MWC 2022: Huawei’s MatePad Paper is an e-ink tablet for scribblers

The Huawei MatePad Paper can display images and video, even though they’ll be all black and white, not for artistic effect. As a matter of fact, there are color e-ink screens but the tech is still not ready to rival your OLED screen, capable of showing 1.07 billion shades of the rainbow.

Nevertheless, the MatePad Paper comes with some bells and whistles you won’t find in a regular e-ink tablet. Take aesthetics for example, this device has an 86.3 percent screen-to-body ratio, rivaling some conventional tablets out there. The resolution is also respectable at 1872 x 1404 pixels, resulting in 227 PPI, and there are 32 levels of backlighting available.

The MatePad Paper comes with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, and according to Huawei there’s a “powerful chip inside.” Looking at the specs sheet, we find that the said powerful processor is the HUAWEI Kirin 820E. It’s an ARM-based mid-range Octa-Core-SoC launched back in 2020 but for all intents and purposes, it should get the job done.

Another cool feature of the MatePad Paper is the compatibility with Huawei’s M Pencil stylus. You can use it to scribble, paint, edit, annotate and do all the things you normally do with your regular pen and paper tools (no clicking the pen, and no ink stains on your fingers, though). The response time of the screen is 26ms, not as fast and smooth as your Galaxy S22 Ultra but still very impressive in the e-ink world.

This tablet runs on Huawei’s new HarmonyOS (based on open source Android), and you can seamlessly connect it to all kinds of devices - from smartphones and other tablets to PCs, laptops and macs. We started this article with the battery life argument and will finish with it - the MatePad Paper can go for up to 28 days on a single charge, courtesy mainly of that e-ink display.