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A powerful yet affordable, premium tablet.
Huawei is a brand that is continuing to try and break into the U.S. market and while its challenges in this area are not over, it’s continuing to crank out great devices. One of those is the new MediaPad M5, a tablet from the company which it unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2018. Huawei has long offered devices with great design, though most of its best-looking devices never make it to the U.S. and instead tend to be kept reserved for Europe and the Chinese and Southeast Asian market. The MediaPad M5 may not be offered in the U.S. as past tablets have but regardless of that, it evokes Huawei’s passion for creating a great-looking product, which is a part of why it deserves to be in the category of ‘Best Of MWC 2018’ offerings.
Part of why Huawei’s design is usually viewed as top-notch is in the material it uses for many of its products, which in this case happens to be metal. Metal devices just look and feel more premium and Huawei seems to know this. Though it isn’t only relying on metal for its device designs, it does use it quite a bit and it has seemingly perfected the process of crafting a great-looking product using this material. Aside from looking good, the MediaPad M5 feels good when holding it and this is just as important as having it be easy on the eyes, because the more comfortable it is to hold the longer you are likely to use it.
Design aside, Huawei devices like the MediaPad M5 are using part of Huawei’s own in-house hardware. Using a processor that is made by its own company means Huawei has complete control over the optimization of that processor and how it works with the rest of the device, which essentially translates to just a really smooth user experience, and this is true with the MediaPad M5 just as it has been with other recent devices from the brand. That optimization and a smooth user experience it enables are also going to come in handy for things like multitasking or gaming which Huawei is boasting about, stating it’s the perfect device for both casual and hardcore mobile gamers. That’s likely to be quite true if the device offers high performance and the bigger screens won’t hurt either. What it comes down to is users will have a sizeable display with which to view content on and the tablet should be able to perform really well during the interaction with that content. For gamers, sound is also an important factor and the MediaPad M5’s “3D Sound” (which is coming from its stereo speakers) as it’s being referred to is likely to make experiences in any game more immersive, though it won’t be great for just games, as it’ll also enhance the experience of watching videos.
Another strong point for Huawei is software, and although it might not be to everyone’s liking due to its lack of uniformity with a more stock Android UI experience, Huawei’s EMUI is not only a beautiful UI but it’s also feature-rich, with offerings like gestures and such to launch shortcuts or apps when you wake the display. The software is simply full of options and features and the MediaPad M5 comes with the latest version of EMUI which is built on Android 8.0 Oreo, and that means users will be getting Oreo’s great features too. Huawei may not have announced official pricing or availability yet, but wherever it launches it’ll surely be a top offering and Huawei usually prices its devices fairly competitively, so it likely won’t cost a whole lot either compared to some other premium tablets on the market.
