If you've been looking to purchase a new tablet such as the iPad Pro there's actually another tablet that might interest you: the Huawei MatePad Pro.
We'd already heard about the Huawei MatePad Pro from its Chinese announcement in November 2019, but the tablet is going to be available for pre-orders in 5G and non-pro variants in the UAE starting June 24.
The Huawei MatePad starts at AED 1,099 and comes with AED599 worth of gifts including HUAWEI Flip Cover Case, HUAWEI AM61 Bluetooth Earphones, 3 months screen protection warranty and 3 months free VIP access to HUAWEI Video streaming platform.
The beefier Huawei MatePad Pro starts at AED 1,999 and comes with AED1199 worth gifts including HUAWEI M-Pencil, HUAWEI Smart Magnetic Keyboard, 3 months screen protection warranty and 3 months free VIP access to HUAWEI Video streaming platform.
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The Huawei MatePad Pro runs on a top-end Kirin 990 chipset, which we've seen in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Honor View 30 Pro, and delivers snappy processing speeds. There's also 8GB RAM underneath to help with that speed boost.
The screen is a 10.8-inch LCD screen, which is the same tech Apple uses in its iPads and comes with a punch-hole cut-out for the 8MP front-facing camera, which is matched on the back by a 13MP snapper.
There's also the 'M Pencil', which wirelessly charges on the top of the tablet, has 4,000 levels of pressure and sensitivity to allow for a variety of sketching and allows you to tap to wake the display of your MatePad Pro tablet.
There's a 7,250mAh battery which supports a snappy 40W fast charge but also wireless charging (for if you want to try and balance the large device on a wireless power mat) and reverse wireless charging, so you can power up other devices by using the tablet as a charging pad (presumably you can't use the tablet while you do this).
If you're the proud owner of an Huawei phone, you can use the two together and operate your smartphone on your tablet and drag and drop content across the two devices.
So what's the problem?
If you think this sounds like a viable alternative to the iPad Pro or Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 (especially given the design and bundled accessories), there's something you should know – there are no Google apps on this tablet.
Thanks to the Huawei ban, smartphones and tablets from Huawei don't come with Google Mobile Services, and this is the case for the MatePad Pro too. That being said, Android apps on tablets aren't always the most polished experience and you might end up accessing more apps using the web browser instead.
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