[embedded content] Pros Solid metal design Large vibrant screens Fast performance Strong and clear double / quad speakers Ideal for…
Android tablets have been experiencing a steady decline in sales recently, but Huawei is still achieving success in the shrinking tablet market. The previous MediaPad M3 offered a solid Android tablet experience and now Huawei is renewing its line of tablets with the MediaPad M5 and the M5 Pro. If you are looking for a new Android tablet in the market, your options are scarce, but are the MediaPad M5 and M5 Pro good enough to guarantee a purchase?
The MediaPad M5 and M5 Pro designs are pretty standard. After all, there’s not much you can do in terms of aesthetics when designing a tablet. The models M5 and M5 Pro have completely metallic monoblock designs that are very soft to the touch, but since these are much larger devices compared to a smartphone, having them out of your hands is not a problem. The corners are well rounded and the back tapers down along the edges, providing an elegant appearance and a comfortable feeling in the hand. New in the MediaPad M5 line is the addition of 2.5 D glass in the front that complements the rounded and curved aesthetics of these tablets very well.
Plastic antenna bands can be found on both the M5 and the M5 Pro along the top and bottom to assist with radio signals and cell reception in LTE variants. They are never the most beautiful things to look at, but Huawei has the color that corresponds to the devices. As such, they are not too monstrous, especially on darker devices, such as the gray shown above.
Unlike our smartphones, where the screen frames are getting smaller, the M5 and M5 Pro have thick bezels everywhere, but the thick bezels make much more sense in the tablets. The frames provide an ideal area to adequately support the thumbs and comfortably hold these tablets without interfering with the screen. This is especially useful in the larger M5 Pro, which is more geared towards landscape use.
There are several elements in the M5 Pro that encourage you to use this tablet mainly in the landscape. The front camera is on the long side, the Huawei logo is in the landscape, and the power and volume buttons are on the short side of the tablet. Using it in the portrait is obviously possible, but it is a much more uncomfortable experience when interacting with the physical hardware of the M5 Pro. The front camera ends up on the right or left side and the power and volume buttons will be on the bottom or higher when holding the tablet in an upright position.
The beauty of the MediaPad M5 line is that no matter which one you get, they are completely identical in terms of specifications, except for the physical size and capacity of the battery. Starting with the screens, both the M5 and the M5 Pro have IPS panels with a resolution of 2,560 × 1,600. The M5 measures 8.4 inches, while the M5 Pro will provide a viewing experience much greater than 10.8 inches.
With a resolution of 2K, both screens are incredibly sharp, which makes it a great experience no matter what you are doing. The screens are also quite vibrant, rich in color and provide a great contrast that I did not expect from these IPS panels. Watching YouTube and Netflix, surfing the web and playing games are great and fun, especially on the larger M5 Pro.
Inside the MediaPad M5 tablets is the Huawei internal Kirin 960 processor backed by 4 GB of RAM. This is Huawei’s latest generation processor, but it is still quite powerful as the performance has been very fluid in the daily operation.
Sliding and scrolling through the interface, surfing the web, multitasking or playing graphically demanding games is a pleasurable experience. These tablets are fast and responsive, which is great to see on tablets designed for work and play. How well will the performance be maintained months in the future? Only time will tell, but for now they have done an excellent job to keep up with my daily demands.
As for general hardware, M5 and M5 Pro are available in 32, 64 and 128 GB versions, with microSD expansion and the addition of a SIM card slot in LTE variants. Fingerprint sensors can be found in the front frames, which not only unlock quickly, but can also be used to navigate the operating system instead of the programmable keys on the screen. There is no headphone socket in any of the models, unfortunately, but they come with an adapter that allows you to use the headphones of your choice. However, Huawei makes up for it with very impressive speakers with Harmon Kardon technology. The 8.4-inch M5 comes with dual speakers, and the larger 10.8-inch models have an even more amazing four-speaker system.
