Huawei M5 MediaPad Review

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Overview & Price

No this is not a review on the BMW M5, but rather a Huawei M5 Mediapad review which is Huawei’s latest high performing tablet.

Since the Huawei M5 release date back in April of 2018, this device has been selling exceptionally well thanks to its low cost but high performance.

If you are looking to buy the Huawei M5 mediapad, then it is currently £300 here in the UK, this tablet is a great alternative to the iPad Mini 4, it comes in a range of storage sizes from; 32GB – 128GB and has some pretty impressive specifications for a tablet at this price.

Check out the best places to buy the Huawei M5.

It is nice to finally see a company designing more premium Android tablets, and Huawei does not mess about when it comes to any of their products.

So it will come as no surprise to hear that this tablet is not one to miss out on.

With great sound quality, an impressive display, and the powerful Kirin 960 processor, this tablet certainly gives you bang for your buck.

Let’s take a look and see why…

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Design & Display

It is no secret that in recent years Huawei has certainly made a name for themselves, from their Huawei Mate 20 Pro phone, to the Huawei watches and tablets.

We have yet to be disappointed by any of their devices, and it is not about to start now with the M5 tablet.

So the Huawei M5 MediaPad comes in two different sizes, we have the 8.4” model and the 10.8”, which comes in a Pro and non-Pro version.

The only real difference between the Pro and non-Pro is that the Pro model comes with a pen and keyboard.

The Huawei M5 Mediapad tablet looks and feels great, made from complete metal and glass; it has a minimalistic design and feels great when holding it in your hand.

Design-wise the tablet is not too flashy and you won’t notice anything out of the ordinary, you have the antenna which is built into the metalwork, ensuring that signal strength is always going to be strong and meaning there is no ugly antenna visible on the device.

Again like most tablets nowadays, the headphone jack is absent and there is a USB-C port down under at the bottom of the tablet.

Image: Pierre Lecourt

The corners are smoothed and the back of the device is slightly tapered, which means less grip than desired but as long as you don’t have butter on your fingers then you should be fine.

There are some pretty thick bezels around the edges of the display, but to be honest we did not mind this at all as when gaming its nice to have somewhere to place your fingers without disrupting your gameplay.

The Huawei M5 IPS display is actually very impressive, with a 2K resolution which is 2560 x 1600 there is nothing to complain about in this department.

The display offers great brightness levels and you can actually fine-tune the screen to suit your own personal preference.

Contrast is great and the display has some awesome viewing angles, there is also an impressive ‘vivid viewing mode‘, which improves the saturation, making it a lot more vibrant.

Watching Netflix and YouTube videos on this display were great, especially on the bigger 10.8” version of the tablet.

The M5 also has a blue light filter, which essentially means that it is protecting your eyes when watching the tablet and you can even drop the screens processed resolution if you wish to save on battery life.

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Performance

When it comes to the internals of the Huawei M5 tablet, we see the Kirin 960 processor and 4GB of RAM makes everyday tasks such as reading, browsing and watching video a breeze for the device.

We had no issues when it comes to the performance of the tablet and found multi-tasking and app swiping to be extremely smooth with no lag or stutter.

On the Huawei M5 release date we played games such as ‘Minecraft’ and ‘Pocket City’ and really enjoyed the over experience thanks to the tablet keeping up with our demands.

Software-wise the Huawei M5 runs EMUI 8.0 with Android 8.0 which is essentially the same as what you would find on their smartphones.

This looks a lot like the UI of an IOS device as it has vibrant colours and rounded icons, super easy to use and will be familiar to the majority of users out there who own a smartphone.

See Related:

*Huawei T3 Review*
*Samsung Galaxy Tab A Review*
*Samsung Galaxy Tab S5e Review*

The Huawei M5 Mediapab tablet comes in three sizes; 32GB, 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, depending on what you are going to be using the device for should determine the storage size you go for.

For example, if you are going to be using the tablet for just everyday browsing, reading and watching some Netflix or YouTube, then you will be fine with the 32GB of storage as we found this more than enough.

However, if you were going to be using the tablet more frequently for downloading music and storing downloaded movies on the device then the 64GB model would be more suitable.

Image: Pierre Lecourt

Finally, the 128GB model is generally used for business purposes, storing loads of presentations or word documents and generally having more flexibility to be able to store as much as you like on the tablet, we do think 128GB is a little excessive for the everyday user and found 32GB to be more than enough.

A cool feature which we loved on this device is the fingerprint sensor which is located at the bottom of the device, it makes it super easy to unlock the tablet and keeps it nice and secure.

The sensor also has some built-in gestures, which are great for setting shortcuts to navigate around the tablet.

Now, unfortunately, there is no headphone jack on the Huawei M5, but Huawei has included a headphone adapter in the box, which allows you to plug in any headphones of your choice.

Dual speakers are present on the 8” model and there is a quad-speaker setup on the bigger model!

