A stylish tablet with a great display

With HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2, the manufacturer is starting to attack the Apple iPad Pro. The new tablet impresses not only with its bright and easy-to-grip OLED display, but also with its unique silky design, impressive features, and long battery life. Our tests revealed even more.

technical data

€1,098.00

Dieser Artikel erscheint am 11. October 2024. Jetzt vorbestellen.

HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 Review: Elegant and flat gold silk design

• Striking gold silk design
• excellent finish
• Satisfactory delivery scope

HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 is a truly eye-catching product. The reason for this is the tablet’s unique gold silk design, with a silk-like texture on the back. It reminds me of paper in some way, but it doesn’t have a surprising amount of grip.

The situation is different for displays. The front of the display is surrounded by a symmetrical 0.5 mm thick edge. This is because, as we already saw with the MatePad 11.5″S (test), the new MatePad Pro also uses a PaperMatte display. The paper-like construction not only ensures a very comfortable feel, but also , prevents most reflections.

Returning to the design, the MatePad Pro’s slim frame is also gold-colored and has rounded edges that make it easy to hold. The tablet is only 5.5 mm thin and weighs only 508 grams, making it comfortable to carry. Even Huawei’s MatePad 11.5-inch S, not to mention the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro (our test), is heavier, with a similar size but 82 grams more weight.

Despite its 12.2-inch display, the MatePad Pro is comfortable and convenient. It is 271mm wide and 182mm high. The two rear cameras are arranged in a circular pattern, and the manufacturer has opted for a larger MatePad Pro 13.2-inch design. HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 looks very elegant and high quality, especially thanks to the elegant gold silk finish. Build quality is excellent.

In addition to the tablet itself, it comes with a 100-watt SuperCharge power adapter with USB-A and USB-C ports. The manufacturer also includes the necessary cables. It also comes free, at least initially, with an M Pencil 3 stylus and a high-quality Glide keyboard that turns your tablet into a full-fledged notebook.

Glide keyboard details

• very good typing feeling
• Ergonomic design
• Can’t be folded completely

HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 ships with a great keyboard cover along with Glide Keyboard, which brings classy, ​​high-quality contrast to the golden tablet with a white textured design. When the cover is closed, the combined thickness increases to 13 mm and weight to 959 grams, but it’s still lighter than most notebooks.

The back of the cover has a high quality metal hinge. The tablet is attached to the top with a magnet, but I wish the magnet would have held it a little more firmly in place. Unfortunately, you can’t open it with one hand.

The tablet can be placed at two different angles within the case. Once right above the keyboard and once at a slight angle. Both positions are very comfortable. Once you set up the tablet, there’s a tray underneath for the stylus, and you can also charge it directly. It’s very practical.

The quality of the keys was also completely convincing during testing. The travel and feedback on the individual keys is great, and it’s okay to leave some notebooks in the shade. Of course, the keyboard is a little cramped due to the lack of space, and some keys are a bit small, but you can comfortably type even long texts.

But it’s actually just a keyboard cover. You cannot fold the cover all the way and lay the keyboard and tablet flat on the table. Next, you need to take your MatePad Pro out of its protective cover again.

Great OLED display, great speakers

• Impressive OLED display
• 2,000 nits brightness
• very good speaker

A special feature of HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 is the display. This tablet uses an innovative tandem OLED panel that works more efficiently than comparable screens. It achieves an impressive peak brightness of 2,000 nits and has a high refresh rate of 144 hertz.

At the same time, the display has a 2.8K resolution of 2,800 x 1,840 pixels in 3:2 format, which is especially convenient for writing, drawing, and sketching. This screen shows its full potential, especially with HDR content, impressing with rich colors, excellent contrast and color accuracy of Delta E <1.

The display also features a PaperMatte coating, which not only has a paper-like structure, but is also designed to almost completely eliminate reflections. We saw this in action during testing. Virtually nothing is reflected, even under direct lighting or from sharp angles. Extraordinary.

