After the successful launch of the Huawei MatePad Pro 11 inch last month during Smart Office event in Thailand, Huawei sent over one and its accessories for us to check out. If you missed our video a few weeks ago, you can check it out below.
Huawei MatePad Pro 11 Specs and Major Features
What Huawei is aiming for is for the users of this tablet to embrace it as a productivity tool. Huawei believes that high productivity requires a certain level of capability to meet certain user needs. If you are into designing or drawing, then you need a tablet that has a very responsive and color accurate display. If you want to play games on a bigger touch display, it needs to be able to render 3D graphics or keep up with computational processes without hampering the experience.
The new Huawei MatePad Pro 11 inch sports a 120Hz 11-inch OLED display. At its price-point (PhP41,999), this feature puts it at par with other flagship tablets such as the iPad Pro and Galaxy Tab series. I also believe that this is one of its best crowing achievements. It displays amazing and accurate color – one of the best ones I’ve seen on an Android tablet, in fact.
Since this is a tablet, the device offers several ways to use it. You can use it as your typical tablet with touch display and compatibility with pen input. It works really well with the Huawei M Pencil 2. It now has a pretty cool feature of being able to capture colors across applications, which is very useful when you want to have a uniform mix of colors when working on a specific theme.
The Huawei MatePad Pro 11 looks sleek and definitely gives a premium look in all angles. It also has this frosted back design that adds more sophistication to its looks.
It is easy to hold with just one hand, and the weight distribution of its internal parts is carefully considered. Huawei also sells this accessory that can give the tablet an option to have a kickstand or turn it into a laptop – this is the new Huawei detachable magnetic keyboard.
Huawei also made sure that it’s possible to “turn” this into your new laptop with these accessories. Not only that these can make it look like one, but perform like a laptop too.
Performance
This is powered by Snapdragon 870, a 7nm chipset with 3 Cortex A77 and 4 Cortex A55 processors. You also have to take note that this tablet has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. This is something to keep in mind when buying this device.
I managed to play Tower Fantasy at high Fine Settings using UHD resolution and 90fps.Everything is set at High in advanced settings except for View Distance. The performance was great, overall! The only issue is that you will get an error when trying to buy anything from shop because – in my case, I did not download this from AppGallery thus making it not connected to any billing services.
I also got to play Metalstorm, Genshin Impact and Lost Light on this tablet at high settings with relatively high and consistent frame rates. This just shows how capable the Snapdragon 870 is when it comes to gaming performance.
Speakers and Audio
Another good feature that I noticed on this device is how loud the speakers are. You get quad Huawei Sound speakers that give full stereo sound. It reaches 96 – 102db in my tests, which is already very loud by my standards.
Again, this is one of the features that make this tablet stand out in the competition.
Software
The Huawei MatePad 11 inch is among the first devices to have Harmony OS 3. One of the main goals of this major software update is to make it easier for people to connect their Huawei devices.
They also added a few personalization options like flexible widget combinations and the ability to stack widgets. They also improved Privacy and Security by giving you a better picture of how frequently your apps access your personal data. You can find it in settings via Privacy tab.
Then again, you have to keep in mind that this device does not have Google Playstore. But just like what I said in the past, AppGallery can let you download most top applications found in Google PlayStore. There are also workarounds that can even let you “install” PlayStore like looking for safe APK files or use GSpace. The latter brings all the benefits you get from PlayStore without losing the benefits of Harmony OS 3.0.
Battery
This tablet’s battery capacity is 8300mAh, which according to Huawei, can let you use this to watch a video for 11.5 hours. I’m going to see if this claim is true, but judging from my previous experience with the MatePad 10.4 inch, I think that this checks out. The last tablet I reviewed from Huawei has 7250mah battery and managed to stream 4 hours of movie and only used up 21% battery juice. So, I’ll definitely see if this will perform similarly, if not better. If yes, then that means, this will last longer than any other tablets that I have reviewed in the past from Huawei. Oh, and you also don’t have to worry about charging this because this one already has a 66W charger included in the box.
Camera
Huawei changed the layout of the camera on this tablet. It now has a circular design where you can find a 13mp f/1.8 main and another 8mp f/2.2 wide angle. This will let you shoot up to high resolution photos and 4K video. It also has a 16MP f/2.2 front facing camera. Here are some sample photos that I took!
Verdict
Huawei checks most of the things in my positive checklist. It has amazing display and battery life, plus its improved software experience is really better than ever before. The speakers on this tablet is my favorite so far. It just simply makes it amazing content consumption and gaming device. The fact that it managed to play my favorite games is a major factor of consideration.
It definitely checks out when they said that this can provide a PC-like experience. You can install pretty much anything you need provided that you know how Android works.
Is it perfect though? Definitely not. Apart from the universal necessity of convenience of downloading apps from PlayStore, some may also find the price of this tablet a little too steep. At PhP41,999, it crossed a threshold that can allow people to buy a real PC or laptop. What I honestly recommend is you’re really looking for a laptop, get a laptop of the same size. If you want to have the best of everything you can get from a laptop and tablet – convenience, portability, and power efficiency – this is a choice that you can consider.
Giancarlo Viterbo is a Filipino Technology Journalist, blogger and Editor of gadgetpilipinas.net, He is also a Geek, Dad and a Husband. He knows a lot about washing the dishes, doing some errands and following instructions from his boss on his day job. Follow him on twitter: @gianviterbo and @gadgetpilipinas.