This makes the whole experience of the tablet so much better, especially when gaming or watching Netflix on the device.

The speakers are tuned by the famous ‘Harman/Kardon’, which are the actually the company that provide the speakers in my car, and they are super crisp and loud, and overall absolutely fantastic!

They really give you a surreal audio experience and its nice to see fantastic speakers in such budget tablet.

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Camera

The main camera on the Huawei M5 is, well.. not great. But this is to be expected as it is a tablet, and taking photos on the device is very rare.

There is an 8MP at the front and a 13MP camera on the rear, which sounds great but even in perfect lighting conditions the camera, is very basic.

The Huawei M5 mediapad is definitely capable of snapping some decent shots when at home or even out and about, but we found that the camera in your smartphone is so much better.

In low light situations, the camera isn’t great and will often give you images that look grainy and low detailed.

Coupled with the fact that there is no flash option on the Huawei M5 mediapad makes it really tricky to get any good quality shots at all.

However, there is an HDR mode that will help slightly but overall the camera on this device certainly isn’t going to win any prizes.

Full HD video is available on the tablet which up to 60fps, with 4K shooting at up to 30fps and the option for a digital stabiliser is present here making it nice and steady when trying to shoot some decent video.

However much like the camera on this device, no medals will be won and overall the performance of the camera and video is dreadful.

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Battery Life

Now that we got the awful camera side of things out of the way with, back on to some positives with the battery life on the Huawei M5 mediapad being great!

The Huawei M5 mediapad packs a 5100mAh battery, which you can expect to last you for around 3-4 days, offering 10 hours of screen on time.

Huawei has also got you covered when it comes to preserving the juice as it offers a range of different methods to make the most of that last 10%, from adjusting the resolution of the screen and a superb power-saving mode.

Image: MyNextTablet

Fast charging comes as standard with the 10” tablet too, making it so much more efficient and improving the tablet experience as a whole.

Throughout this Huawei M5 mediapad review we found the camera to be one of the best aspects of this tablet, keeping us going for long periods without having to reach for the charger.

If you own a Huawei handset, for example the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, then you will know the capabilities of the fast charging that Huawei offer and it is nothing short of amazing.

Unfortunately, the tech is not available in the smaller 8” tablet, so this is definitely something to bear in mind when making the purchase decision of this tablet.

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Summary

Overall we were extremely impressed with the tablet as a whole, it’s fairly priced and offers so much value for money.

It is no surprise that since the Huawei M5 mediapad release date the device has been selling very well, it has a well-built design and strong performance specs all for a low cost.

The tablet can be used for casually watching Netflix at home or taking it to work with you to help with presentations. Build quality and the display is awesome, it really does feel like it’s worth so much more than it is.

Huawei Mediapad M5 10” Tablet(Grey) - (Octa-Core Processor, 4 GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC, 2K IPS Screen,Android 8.0) 

When it comes to performance on the Huawei M5 mediapad you won’t struggle and have multiple different storage options and the option to add a microSD card to boost the storage even further.

With awesome battery life as well it is really easy for us to recommend this tablet to anyone in the market looking for a new tablet.

We hope you have enjoyed our Huawei M5 mediapad review, and feel free to leave a comment and check out the best places to buy the Huawei M5 at the top of this post.

If you are looking for something a little cheaper then feel free to check out our Samsung Galaxy Tab A review and Huawei T3 Mediapad.

Huawei M5 MediaPad Review: Full Specification

Launch: 2018, February

Body:

• Dimension: 212.6 x 124.8 x 7.3mm (8.3 x 4.91 x 0.29 inches)
• Weight: 316g (11.15 ounces)
• Build: Front glass, aluminium body
• Sim: Nano-SIM

Display:

• Type: IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours
• Size: 8.4 inches, 204.6 cm² (-77.1% screen-to-body-ratio)
• Resolution: 2560 x 1600 pixels, 16:10 ratio (-359 PPI density)

Platform:

• OS: Android 8.0 (Oreo); EMUI 8
• Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin 960s (16nm)
• CPU: Octa-core (4×2.1 GHz Cortex-A73 & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A53)
• GPU: Mali-G71

Memory:

• Card slot: microSD, up to 256GB
• Internal: 32/64/128GB, 4GB RAM

Camera:

• Primary: 13MP, PDAF
• Features: LED flash, HDR, Panorama
• Video: 1080p@30fps
• Selfie Cam: 8MP

Sound:

• Loudspeaker: Yes, with stereo speakers
• 3.5mm Jack: No

Comms:

• WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, hotspot
• Bluetooth: 4.2, A2DP, LE
• GPS: Yes, with A-GPS
• Radio: No
• USB: 2.0, Type-C 1.0 reversible connector

Features:

• Sensors: Fingerprint (front-mounted), accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass

Battery:

• Non-removable Li-Ion battery (32.4 Wh)
• Charging: Fast battery charging 18W

Misc:

• Colours: Space Grey, Champagne Gold
• Price: As seen in the above post