Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2in (PaperMatte Edition) review: Stunning display technology for creatives

Huawei has a stellar track record when it comes to hardware designs; over the last decade, the Chinese giant has produced mobile devices of remarkable beauty and cutting-edge innovation that is almost hard to believe they're not more popular. But, of course, we know very well why that is – there are no Google Play apps on the devices.

This never-ending frustration is acutely felt when using the 12.2in MatePad Pro, where all its best features, such as the PaperMatte display, are limited by app restrictions. Sure, Huawei has some very clever alternatives, but not all of its apps can replicate what you know and love.

People who work in creative professions, those who sketch and draw, will still be able to use the MatePad Pro – its art app (GoPaint) is just as good as Apple Procreate. And you can have it with 12GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB storage for just £799.99.

Huawei MatePad 12.2in: Design

Flamboyant is the first word that comes to mind when considering the design for the MatePad Pro – especially the gold PaperMatte version. The other option is the standard black, which is more professional looking though still very slick. For the PaperMatte model, you have a 'golden silk' design, which is a textured finish that replicates woven silk fabrics. It's unnecessarily fancy, but quite nice in the hand.

It's super light at just 508 grams (without the keyboard) and extremely slim at 5.5mm. Hardly noticeable in a rucksack and effortless to carry single-handed between meetings. And there are minimal bezels around the display with a 92% screen-to-body ratio.

Once connected to the keyboard, you'll find the NearLink keyboard is full of neat details and useful features. Such as the pen tray that can be hidden when folded, and the various ways you can dock the tablet. You can have it as an upright standard screen, a flat display with the keyboard either flipped over or next to it or as a slightly raised screen, which is perfect for when sketching.

Structurally, it is a well-built tablet with very smooth edges and corners. There is a USB-C slot on the bottom, flanked by two sets of speaker holes. There's a volume rocker on the top and a power on/fingerprint reader around the corner from that. On the rear, there is a circular bump for the dual camera lenses (13MP and an 8MP wide lens) which slightly protrudes. All very nice touches, but frankly this is a story about one thing and one thing only – a superb display.

Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2in: Display

Now, the 12.2in OLED display is not your typical OLED panel. You will instantly notice this out of the box as you get a wonderful glare-free experience. This is down to nano-level pixel stacking technology that increases the brightness across the display. This is achieved with a new layer specifically for emitting light. Huawei even claims that this nano-level pixel stacking technology (which really needs a shorter name or acronym) can triple the display's lifespan.

We can't judge that after two weeks of use, but we can confirm it is an extremely bright tablet. It is a true-to-life HDR with a whopping 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio. And, with Huwei's Natural Light Sensing tech, nothing will be faint, or obscured by the other really bright thing in our lives – the sun.

With our colormiter the MatePad also came up trumps; it scored 99.6% for sRGB gamut color coverage and 112% DCI P3 gamut volume. Similar to the latest iPad Pro and well ahead of rivals like the Lenovo P11 Pro.

In our two weeks with the MatePad Pro, we were impressed with its color representation and its ability to handle seemingly any lighting conditions, inside and out. Much of our time was spent in the GoPaint app where its display technology shines – more on that later on.

Huawei MatePad Pro: Keyboard and pen

You'll be pleased to know that the MatePad's Bluetooth keyboard accessory and stylus come bundled in, for now. The stylus is listed on the website as a 'gift'? But both are a joy to use.

Admittedly, there was a little confusion and difficulty when connecting the NearLink keyboard to the tablet. This could be due to it being previously connected and only the tablet portion being reset (another reviewer got it before we did) – but there was a little frustrating period before we got to use the keyboard.

Once you d0 get it connected, the keys are very pleasant – all cream-colored, large, easy to hit at speed, and very responsive. It offers 1.3mm travel and the sound is a delightful muffled clack, maybe not quite as satisfying as you would get on a good laptop but still gentle on the ears.

The Huawei M-Pencil is particularly amazing as it does indeed give you the 'rustle' of pen on paper. When you sketch, it is almost like the real thing. What stops it from being exactly like a real pen on paper is the slight slippiness of the display that sometimes leads to a mistake or wobbly attempts at free-hand straight lines, but to our knowledge, no tablet has solved this.

Huawei's art app, 'GoPaint', is a fully stocked tool kit for the illustrator. You have everything here that you would find on Apple's Procreate, just in a different order – it does seem unfamiliar at first, but after a few sketches you get the hang of it. We review from the perspective of a business, and this app is a joy regardless of your work needs or even your artistic ability – it's simple yet brilliant.

Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2in: Specs and performance

Inside the MatePad Pro is the Kirin T91 octa-core processor – unfortunately this is all the details we have, Huawei hasn't revealed much about it. What we do know is that is a good performer, not quite at the Apple Bionic level, and a smidge below Samsung's latest Galaxy Tab, but a decent chip nonetheless. In Geekbench 6, the Kirin T91 hit 1,298 for single-core workloads and 4,272 for multithreaded performance.

Having used it rigorously for two weeks, we haven't seen any lag switching from apps, no sluggishness when we open yet more tabs, and no signs of strain when we put it through any heavy processing. There is a smoothness to its software and a snappy feel to its operation.

However, when it comes to downloading apps you'll find a whole world of frustration – not entirely Huawei's fault, we might add. It can't use Android, so you have the latest version of HarmonyOS (4.2) which is very smart-looking and easy to use until you come to download your favorite apps. For our tests, we use Geekbench 6 and to get it on the MatePad Pro you need to download an emulator (APKPure) that basically adds extra steps – lots of them. Because it isn't getting the Android or iOS version of the app, it needs to find an open source one that is then checked for security. So it isn't one click and you have a download, it's a relentless process of shutting down popup boxes and ads – you also need to install APKPure via Petal Search. From a business perspective, this isn't a smooth user experience and is probably a bit of a security nightmare for the IT department.

What's most annoying, however, is that the MatePad Pro has so much bloatware out of the box – it is riddled with games and entertainment apps – countless apps that have no real interest for adults. There are two different kinds of note-taking apps, but nothing for writing and editing documents. You can't get Google Docs and you need to go through that awfully long process to get Microsoft Word. There isn't anything seamless about this process.

On the plus side, it lasts for ages; in our battery life tests, where we ran a looped video test, the MatePad Pro lasted for 16hrs, 18 mins. That's far more than reported scores for the Galaxy Tab and the latest iPad Pro.

Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2in: Is it worth it?

The Huawei MatePad Pro should be a five-star device that all creative businesses should consider, but the lack of Google and Android is a problem. Huawei has a superb track record with hardware but the software lets it down.

In the MatePad Pro, we have innovative hardware riddled with duff apps and overly complicated ways of getting the ones you actually need and that is too frustrating a process. This is the kind of hardware you'll want to use at work but there is still no decent substitute for Android and iOS. As such, this is a wonderful tablet that we struggle to recommend.

Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2in specifications