Huawei MatePad Pro review – do you need Google Play services?

While Huawei is among the top three smartphone and tablet manufacturers in the world for more than a couple of years now, there is one big issue – the US market is pretty much closed for them. This not only means they can hardly sell their products in the USA, but they have very limited support to the Google Play services.

And since we are still some time away from Huawei’s proprietory OS, we find ourselves in a middle ground where we don’t really know what to do. Of course, you can buy a mobile machine from them, and just sideload every app you need, as they are largely available across the Web. However, this is less secure than downloading directly from the Google Play Store. And this is why, Huawei has developed its own AppGallery, which is growing in size every single day. Interestingly, if the App you want to get cannot be found there, you can request it to the developers, and you’ll get a notification, once it is available.

So, enough for the software side of things. Today, we have the Huawei MatePad Pro – a 10.8-inch tablet that sports the brand’s own Kirin 990 chipset. Unlike its main competitors – Samsung, here, we see a 60Hz IPS panel, but there is one thing that really pegs for this device. We got it in a bundle with two accessories – the magnetic keyboard case, as well as the stylus, which not only looks like Apple’s Pencil but also shares about 75% of the name – it is called, the M-Pencil.

You can check the current price of Huawei MatePad Pro here: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

Contents

Specs Sheet

What’s in the box?

We got this tablet in a bundle with the Smart Magnetic Keyboard and the M-Pencil. This means – three boxes to open. First, let’s start with the accessories. They come in white packages, very similar to what Apple offers its devices. And on both occasions, you get the accessory, itself, be it the stylus, or the keyboard, as well as some paperwork. And for the main event – inside of the MatePad Pro box, you will surprisingly find a MatePad Pro tablet, again – some paper manuals, as well as a 20W (10V/2A) power brick, and a USB Type-A to USB Type-C cable.

Design and construction

Before we dig into the usability of the machine with its accessories, let’s start with the MatePad Pro, itself. First things first, this tablet feels pretty good in the hands. Not only is it made from metal, but it uses a magnesium alloy frame, instead of aluminum, which results in even lighter weight – 460 grams, and no visible antennas. In terms of thickness, the device isn’t the slimmest out there with a 7.2mm profile, but to be honest – there is nothing bad about that. This is exactly what makes the tablet feel comfortable in the first place.

Other than that, we see relatively slim bezels all around the display with a hole-punch front-facing camera setup. Ultimately, we feel like the cutout could have been smaller but on the bright side – it sits symmetrically in the corner.

This very corner is also home to the Power button and the volume rocker, both of which have tactile feedback.

Speaking of which, there comes the keyboard accessory. As a keyboard, it has clicky feedback and impressive key travel. However, the keycaps feel a bit small. Imprinted onto the inside of the top part of the cover, are the keyboard shortcuts with the “~” and “1” keys being used for the “Escape” button. Also, it has two magnetic stripes, which deliver two positions of use, respectively. Once it locks into place, you will be prompted to turn on your Bluetooth, should it’s not On by default, and will then pair the accessory automatically.

What is also impressive, is the initial quality. Ultimately, it is made out of some kind of polymer that imitates leather (called vegan leather). We are not sure how is this material going to age, but it definitely feels good and resembles a good-quality organizer.

Next, we have the M-Pencil. As we said, it is very reminiscent of the Apple Pencil, but it is lighter (and silverish). It has its own wireless charging spot below the volume rocker. When it comes to usability though, it has a bit of a latency observed and generally doesn’t provide the same feedback as the Samsung S Pen for example. Also, its 4096 points of pressure need quite more pressure than the latter, as well.

Ports

Well, it’s a surprise to no one that this tablet has only one port, and it is the USB Type-C one placed on the right (bottom in portrait mode). Additionally, there is one Nano-SIM card tray, which also holds Nano Memory cards for up to 256GB of expansion.

Display quality

Huawei MatePad Pro features a 10.8-inch (27.4cm) touchscreen IPS panel with a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels. The aspect ratio is 16:10, the pixel density – 280 ppi, their pitch – 0.09 x 0.09 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 30cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).

This device offers two display modes – “Normal” and “Vivid”.

We measured a maximum brightness of 472 nits. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6200K, in the “Normal” display mode, which is colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.

The contrast ratio here is good – 1400:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is an essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream tablet.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows Huawei MatePad Pro’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 96% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976 in the “Normal” mode. However, the “Vivid” mode has considerably higher color coverage, and it is able to reproduce even 98% of the DCI-P3 gamut, providing punchy and vibrant colors.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc.