With its high frame rate and resolution, Tandem OLED screens are not only great for media consumption, but also great for gaming. Fortunately, the built-in speakers are no worse than the screen.

A total of 4 speakers tuned by HUAWEI SOUND are located on the sides, delivering excellent maximum volume and very good rich sound. It delivers a detailed and pleasant warm sound, especially in the high and mid ranges. Movies and series on the tablet can also be heard very well, as the bass reproduction is excellent.

Features, performance and battery life

• Excellent storage capacity
• A little weak chip for gaming
• Excellent runtime

As usual, HUAWEI does not provide information about the processors installed in its devices. Most likely, the MatePad Pro 12.2 uses Kirin T91 or 9000WL inside, which is almost on par with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in terms of performance. According to Geekbench 6, 12 computing cores are used across three clusters with clock speeds of up to 2.19 GHz.

It is supported by 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of system memory. Enough RAM for more demanding multitasking and gaming tasks. Day-to-day performance, at least at the system level, is also at an excellent level. However, if you play graphics-intensive games, you’ll have to put up with some weird stuttering.

The MatePad Pro 12.2’s performance slightly exceeds that of the 11.5-inch S model. However, newer tablets with Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 or Apple’s chips offer much better performance.

The rest of the features are at a decent level. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 are included. It’s no longer the latest standard, but it’s still good enough. In particular, the achieved WLAN speeds are very good.

HUAWEI has equipped the MatePad Pro 12.2 with a 10,100 mAh battery. It is the same size as the 13.2 inch version. Thanks to the included 100-watt power adapter, the battery can be fully charged in just 55 minutes.

Nevertheless, the chip is highly efficient, achieving an impressive battery life of 14 hours and 17 minutes on the PCMark Work 3.0 battery benchmark.

decent camera

Then the camera can be activated immediately. All three lenses offer decent image quality, but the photos aren’t very convincing. The image is noticeably lacking in detail and sharpness. However, the image quality is good enough for a tablet.

Practical exam, UI, software

HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 uses the latest version of the manufacturer’s Harmony OS. And when combined with powerful hardware, it delivers impressive numbers and convincing everyday performance.

But what I don’t like at all is when manufacturers stuff the UI with bloatware. Almost the entire second page of the user interface is filled with app recommendations. You can also delete these, but if there are a lot of them it will take some time.

As is often the case with HUAWEI, of course you have to do without Google services, apps, and the Play Store. This means not using things like GMail or the YouTube app. AppGallery, our own app store, has some applications, but most of the apps we use on a daily basis are not available. This gives the tablet, which costs around 1,000 euros, a rather bland aftertaste.

If this really bothers you, you can also use an app that requires Google services in a roundabout way. This won’t work for all apps, but some of the most important programs will.

Of course, the extensive GoPaint app, which we already mentioned in our review of the MatePad 11.5 “S, once again deserves a big compliment. Here you have at your disposal a large number of free brushes, artistic styles, etc. Restrain your creativity. You can also create your own brushes and customize them to the finest detail. If you want to know more, you can find more information on Huawei’s website.

HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2 Test: Conclusion

With the HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2, the manufacturer once again offers a great tablet. It’s not just the tandem OLED display that’s impressive. It is characterized by its impressive brightness, great colors, high refresh rate, and paper-like texture.

The unique gold silk design and superior finish are also great additions to the MatePad. This tablet combines all of this with good speakers, decent battery life, and a very strong keyboard cover that allows you to use the device as a notebook replacement.

The graphics performance is noticeably worse, but the day-to-day performance is also hard to criticize. But the biggest problem for me personally, even if it can be circumvented, is the absence of Google services. You need to ask yourself about price and how important Google apps are to you. All in all, the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro offers much better value for money at half the price of the HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2, but the MatePad offers a significantly better display and a much better keyboard.

€1,098.00

Dieser Artikel erscheint am 11. October 2024. Jetzt vorbestellen.