The Huawei MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte Edition is the latest midrange tablet from the well-known Chinese hardware giant. Yes, there is controversy attached to the brand in the West (including bans on it accessing things like official Google apps, US-made semiconductors and more), but the fact remains that the company's hardware is some of the best you'll find out there. We've seen that ourselves with both recent MatePads and MateBook laptops too (as well as its junior brand Honor, which frequently outperforms its price point when it comes to tablets and phones).
So when I received a test unit of the new midrange (and midsize) MatePad, I was keen to see how it stacked up, not just against similar models in the market like the Lenovo Tab P12 or budget tablets like the Honor Pad 9, but against flagship models like the MatePad Pro, and of course the ever-dominant iPads too.
Huawei MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte Edition review: Key specifications
Design and build
The first thing that struck me when opening up the box containing the 11.5-inch Huawei MatePad tablet sent to me for review was the reason for the second part of its lengthy full name: "PaperMatte Edition". A gorgeous-looking screen with a distinctive matte-textured surface, giving it a very different air to the OLED-fronted MatePad Pro (which was also gorgeous in a different way).
The body is very light too, the aluminium frame and super-thin 6.2mm construction weighs only 510 grams, which is 45 grams less than the 12-inch Honor Pad 9 and a full 100 grams less than the 12-inch Lenovo Tab P12 Matte Display (which has a near-identical display). Still, it feels sturdy and firm, with no flex or any sensation of flimsiness.
The back is adorned with Huawei's logo and a 13MP camera in the top-right corner (as you look at it), with the power button placed on the short 'top' side and the volume-control button just around the corner on the long side. Add the obligatory USB-C port at the bottom, a three-pronged magnetic latch on the opposite side to the volume control (for attaching the magnetic keyboard) and a 4-speaker array with two on each short edge and that's about it, design-wise.
Oh, and it's available in two colours, standard blast-effect grey, and a gentle, attractive violet. I had the violet variant, but didn't get to enjoy that very long before attaching the included soft-touch magnetic stand to the back.
The magnetic connection for both the stand and the keyboard is strong and without wobble, with the included M-Pencil 3 magnetically attachable to one side as well. Yes, the keyboard is rather tiny as is the custom with compact tablets, but the keys are responsive, the connection instant and seamless and the adjustable kickstand very easy to use. I also found that keeping the stand on when in 'handheld' mode gave me extra grip over the sleeker back of the body itself.
Features
The headline feature here, of course, is the paper-matte display, which I think is a clever way of taking an IPS LCD, which would be quickly outshined by an OLED or AMOLED in a straight fight, and giving it a new unique selling point.
It serves a practical purpose for tablet users too, as it makes reading text more comfortable over extended periods of time, and gives you a more paper-like feeling when doodling or drawing.
In a show of confidence over the second part, Huawei has preloaded the GoPaint app and placed it on your start screen. I duly obliged and had a go with my extremely limited artistic abilities, trying out different brushes and pens on different-textured backgrounds. The app itself has fairly limited functions compared to apps such as Sketchbook or Procreate, but I found interacting with this type of screen really rewarding, and ended up spending a lot longer doodling on it than I tend to on brighter OLED or AMOLED screens. I took a special liking to watercolour painting and using chalk-like brushes, as the app includes a specific coarse watercolour-friendly background that I particularly enjoyed using.
In terms of the tech inside, the MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte Edition is a fairly standard proposition. Using Huawei's proprietary Kirin processor, we get 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, with the screen capable of up to 144Hz refresh rate. It's pretty much on par with similarly placed models on the market, including base-spec iPads, while offering more storage than the recently reviewed Lenovo Tab P12.
The display offers 16.7 million colours and a P3 wide colour gamut, but the contrast tops out at 1500:1, which might make pro-level video-editing tricky.
On the other hand, the colour temperature of the screen is infinitely adjustable, as you get a colour wheel to set it at literally any level you desire. There are also EyeComfort and ebook modes, with the latter available in two sub-modes; traditional black-and-white ebook and a an ebook mode with colour illustrations, where images, illustrations and diagrams are presented in colour alongside the B&W text.
There's a 13MP main camera and an 8MP selfie camera, but like most tablet cameras, neither will serve any purpose beyond strict cataloguing or record-keeping.
Performance
As the Geekbench testing shows, the Huawei MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte Edition is not a powerhouse maching by any stretch. It outperforms the Honor Pad 9 in multi-core testing, as well as the MediaTek-powered Lenovo Tab P12, and it actually outperforms Huawei's own MatePad Pro in the OpenCL GPU test, but then again, the main complaint we had for that one was that it was lacking in graphic processing prowess. That means you're getting good performance at this price point here, although it's nothing spectacular. It's plenty good enough for drawing, note-taking or light content creation, such as video or audio editing.
Speaking of audio, the speakers are pretty good here, just like the MatePad Pro, and watching streaming video without headphones or listening to Spotify is at least on par with most laptops when it comes to the sound. The screen is good for video too, and although the contrast isn't quite the same as you get on an OLED or AMOLED screen I had little trouble in bright conditions or when watching dark scenes (a recurring issue with the perennially underlit shows and movies everywhere nowadays).
As stated above, the experience of using it for drawing, note-taking and doodling is particularly pleasing, and perhaps the highlight of this tablet during my weeks with it, and that's coming from someone with only slightly stronger artistic skills than your average domestic cat.
Price
The Huawei MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte Edition is sold for £449.99 in the UK and €499.99 in most EU countries, but is not available by any official means in the US at the time of writing. It's slightly more expensive than the Lenovo Tab P12 Matte Display, but then it does have bigger storage than that tablet, and it's only half the price of the MatePad Pro 13.2, so if you're happy with the smaller screen and don't want that latter's OLED screen, you're getting good value here.
Who is it for?
The Huawei MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte Edition is best suited to casual content creators or artists who like the matte texture of the IPS screen. It's fantastic for drawing and doodling, as well as note-taking and reading thanks to its highly customisable ebook and eye-comfort adjustability. If you need extreme contrast or high performance out of your tablet, you need to step up at least one rung in the price ladder.
Buy it if:
- You read a lot of ebooks
- You like drawing on a tablet
- You need a tablet for casual content creation
Don't buy it if:
- You need a pro-level tablet
- You're bound to Google suite services
- You really want an OLED screen
