is that it’s only available in Chinese. I was worries if finding drivers and reinstalling windows and office would be a problem.

After some research I found out that you can reinstall Windows 10 using the “Single Language” option. I will leave the download link of the Single Language ISO in the video description.

Since the laptop doesn’t have any stickers with product keys, before you reinstall Windows it’s recommended to log into the Chinese Windows so you can copy your product key. It can be acquired by running a simple command in the Command Prompt.

In addition you should also open Microsoft Office and try to connect your Microsoft account with it. I was unsuccessful to connect my Microsoft account, however in the process it displayed my Office product key.

I copied the product key and on my English Windows I was able to connect the key to my Office by using TunnelBear proxy and connecting to Mexico. It’s a tip I received from the Microsoft support team and it worked really well.

Remember, if you have problems, you can always contact Microsoft for help.

Conclusion

The Xiaomi Notebook pro is currently one of the highest value laptop out there. It looks modern and sleek, has a dedicated graphics card, is very portable, and has a great battery life.
If you’re looking to buy a laptop and don’t require heavy workload on it, then this laptop is a no-brainer. The only downside is that you have to order it from China, and thus having very limited warranty and support.