I was a bit skeptical about the location of the speakers, since they are side-firing speakers on the 8.4-inch and rear-firing on the Pro model. But these speakers are so incredibly loud that it almost does not matter. Not only are they noisy, but the sound quality is very good. They are crisp and clear, without signs of distortion, even at a maximum volume and provide a good number of low-end strokes. They are some of the best speakers I’ve heard on tablets and they make Netflix, YouTube and the listening experience much more enjoyable. These are very media-centric tablets, after all, and these speakers complete the package.
What makes the M5 Pro a “pro” tablet is the inclusion of a keyboard dock and an M Pen with 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity. The M Pen does exactly what you would expect from a stylus. You can create drawings, note notes and even make handwritten calculations with the Huawei calculator application, which I thought was one of the cleanest uses of this pen. The tablet will also detect when you are using the pen and automatically by default a handwriting keyboard instead of the normal on-screen keyboard.
The M Pen is the size of a normal pen, so it is comfortable to use and has a solid weight so you do not feel cheap. The Pen has its own battery and is charged through its USB Type C port, which can be hidden with the clip of the pen when it is not in use. Huawei says that a single charge is valid for 50 days of use, and although I have not had the pen long enough to verify that claim, the only time I charged it until now is when I initially took it out of the box, which, as I write This was a week ago.
Similar to Microsoft’s Surface Pen, the M Pen is magnetic, which allows it to rotate on the side of the tablet, but the magnet is quite weak. It is very easy for the pen to fall.
There are two buttons on the side of the pen with one that allows you to select any part of the screen to create and edit a screenshot. Basically it is the gesture with the knuckles of Huawei, executed with a ballpoint pen. The other button serves as a “left click” and allows you to interact with the operating system, open applications, etc. without having to lift the stylus from the screen.
The keyboard dock, on the other hand, gives the M5 Pro an experience similar to a laptop. Unlike a pencil, the keyboard dock does not have its own battery. Take your power directly from the tablet. The keyboard is connected to the tablet by copper connectors and fixed in place with plastic arms. It works fine, but sliding the tablet in its place seems cheap and awkward.
When the tablet is fixed securely, the keyboard base folds like a protective case, giving protection to the tablet on all sides. The back can be folded to support the tablet when writing on your lap or desk. It is made of soft material to the touch, both inside and outside, and feels pleasant and comfortable to the touch. My only concern is that it can be stained with prolonged use, especially the interior, which has a much more sticky feel.
The main benefit of the keyboard dock is to provide a physical writing experience that allows faster and easier productivity when writing emails, creating Word documents or spreadsheets. It is not the most spacious keyboard, but it is surprisingly comfortable to write. The keys are clicks with a satisfying number of trips, and offer some physical shortcuts to adjust the brightness of the screen, the volume, multimedia playback controls and the standard Android navigation keys.
However, the keyboard has some disadvantages. Huawei did the best it could with the touchpad given the size limitation, but it is inconvenient to use, and scrolling or moving windows is slow and slow compared to using the touch screen. There is no noticeable entry delay when writing, but when the keyboard is used to control system functions such as volume, the input response is not instantaneous and sometimes takes a few seconds or more before the key press wants to register .
In terms of battery life, the M5 Pro and the standard 10.8-inch M5 come with a 7,500 mAh battery. The 8.4-inch model runs in a 5,100 mAh cell. Both capacities are quite large for their respective sizes and have proven to be more than enough for several days of casual use and can easily last a whole day with intensive use.
The entire MediaPad M5 line presents the same cameras in all areas with a front trigger of 8 MP and a rear camera of 13 MP. Historically, tablet cameras have never been so good, and MediaPad M5s do not do much to change that. If you’re in trouble, the photos are more than useful, but the quality is not going to compare with the smart phones we have today.
There is a lot of resolution with 13 MP, but the photos do not look very clear, the colors are erased and a dynamic range is missing with very little detail in the shadows. Huawei manages to keep most of the camera experience you would find on your smart phones intact on the MediaPads with all the same shooting modes. The only exception is the portrait mode and the exclusive opening mode of Huawei, which is probably due to the fact that the MediaPads do not have two rear cameras.
The MediaPad M5 and M5 Pro are shipped with Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI version 8.0. It is the same experience as Huawei’s smart phones, except that it was exploited in a larger size. As usual, EMUI looks aesthetically very similar to Apple’s iOS, with rounded square icons, a striking search function and no default application drawer. The application drawer can be re-enabled through the system configuration.
