Huawei is one of the few manufacturers who have been still catering to the Android tablet market. And the Chinese manufacturer has gone on to unveil its new MatePad Pro tablet that will go head to head against the likes of iPad Pro and Samsung Galaxy Tab S6, and it certainly packs the punch to do so.
As a like-for-like competitor of the iPad Pro on the Android side, the MatePad Pro comes with a similar keyboard case and of course, a stylus. A stylus that detects 4,096 levels of pressure and charges when attached to the top of the tablet magnetically.
At first look, the MatePad Pro welcomes with a glorious 10.8-inch AMOLED panel with 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution and an aspect ratio of 16:10. Huawei profoundly claims the tablet has a 90% screen-to-body ratio, all thanks to its bezels that measures at just 4.9mm. Small bezels mean a punch-hole at the top, which is not found on either of iPad or Galaxy Tab; but it’s a trend that is going to last for a while. It holds an 8MP selfie camera. On the audio front, the tablet boasts a quad-speaker setup but lacks a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Underneath, the tablet rocks a powerhouse in the form of Kirin 990 SoC, seen on the likes of the Mate 30 series. The powerful chipset is backed up by 6GB or 8GB of RAM and 128GB, 256GB or 512GB of storage. There’s also room for expansion, albeit it being Huawei’s Nano memory card.
On the other hand, the MatePad is equally impressive in terms of battery, courtesy to its 7,250mAh battery. It supports 40W wired charging and 15W wireless charging plus 7.5W reverse-wireless charging. Also, due to a big battery, the reverse-wireless charging feature seems quite practical in this case.
As for the remaining features, noticeably, it comes with a 13MP rear camera and mobile phone integration that allows you to access your smartphone in a pop-up window; baked into Huawei’s EMUI 10 based on Android 10.
The Huawei MatePad Pro is available for pre-order in China for a starting price of CNY3,299 (~$469). Pricing for the tablets bumps up to 4,499 (~$640) for the 8GB+256GB LTE model. The pricing seems ok and the device’s specs are definitely noteworthy. But it comes with a drawback — no Google Play services, which could possibly mean that the tablet will remain in China for a while until Huawei fixes it.
