Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro review: This MacBook Pro clone has some serious hardware

Ever wondered what a MacBook Pro would be like if it ran Windows 10? The Mi Notebook Pro answers that question.

Xiaomi is known primarily for its phones, with the Chinese manufacturer now among the five largest smartphone brands in the world.

In China, however, phones are just one part of a larger ecosystem that includes everything from robot vacuum cleaners to LED bulbs, smart shoes, and backpacks. You can even buy Xiaomi-branded screwdrivers, comforters, and luggage from its Mi Home retail stores in China, and the brand is increasingly looking to the lifestyle segment as a growth driver.

So it stands to reason that Xiaomi would venture into the notebook segment. The first Xiaomi laptop was the Mi Notebook Air, which made its debut back in 2016. As the name suggests, the Mi Notebook Air was targeted at MacBook Air, offering a similar set of features as Apple — and building on the MacBook Air in a few areas — but at a significantly lower price point.

With the Mi Notebook Pro, Xiaomi is looking to do the same to the MacBook Pro. The laptop shares a similar design aesthetic to the MacBook Pro, but retails for $1,150. For that price, you get a 15.6-inch Full HD panel, eighth-gen Kaby Lake Intel Core i7-8550U CPU clocked at 1.8GHz, NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 256GB M.2 SSD, Wi-Fi ac, two USB 3.0 ports, and two USB-C ports.

On paper, the Mi Notebook Pro sounds like an interesting proposition — you're getting a notebook with the same design as the MacBook Pro and decent hardware for less than half the cost. Let's see if the laptop manages to hold its own in this segment when it comes to real-world usage.

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