Review: Huawei MatePad 12 X PaperMatte edition

Review unit on loan from Huawei Singapore

This review is from the artist perspective.

The Huawei MatePad 12X PaperMatte edition was released in in late 2024. This tablet comes with a 12-inch matte glass IPS LCD with 2800 x 1840 resolution and adaptive 144Hz refresh rate. There's pen support with the Huawei M-Pencil (gen 3) that supports tilt and 10,000 levels of pressure sensitivity. It has 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, Kirin T90A and runs on HarmonyOS 4.2.

Here in Singapore, the tablet is sold as a bundle with the following accessories:

• HUAWEI FreeBuds 5 (worth SGD 200)
• Smart Magnetic Keyboard (Inbox) (worth SGD 198)
• HUAWEI M-Pencil 3rd Gen (worth SGD 98)

Retail price is SGD 898 on Shopee SG and Lazada SG.

Bottom line

The Huawei MatePad 12X is beautiful, well made and feels premium. The matte LCD display looks bright, vibrant and sharp. Anti-glare works well except under extremely strong lighting where the contrast will be affected. Audio quality from the 4-way is good, though the MatePad Pro tablets have even better audio.

The size is good for drawing. Pen performance is excellent so drawing experience is wonderful. Battery life is around 8 hours, or 5-6 hours at maximum brightness.

Main downside or limitation is there's no Google Play Store. It is possible to install Google Play Store (explained below) but the apps may not work properly, e.g. missing features, cannot restore purchases or just cannot load. There's no way to know in advance whether the drawing app you use would work properly, and I am not able to test all drawing apps for this review.

Specifications

• Display
  • Size: 12 inches
  • Type: IPS LCD, 30-144Hz adaptive refresh rate
  • Resolution: 2800 x 1840 pixels
  • Brightness: 1000 nits (peak)
  • Screen-to-body Ratio: 88%
  • Color Gamut: 16.7m colours, P3 wide colour gamut
• Operating System
  • OS: HarmonyOS 4.2
• Memory & Storage
  • RAM: 8 GB or 12 GB
  • ROM: 256 GB (no card slot)
• Processor
  • Chipset: HiSilicon Kirin T90A
  • GPU: Maleoon-910 MP4
• Cameras
  • Rear Camera: Dual 13 MP (f/1.8, PDAF) + 8 MP (f/2.2, ultrawide)
  • Front Camera: 8 MP (f/2.2)
  • Video Resolution: Rear: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps; Front: 1080p@30fps
• Battery
  • Capacity: 10,100 mAh (Li-Po, non-removable)
  • Charging: 66W wired fast charging
• Connectivity
  • Wi-Fi: 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band
  • Bluetooth: 5.2, A2DP, LE
  • USB: Type-C 3.1 gen 1, OTG, magnetic accessory connector
• Dimensions & Weight
  • Dimensions: 270 x 183 x 5.9 mm
  • Weight: 555 g
• Other Features
  • Speakers: Stereo speakers (6 speakers)
  • Colors: White, Greenery
  • Miscellaneous: No cellular connectivity, no NFC, no radio, no 3.5mm jack

Things included

• Tablet
• 66W charger
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• User manual
• "How to download apps" card
• Micro-fiber cleaning cloth

Design

The design looks beautiful and the build quality is solid, premium. Bezels are thin and the front camera (with face unlock) is in landscape position.

Actually bezels are so thin that sometimes my thumb grip would go above the display and affect my other finger gestures.

This is a comfortable tablet to hold with curved sides. Thickness is 5.9mm and weight is 555g.

Audio from the 4-way speakers has good clarity and decent amount of bass. The USB-C 3.1 gen 1 port can output video. Fast charging of 66W is possible only with the included Huawei charger and not with other GaN chargers that I've tested.

The tablet is available in white or green colours. The back is matte textured. There are two cameras, wide and ultra-wide.

The keyboard cover is well made, has no touchpad and backlight. Keys have good travel and typing experience is good. I've typed this whole review on the keyboard and did not experience any issues other than having to get used to the Android keyboard layout and shortcuts.

The keyboard uses NearLink technology for pairing and gets its power from the tablet wirelessly. The keyboard can be used wirelessly while detached only for a short moment before the battery dies, so my guess is there's a tiny battery inside the keyboard.

The keyboard case can be placed on your lap. There are only two height adjustment for the keyboard.

Display

The 12-inch IPS LCD display is gorgeous and one of the main selling points.

Resolution is 2800 x 1840 (280 PPI) and refresh rate is adaptive 144Hz. Colour support is up to 16.7 million colours and the colours look great.

The laminated display is matte textured with anti-glare that's not too aggressive so that you can still see what's on your screen through diffused reflection. Brightness is up to 1000 nits when tablet is used in bright environment, watching HDR content and battery life is above 50%.

While Apple overcharges their customers for extra storage in order to have the option to purchase a matte glass display, Huawei provides matte glass as part of the package.

