Huawei MateView GT Review

Huawei continues to expand its ecosystem of products by venturing into new categories including displays, and the MateView GT is one of the fruits of that step. Being a flagship, the expectations are high, as it also faces tough competition. The question is, can it hold its ground?

Specifications

Unboxing Experience

Inside the box, the stand and the panel are sandwiched in Styrofoam panels while the rest of the accessories are in a separate box. The great thing about this monitor is that you don’t need a screwdriver to assemble it.

What you get:

• Stand
• Panel
• Documentation
• DisplayPort 1.4 Cable
• Power Brick with USB-C cable
• USB-C to USB-A cable
• USB-C to USB-C cable

Stand Assembly

The stand of the MateView GT connects to the panel through several locking mechanisms that don’t require the use of screws. When it locks in, you can basically carry the panel using the stand as a handle, which demonstrates its strength.

The stand allows for tilting and height adjustment, which means you’ll need to move the entire stand if you want to swivel the screen. There are no provisions for cable management here, at least by default. You can probably push the cables behind for a cleaner look or to try to hide them.

What makes the MateView GT unique is that the stand is attached to a sound bar which serves as the primary speakers for the monitor. While most monitor speakers are well.. underwhelming, these promise to deliver better quality sound, and actually, it does, but let’s talk about that later.

Design

On the surface, the Huawei MateView GT looks like what you’d expect from a monitor of this size and price. Branding goes to the chin, a 34-inch 1500R curved VA display surrounded with slim bezels, and a joystick to navigate the OSD.

At the back, you get more branding, two USB-C ports – one for display, data transfer, and 10W charging, and the other, for its power brick. There’s also a couple of HDMI 2.0 ports (sadly, no HDMI 2.1), a DisplayPort 1.4, and a 3.5mm audio/mic jack.

The highlight of the device, of course, is its stand, which has a sound bar composed of two 5W speakers plus a touch enabled strip with customizable RGB lighting. While not exactly impactful, it does add a bit of zing to the visuals, better than having it at the back at least.

Now, regardless of whether you like how this speaker sounds or not, you’re paying for it, and that’s okay if you’re going to use it. If you’re planning on wall-mounting this monitor, which it is capable of (but make sure to check if the mount can handle the weight), then where does that speaker go? to waste. Point is, the sound bar should be optional, or maybe have a variant that has a standard stand without the sound bar for a lower price.

Anyway, you will be able to control the volume of the sound bar by tapping or sliding your finger on the touch panel. It’s very cool-looking to be honest, and pretty quick to do.

Sound

So about that sound bar, is it better than a pair of dedicated desktop speakers? well, that depends. If we’re talking about those cheap generic ones, the answer is yes, but against a more expensive pair like the AudioEngine A2+? no.

Let’s just say it’s not great, nor is it bad – bass is probably its weakest point, as it is the most lacking of all the frequencies. The vocals come across with decent clarity and crispness, and the treble leans towards the warmer side. It can get loud enough for a small room.

On Screen Display

The On-Screen display on the MateView GT can be accessed with five-way joystick in the enter section of the display. The OSD gives you access to most of the monitor’s features like Game Assist, which allows you to have a crosshair or the FPS shown on the screen, for customizing the RGB lighting effect, and for adjusting the usual parameters like brightness and contrast, there are also several display and audio presets to choose from, depending on what you’re doing.

Based on the official website, the device does not support AMD FreeSync or NVIDIA G-SYNC, though there are materials that point to a way to enable these features.

Performance

The MateView GT uses a VA Panel and has a refresh rate of 165Hz. If you want to know the ups and downs against IPS and TN panels, here the general list.

VA vs IPS

VA vs TN

Viewing Angles and Backlight Bleed

The MateView GT showcased good viewing angles as content visibility and clarity is pretty much looks the same from various directions. There is a lot of glow, but no visible backlight bleeding.

Color Analysis

Huawei claims a 90% DCI-P3 coverage, which is close to the result of the test, and 100% sRGB, which is exactly what we got. Its ARGB coverage is also at 82% which is greater than the 78% that we were looking for. All this means that this monitor is good for both gaming and creative work.

Tone Response

The MateView GT also showcases good blacks with a “perfect” score of 2.2 on the tone response test.

Brightness and Contrast

It’s not very consistent in terms of brightness levels, which probably means it’s using varying amounts of power to increase its brightness, not necessarily a bad thing. Max brightness capped off at 411.5, which is way more than the 350 that Huawei says on its website.

Gaming Performance

The MateView GT is able to deliver good performance with high refresh rates that make visuals look smoother and more fluid, In this case, we tested The Ascent and Project Cars, which both support its native resolution of 3440 x 1440.

VS The Competition

Based on specifications and pricing, the MateView GT is actually in a good spot, as it delivers a higher refresh rate and better brightness, as well as HDR10 support compared to Xiaomi’s product, while still being in the sub-PhP30k price tag.

Verdict

The Huawei MateView GT delivers on most of the core aspects that you’ll need from a gaming and productivity monitor. It’s easy to setup, the stand is quite sturdy, the monitor is color-accurate, delivers smooth and fluid visuals, an OSD that’s easy to navigate, and pretty decent build quality as well.

As for the speaker, it’s average at best in terms of sound, but it’s great if you want to save space. The RGB lighting adds a bit of flair to the mix, but with function as well, being the volume rocker for this device. It’s also not consistent with its brightness levels, and then there’s the lack of (at least on paper) of support for VRR technologies like FreeSync or G-SYNC.

For their first entry into the gaming monitor space, I think Huawei has done a good job here, despite its shortcomings, this is still a solid, all-rounder for its price.

Emman Tortoza

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Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.