I’ve been side-eyeing foldable tech for a while now, foldable phones, foldable screens, even rollable TVs. Most of the time, they’re cool in theory and awkward in practice. But Huawei MateBook Fold? This one caught me off guard.

Imagine unfolding what looks like a sleek laptop and watching an 18-inch 3.3K display bloom open like a book made of pixels. It’s bizarre at first, in the best way. The screen is huge but sharp, with this vivid color depth that almost feels excessive for an office doc. But throw on some HDR video or open up a sketching app, and it makes sense. It’s a screen that wants to be used like a canvas.

Then there’s the design: minimal, elegant, no wild branding shouting at you. It’s a machine that looks like it knows it’s special but doesn’t need to prove it. The hinge feels solid (a miracle in the world of foldables), and when it snaps shut, it’s surprisingly compact. Definitely not pocketable, but that’s the point. This isn’t a gimmick. It’s a tool.

Now, the tech under the hood, Huawei’s in-house Kirin X90 chip, is where things get interesting. It’s supposedly a 5nm processor, which might not mean much unless you’ve been watching Huawei’s chip journey like it’s a drama series. For a company that got locked out of the global chip supply chain, building something like this in-house is borderline rebellious. No Snapdragon, no Intel. Just Huawei doing its own thing. That alone makes this laptop weirdly compelling.

It runs on HarmonyOS, which is also its own rabbit hole. You either love it or you’re still figuring it out. For me, it felt cohesive — especially if you’re already in the Huawei ecosystem (phones, tablets, buds). Everything just talks to each other, like it’s been trained to behave.

So, is the Huawei MateBook Fold perfect? Not yet. It’s expensive. It’s niche. And it’s probably not the daily driver for everyone. But it does something most laptops don’t: it makes you feel like you’re using something from tomorrow. If nothing else, it proves one thing — Huawei isn’t just surviving. It’s making bold, risky moves again. And that alone deserves a second look.