Huawei’s latest tablet looks a whole lot like Apple’s iPad Pro, certainly, but try to ignore that and you’ll find a sleek 10.8-inch Android slate tipping the scales at just 492 grams. Huawei’s tablet has a couple of unique features up its sleeve. These include two-way wireless changing, the ability to mirror the screen of a paired smartphone, and the aforementioned 5G connectivity. The tablet will ship with open-source Android, without Google’s apps or services.
Huawei says the MatePad Pro is the first tablet to support wireless charging. When you’re charging the device, it can charge at speeds of up to 27W, and it can then reverse-charge devices at up to 7.5W. It can use this capability to charge its keyboard case wirelessly, but you can also use it to charge headphones or your smartphone if they support it. That said, it’ll only charge one device at a time, much like every other device that offers reverse wireless charging.
The display is surrounded by a skinny 4.9mm bezel, which Huawei says is enough to give the MatePad Pro a 90-percent screen to body ratio. It’s 2560 x 1600 resolution, DCI-P3 wide color gamut compliant, and promises 540 nits of brightness.
The MatePad Pro 5G also supports screen mirroring with compatible EMUI devices, a feature that we’ve previously seen on its MateBook laptops. As with its laptops, you can pair the two devices using NFC, this time by tapping your phone on the smart keyboard’s right shift key. This lets you do things like type messages on your phone using your keyboard or transfer files between the two devices.
Inside there’s Huawei’s Kirin 990 chipset, with Mali-G76 graphics. Various configurations will be offered, with either 6GB or 8GB of memory, and between 128GB and 512GB of storage. Huawei will also have a MatePad Pro 5G, with integrated 5G connectivity.
Huawei says the 5G version of the new tablet will be available from June in mainland China as well as markets across the Asia Pacific region, EMEA, and Latin America. Meanwhile, the 4G and Wi-Fi models will be available from April in Russia and Japan, as well as select Asia Pacific, EMEA, and Latin American markets. The 5G models start at €799 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, up to €949 with 8GB of RAM and 512GB. Alternatively, the company is also selling Wi-Fi only and 4G models. The Wi-Fi-only versions start at €549 for the model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, up to €749 for 8GB of RAM and 256GB of onboard storage. The 4G versions starts at €599 for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, up to €699 for 8GB for RAM and 256GB of storage.
