As we mentioned in our iPad Pro review, you need a big screen to take true advantage of a modern tablet’s power, and while the MatePad Pro’s 10.8in display is 0.6in larger than Apple’s vanilla iPad, it still feels cramped once you start doing ‘real’ work on it. This does highlight the screen’s relatively small size, however. Similarly to Samsung’s DeX mode, click it and you switch to a windowed environment, complete with a Start menu and the ability to work with two windows side by side. The feeling of a desktop in disguise is enhanced by the operating system’s Desktop mode, which you can activate from the settings bar. Sadly, Huawei couldn’t send a stylus or keyboard in for review. It’s surely no coincidence that Huawei is actively pushing people to buy a bundled version of the MatePad Pro, which adds the M-Pen stylus (sold separately for £100) and MatePad Keyboard (£130) with the tablet for £610. While the iPad family still has a far greater range of tablet-friendly apps, if you just want something to watch films, browse the internet and do light work on, the MatePad Pro meets those needs admirably.įor instance, we typed this review in Microsoft Word on the tablet using a Bluetooth keyboard and navigating Android with a mouse. Microsoft Office is even available direct from AppGallery. If we needed to grab an app not available on Huawei’s AppGallery store, we could legitimately copy it over from our phone that worked fine for Netflix and Spotify. There’s less reliance on location services, powered by Google, and we found the lack of direct access to the Google Play store wasn’t an issue. However, the types of apps people use on tablets are different to those on phones.

Thanks to the US trade sanctions, it doesn’t have access to Google’s apps, Play store or services – and many popular apps rely upon the latter.

On the face of it, the MatePad Pro faces the same problems as the Huawei P40 Pro Plus.

Huawei tablets reviews