Below you can compare the scores of Huawei MatePad Pro against the sRGB standard.

“Normal” display mode

“Vivid” display mode

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 23 ms

Health impact – PWM

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Huawei MatePad Pro’s display doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness at any point. This makes it comfortable for long working periods while being comfortable for your eyes in this aspect.

Conclusion

Huawei MatePad Pro’s touchscreen IPS panel has a high resolution, relatively comfortable viewing angles, decent maximum brightness, and a high-enough contrast ratio. It has a very wide color coverage spreading to the DCI-P3 color gamut when configured in “Vivid” mode. Moreover, its backlight doesn’t flicker, which ensures comfort to the eyes in long periods of usage. And despite the relatively wide color manipulation options, the colors it displayed weren’t accurate enough to make the table usable for professional purposes.

Sound

Huawei MatePad Pro’s quad-speaker Harman/Kardon setup sounds deep and loud. We saw no deviations across the frequency spectrum.

Software

Huawei MatePad Pro uses an EMUI 10 iteration of Android 10. And as many of you know, it lacks Google Play services, which makes it feel a bit weird at the beginning.

Battery

We tested the battery life with GFXBench’s battery lifetime test, whilst setting the screen brightness to 120 nits. In this test, the device achieved 276 minutes, which translates to 4 hours and 36 minutes of screen on time. Indeed, this is not great, but keep in mind that this test is pretty intensive, and the big 10.8-inch display can consume a lot of energy.

CPU tests

The Kirin 990 SoC is built on a 7nm+ architecture, and has 8 cores – four of them are Cortex-A76 (two working at 2.86 GHz, and two working at 2.09 GHz). Additionally, there are four further cores of Cortex-A55 type, and they work at 1.86 GHz. As we see – a traditional big.LITTLE configuration.

GPU tests

This SoC sports a 16-core Mali-G76 GPU.

Storage

Our 128GB UFS3.0 unit managed Read/Write speeds in the range of 1659/221 MB/s, respectively.

Stress test stability

Interestingly, the Kirin 990 is pretty potent but quickly dops its performance. And after 20 loops of the Wildlife Stress test in 3DMark, the performance goes down to 76% of the initial value, which is not very nice. Framerates in long gaming sessions will suffer.

Here is the hottest spot on the outside of the device – located around the main camera.

Camera app and settings

This tablet features a single 13MP camera on the back, that shoots 4K videos at 30fps. Below, you can see how the camera app looks, as well as the in-depth Pro Mode, found under the “More” tab.

Verdict

We really can’t say that the Huawei MatePad Pro is not a special device. Especially with the included accessories in the face of the Magnetic Keyboard, and the M-Pencil. After all, it is a premium-grade piece of machinery, which should be put side by side with the greats of Apple and Samsung… or should it?

Well, despite the throttling issue, where it drops the performance by 25% after 20 minutes of playing games, the tablet has one big issue, that can be more painful – the lack of Google Play services. Indeed, you can download pretty much every app out there via its APK installation file, but honestly, we do miss Gmail, Drive, Maps, and the rest of the suite. Not that it’s not impossible to make your way around that either, but it is just more time consuming, and thus – less convenient.

Also, we weren’t really impressed by the M-Pencil, as it needs a lot more pressure to reach its full capabilities, than the S Pen of Samsung for example. Other than that, the keyboard is great, and the four-speaker system, tuned by Harman/Kardon is on point for a tablet.

Huawei MatePad Pro’s touchscreen IPS panel has a high resolution, relatively comfortable viewing angles, decent maximum brightness, and a high-enough contrast ratio. It has a very wide color coverage spreading to the DCI-P3 color gamut when configured in “Vivid” mode. Moreover, its backlight doesn’t flicker, which ensures comfort to the eyes in long periods of usage. And despite the relatively wide color manipulation options, the colors it displayed weren’t accurate enough to make the table usable for professional purposes.

And with a battery life of about 4 hours and a half of screen on time during gameplay, we are not sure, you will be doing your daily work without the need of a charger, should you use this device as a laptop replacement.

So, at the end of the day, if you’re willing to give up the full Google experience, the MatePad Pro doesn’t seem like a bad idea. However, we still think that the Galaxy Tab S7 is a far better option. And although it is a bit more expensive, its availability in the USA makes it far easier to buy.

You can check the current price of Huawei MatePad Pro here: Buy from Amazon.com (#CommissionsEarned)

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