Huawei unveils budget MatePad with M-Pencil support aimed at education

In 2019, Apple introduced a new version of its most popular iPad. It was the 7th generation iPad, a 10.2-inch, $329 budget tablet with Apple Pencil support, aimed at the education market. It was a smart move for Apple, and now it appears Huawei wants to try something similar.

The Chinese company unveiled a budget version of its MatePad Pro, aptly named the MatePad. It features a 10.4-inch IPS display with a resolution of 2,000 x 1,200 and a 7,250mAh battery which fast-charges through the device's USB Type-C port. On the inside, the MatePad packs Huawei's own Kirin 810 processor, with 4 or 6 GB of RAM, and base storage of 64 GB, up to 128 GB. All that, for the price of around $268.

Some areas it definitely beats the base iPad are its more modern design with smaller, symmetrical bezels, quad stereo speakers, two on each side, and its slightly lesser weight at 450 grams.


Like all recent Huawei devices, however, buyers will have to deal with not having Google Play and Google Services on board, and while Huawei is trying hard to make its own AppGallery as complete with core apps and games as it can, it's something to consider. More tech savvy users can also side-load their favorite Android apps, which is not recommended and potentially dangerous.

In any way, the Huawei MatePad is marketed towards education and power users, such as artists. It supports Huawei's own M-Pencil, which is sold separately for about $67. Its operating system is Huawei's EMUI 10.1, which is based on Android 10.

For artists interested in a more accessible tablet experience, we also covered that Photoshop on the iPad is now available as a bundle with Adobe Fresco for $10. iPads users may also enjoy the highly popular $10 ProCreate app which has seen wide adoption from professional and hobbyist artists around the world, and supports both the first and second-gen Apple Pencil.