Huawei Mediapad M5

We don't encounter high-end Android tablets all that often any more than. With the $329 iPad and low-price Windows 2-in-1s out there, tablets like Samsung's Milky way Tab S3 take ended up largely unloved. Huawei's powerful Mediapad M5 could shake things up, if the price is right. We got some easily on time with the tablet in advance of Huawei's press briefing at Mobile Earth Congress in Barcelona this year, and take some kickoff impressions.

Blueprint and Details

The Mediapad M5 comes in 3 models: There's a 10.8-inch size, a 10.8-inch "pro" version that comes with a Wacom pen, and an 8.4-inch model. The x.8-inch ones measure x.2 by six.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weigh 17.6 ounces, and the 8.4-inch 1 measures viii.4 by four.nine by by 0.iii inches and weighs eleven.1 ounces. Both have terminal year'due south Kirin 960 processors, and 2,560-by-1,600 screens—the smaller one is just denser. They come in grayness and gilt. They're both metal unibodies, with a camera protrusion on the back. The principal camera is 13MP, and the front camera is 8MP. Both models have 4GB of RAM, 32/64/128GB of storage, and a microSD card slot. The smaller model has a v,100mAh bombardment, and the bigger ones take seven,500mAh batteries.

Huawei Mediapad M5 Small

The M5 absolutely excels with multimedia, including video playback and reading comics. The IPS LCD screen most looks similar an OLED, the colors are so saturated. It's super sharp, and gorgeously vivid. The only criticism I'd throw out is that information technology'due south a flake cogitating—the viewing angles are excellent, merely they're compromised a little by the reflectivity.

Sound is also height-notch. The larger tablet has four speakers, and the smaller 1 has two (on the top and bottom, not front-facing, merely still very good). They may even be competitive with the iPad Pro, although we'll demand to do some testing to be sure.

In that location's also an LTE modem in hither, which Huawei says is the same 1 as in the Mate 10 Pro. If that's the case, that's great news: The Mate 10 Pro supports total gigabit speeds on AT&T, and is very broadly compatible with T-Mobile, as well. You'll have to supply your own SIM bill of fare.

The pro model includes an additional Huawei-sold Wacom pen with four,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. Between that and the razor-sharp display, the Mediapads look similar slap-up inventiveness tools.

Huawei Mediapad M5 with Keyboard

Huawei's software, as always with all of the visitor'south products, will exist the almost controversial aspect of the tablet. Huawei'south EMUI defaults to having no app drawer, and all the icons are unlike than standard Google Android. Many Americans will want to install an alternative launcher.

The 10.8-inch version has pogo pins on the dorsum to snap into a keyboard dock. Things get a petty weird at that point. Huawei says it won't offer its own keyboard dock, and disclaimed the performance of the keyboard docks we tried in the demo room. That's for the best, considering the dock nosotros used didn't work well—it dropped a lot of key presses. Hopefully that can be fixed in firmware.

When you drop the "Pro" version of the tablet into a dock, it goes into desktop mode, an exclusive Huawei interface that's similar to Samsung'due south Android desktop DeX. Like DeX, it gives you lot a desktop with application icons that feels a lot more similar a laptop than a tablet.

The desktop mode has multiple resizable windows, but only for some applications. We got the video player, email, and WPS Office all running in resizable windows, Simply for some reason, neither nosotros nor our Huawei presenter could make Chrome work in a resizable window - it had to take over the whole screen.

The Price Has to Be Right

The bulk of Android tablets sold in the United states of america are either inexpensive, similar Amazon's Burn lineup, or sold by wireless carriers. Huawei will need to offer a meliorate sales pitch than Apple'due south $329 iPad, or the not-bad $299 Asus Zenpad 3S x to succeed here. Unfortunately, it looks similar the M5 will be more than expensive than those competitors.

At the launch consequence, Huawei announced Euro prices between 349-499 for the 8.4-inch model, depending on storage and LTE modem, Euro prices between 399-549 for the x.eight-inch model, and prices betwixt 499-599 euros for the 10.eight-inch "Pro" model. With products like this, U.South. prices often mirror the Euro prices, considering the Euro is worth well-nigh $1.twenty, only the Euro prices include effectually 20% sales tax. Huawei has not announced the U.S. prices.

If we're using the Euro prices, the Mediapad will cost $399-599, which starts at $lxx above the current fifth-gen iPad and jumps up into iPad Pro range. Samsung hasn't had a lot of success with the Milky way Tab S3 upwards there at that price level, so it's difficult to see these prices as anything other than a missed opportunity.