Ihar Tur, a host on the ONT TV channel, described the new ultra-thin Horizont H-book laptop as an almost entirely Belarusian design. Allegedly, only the case is imported. However, the technical specifications and breakdown of the device reveal that the laptop contains more foreign-made components.
Context: On July 30, 2026, Aleksandr Lukashenko took a working trip to Brest, where he visited the Brest Electric Lamp Plant, which belongs to the Horizont holding company. Unimpressed by the pace of modernization, Lukashenko called on the plant and the entire Belarusian industrial sector to “get moving.”
In a segment of the program Kontury Sobytiy dedicated to this trip, host and correspondent Ihar Tur discussed a new, ultra-slim, Belarusian-made laptop. Apparently, the only part that was imported was the case.
“The fact that Horizont keeps its word is confirmed by its actions. At one point, there was a directive to design a locally-made computer. Earlier this week, Yury Predka [CEO of OJSC Horizont Holding Management Company] boasted about a Belarusian ultra-thin laptop. Aleksandr Lukashenko initially reacted with the kind of skepticism you’d hear from ordinary people: ‘Maybe you’re just assembling it here, while all the components are imported,’” Tur said on air on August 2, 2026.
The segment then showed Predko demonstrating the laptop’s casing to Lukashenko.
“No, we make everything ourselves. I’ll show you — the entire production process. We make the circuit boards, the firmware is ours — everything is ours. The only thing we don’t make is the casing, because there’s such a wide variety of them. This is the casing,” Predka said.
The laptop in question is the Horizont H-book. Its mass production began in March 2026. The model was designed to be thin and lightweight, with the casing painted bright orange. But it’s not just the case that’s foreign-made. This is evident from the laptop’s technical specifications.
Journalists from the tech publication MT Today disassembled the H-book to see what components were inside. It turns out that the SSD is from the Chinese brand Keyway, and the battery is clearly marked “Made in China.” The processor and integrated graphics are from the US company Intel, while the operating system, Windows, is also American.
Using foreign components in a local laptop brand is not problematic in and of itself. Only a few countries worldwide manufacture certain components, and manufacturers in other countries also use imported components. Take, for instance, the laptop brands Hyperbook in Poland and Slimbook in Spain. The Spanish company explicitly states that its laptops’ base units are manufactured in Asia, and that the memory, storage drives, and operating system are installed in Spain. This is standard practice worldwide. However, in the case of the Horizont H-book, viewers were misled by the claim that only the casing was imported.
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HaDEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
