The Qingyun L540 laptop has a 5nm chip made by the Taiwanese firm in 2020, before US bans stopped Huawei from getting their chips.

According to TechInsights which opened the device, the news busts the myth that Huawei's Chinese chip partner, SMIC, may have made a massive jump in technology.

Huawei made a splash in the US and China last August when it launched a smartphone with a 7nm processor made by SMIC in Shanghai.

A teardown by the Canadian research team for Bloomberg News showed the Mate 60 Pro's chip was only a bit behind the best, a trick that US bans were supposed to stop.

That news sparked cheers across the Chinese tech world, and a row in the US about how well the bans worked.

However it turns out that at least in the case of the “new” Huawei machine the bans have been effective at keeping the more advanced gear out of China.