EMUI has never been a favorite skin of mine due to its similarity with iOS, but the large amount of bloatware that comes pre-installed in these tablets is more annoying than the skin itself. You’ll find a handful of pre-installed games and other apps like eBay and Booking.com. Fortunately, most of them can be uninstalled, but still creates unnecessary annoyance.
Specific to the M5 Pro software is the addition of a desktop mode. The desktop mode can be started automatically when the tablet is inserted into the keyboard dock and also works with a third-party bluetooth keyboard. As the name suggests, this makes the user interface a more traditional desktop experience, such as Windows 10 or ChromeOS. There is a taskbar with applications saved in a drawer in the lower left corner and other elements such as time, notifications and basic system functions, all accessible from the right side. The multitasking experience also looks more like a desktop with all open applications in the form of a window and can be minimized and stacked on top of each other. This makes productivity even easier in the M5 Pro, but for some reason not all the applications you download from Play Store are accessible in desktop mode, including Play Store and many other Google applications.
| MediaPad M5 8.4 | MediaPad M5 10.8 | MediaPad M5 Pro 10.8 | |
| screen | 8.4 inches IPS Resolution 2560 x 1,600 359 ppp Aspect ratio of 16:10 | 10.8 inches IPS Resolution 2560 x 1,600 280 ppp Aspect ratio of 16:10 | 10.8 inches IPS Resolution 2560 x 1,600 280 ppp Aspect ratio of 16:10 |
| Processor | HiSilicon Kirin 960 eight cores | HiSilicon Kirin 960 eight cores | HiSilicon Kirin 960 eight cores |
| GPU | Mali-G71 MP8 | Mali-G71 MP8 | Mali-G71 MP8 |
| RAM | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB |
| Storage | 32/64/128 GB microSD expansion | 32/64/128 GB microSD expansion | 64/128 GB microSD expansion |
| Cameras | Back side: 13 megapixel AF Front: 8 MP FF | Back side: 13 megapixel AF Front: 8 MP FF | Back side: 13 megapixel AF Front: 8 MP FF |
| Battery | 5,100 mAh Non-removable | 7,500 mAh Non-removable | 7,500 mAh Non-removable |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac (2.4 / 5 GHz) Bluetooth v4.2, optional LTE | Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac (2.4 / 5 GHz) Bluetooth v4.2, optional LTE | Wi-Fi 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac (2.4 / 5 GHz) Bluetooth v4.2, optional LTE |
| Sensors | Accelerometer Fingerprint Gyro living room Ambient light | Accelerometer Fingerprint Gyro living room Ambient light | Accelerometer Fingerprint Gyro living room Ambient light |
| Authentication | Type of block: pattern, PIN, password fingerprint scanner | Type of block: pattern, PIN, password fingerprint scanner | Type of block: pattern, PIN, password fingerprint scanner |
| Audio | Dual speakers with Harmon Kardon | Quadruple speakers with Harmon Kardon | Quadruple speakers with Harmon Kardon |
| software | Android 8.0 Oreo, EMUI 8.0 | Android 8.0 Oreo, EMUI 8.0 | Android 8.0 Oreo, EMUI 8.0 |
| Dimensions and weight | 212.6 x 124.8 x 7.3 mm 316 g | 258.7 x 171.8 x 7.3 mm 498 g | 258.7 x 171.8 x 7.3 mm 498 g |
| Colors | Gold, gray | Gold, gray | Gold, gray |
MediaPad M5 prices start at 349 euros and go up to 599 euros depending on the size, storage, connectivity and if you choose the Pro or standard versions. As mentioned above, when it comes to Android tablets, the number of options available is very limited, but the MediaPad M5 line is a very solid offer from Huawei. These are some of the best Android tablets we’ve seen in a long time. They are well designed with magnificent screens and fantastically loud speakers that make them ideal for multimedia purposes. Certainly they live up to the MediaPad name, and if you want to turn your tablet into a mobile workstation, the M5 Pro offers the appropriate peripherals for working and playing.
