Huawei’s iPad Mini rival reviewed – in pictures
Looking for an Android-flavoured iPad Mini? This tablet is a tasty alternative...
Huawei’s iPad Mini rival reviewed – in pictures
Remember when it felt like tablets were set to take over everything? Things didn’t quite work out. Most people who wanted a tablet bought one, and then stuck with it. Sales slowed, and so did progress. That means today’s box-fresh Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4 feels every bit the iPad Mini 4 rival – even if Apple’s smallest slate is now creeping up on its third birthday. Whether you’re after Wi-Fi or an always-connected 4G model, this is one of the best smaller tablets you can buy.
HUAWEI MEDIAPAD M5 DESIGN & BUILD
The MediaPad M5 looks and feels great. It’s a lot like the iPad mini 4, just with a “longer” screen. The smooth aluminium back is only interrupted by a few lines that let the antennas breathe, and the whole thing is light at only 316g: about twice the weight of a phone. Huawei has done its best to make the M5 feel smooth, too. The back is curved, and so are the edges of the screen glass. For something made of glass and metal, this tablet feels kinda soft. In a good way. The most obvious bit of “progress” is something bad, actually: there’s no headphone jack. The MediaPad M5 comes with an adapter that plugs into the USB-C port on the bottom.
HUAWEI MEDIAPAD M5 SCREEN & SOUND
The M5 8.4 has an 8.4-inch screen, stretching 2560×1600 pixels across a 16:10 aspect LCD panel. Its biggest rivals, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 8.0 and iPad Mini 4, have squatter 4:3 displays. Which is better? For movies, the Huawei’s longer style wins. But 4:3 beats it for web browsing and most kinds of apps. This is a decent screen, although it can’t quite match the iPad or S2 – partly due to black levels, and partly colour accuracy, the MediaPad’s screen doesn’t quite have the impact of the world’s best tablets. It is not miles off, though. To earn extra points, there are speakers on its top and bottom, playing in stereo when you watch a film. They’re powerful, with good maximum volume and even a hint of bass.
HUAWEI MEDIAPAD M5 SOFTWARE
Dig into the M5’s settings menu and it’ll tell you it runs Android 5.1. This is, thankfully, a fib – chalk it up to pre-release software on our review model. It actually has Android 8.0 Oreo, with Huawei’s EMUI software on top. This makes it one of the most up-to-date Android tablets you can buy right now. EMUI doesn’t look exactly like standard Android, with a different apps menu design, custom icons and a rearranged notification tray. However, the general feel is familiar. You can keep the apps menu in place to make it more like normal Android, or get rid of it entirely for a more iOS-like approach. And there are themes, for a one-button MediaPad makeover.
HUAWEI MEDIAPAD M5 PERFORMANCE
The Kirin 960 CPU inside the M5 isn’t brand new, but it’s a genuinely powerful CPU, with beefier insides than, say, the Snapdragon 650 you might see in affordable phones. The GPU is a Mali G71, and there are eight CPU cores, four of which are punchy Cortex-A73s. If this all sounds like product codes from an industrial supplies catalogue, it just means the M5 doesn’t have budget insides. You might expect that comes at the expense of battery life, especially with the MediaPad’s dimensions coming in at less than 8mm thick. But not so. Huawei has found room inside for a 5100mAh battery, which is very similar to the iPad mini 4’s 5124mAh.
HUAWEI MEDIAPAD M5 CAMERA
There’s a 13MP camera on the back of the M5, complete with autofocus, but no flash. Which tells us it’s there for fun, but nothing more serious. Thanks to the tablet’s relatively small size, the camera isn’t an instant embarrassment to use out in public, and you get higher resolution snaps than either the iPad mini 4 or Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 (they both have 8-megapixel cameras) – but if you have a high end phone, it’ll take better snaps. Still, for a tablet this is pretty good. There’s no major shutter lag, Huawei’s camera processing makes some useful dynamic range tweaks, and tends to make even dim indoors shots look bright enough.
HUAWEI MEDIAPAD M5 VERDICT
The MediaPad M5 8.4 is not a groundbreaking tablet that’ll make you throw your iPad mini in the bin, along with your laptop and TV. But let’s be honest: we just don’t see that many new tablets these days. Particularly semi-affordable ones like this. Huawei has nailed the design and battery life, making the M5 a great little slate for games and movie streaming. We just have one question. Did you really have to rip out the headphone jack?