All matte surfaces will introduce some grain, colour noise or anti-glare sparkle to affect visual quality. On this Huawei tablet, there is slight colour noise as you move your head to look but it's not distracting to me. Overall visual quality still looks great with good sharpness, colours and contrast. I love what Huawei is doing with their PaperMatte edition tablets.

Auto-brightness works well.

Pen

This tablet works with the Huawei M-Pencil 3. The pen also uses NearLink technology for pairing so it's unlikely that previous pens can work with this tablet.

The pen supports tilt and 10,000+ levels of pressure sensitivity, and palm rejection.

The pen features a hexagonal design with one side indented to attach magnetically to the tablet for charging and pairing. Build quality of the pen is solid and I love the matte textured body.

Pen tip is firm and has no movement. Pen tip replacements can be purchased easily on AliExpress.

Performance

The tablet comes with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, and there's no microSD card support. The processor is the Kirin T90A 8-core processor.

Overall performance is smooth even when playing graphics intensive games. There's certainly no issues with multi-tasking.

OS and apps

This tablet runs on HarmonyOS 4.2 and does not come with Google Play Store, and hence does not support Google apps.

The app store is called Huawei AppGallery with plenty of Chinese apps but limited number of English or popular apps, e.g. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube.

Installing Google Play Store on this tablet is actually quite straightforward. Just search Huawei AppGallery for GBox or GSpace and install one of them to get access to Google Play Store.

There are some limitations and downsides with apps installed from Google Play Store via GBox or GSpace. Apps may not work as expected, there could be missing features, or purchases cannot be restored.

Listed below is my experience with apps that I use. (gs) and (apk) are apps installed by GSpace and APK respectively. Gbox works way better compared to GSpace.

• Nebo (gs): This note taking app freezes upon launch
• Microsoft OneNote (gs) works fine
• Infinite Painter (gs) is not available. APK version cannot restore purchase
• Krita (gs) cannot launch. Krita (apk) works fine
• Medibang (apk) cannot restore purchase. Medibang (gs, apk) can work with cloud
• Concepts (apk) cannot restore purchase
• Clip Studio Paint (apk) works fine
• Sketchbook (gs) works fine

Apps that have a browser version won't have much problems. So even if you cannot install Google apps, Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, you can still run them from the web browser.

However if you need to use an app but it's not available or not working well with HarmonyOS, that's gonna be a dealbreaker. So before buying the tablet, it's best to do some research to find out whether your apps can work with HarmonyOS.

Vertical apps have to be run in floating window mode. There's split screen mode of course. You swipe up to right for floating windows, and swipe up to left for split screen.

One thing I don't like about HarmonyOS is there are many ads. Huawei AppGallery almost always shows you a fullpage ad. There are also many bookmarks to apps on the homescreen's second page, and you have to delete those bookmarks one by one. Even other Huawei apps may sometimes show ads, such as when installing APK files.

Backup options involve backing up to external storage or a computer. I did not really test the backup options so I cannot tell you whether it's a 100% backup. I've not seen any Android tablets that offer 100% backup so my advice is this: Always check your backups to make sure all your files are there. Don't assume it's a 100% backup of all files.

Line tests

Line tests below were created with Medibang Paint Pro

1. Initial activation force is very low. Thin lines can be drawn easily with almost no pressure at all, even with a thick brush selected. There's no noticeable wobble or jitter with slow diagonal lines.

2. Lines are able to taper smoothly and sharply.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back to thin is smooth. I can see slight diagonal line wobble but it's not a big issue.

4. Consistent line width can be maintained by applying consistent pressure.

5. No issues with drawing dots.

6. No issues with cursor misalignment. No problems with lines overshooting or leaving gaps. Line always appears directly beneath the pen tip regardless of how the pen is held.

Tilt sensitivity works fine.

This pen is very sensitive. Performance is consistent and predictable.

Pen latency will vary depending on the app used. Having said that, latency performance is typical of what I find on other Android tablets.

The pen performance is comparable to the Apple Pencil and Samsung S Pen, and very similar to the Xiaomi Focus Pen from the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro.

Drawing experience

I recommend turning off the "Slide across bottom to switch apps" gesture in Settings so that palm rejection can work properly. Otherwise while drawing, the resting palm may have the tendency to switch apps often.

Note that the magnets from the keyboard case on the back of the tablet can affect pen performance and cause wobbly lines.

This was drawn with Medibang.

A 12-inch display is big for drawing. There's still some canvas space to work on even with palettes on the left and right. Apps with lots of UI elements work fine, e.g. CSP, Krita, but it's still better to hide one column of palette.

The pen glides quite smoothly on the matte glass so this will take time to get used to. The writing or drawing experience isn't paper-like and the tactile experience is quite subtle. Don't expect much friction you get from paper or matte screen protectors. Having said that, this is still much better than drawing on glossy glass.

Thanks to the anti-glare and high brightness, this tablet is quite usable outdoors under bright conditions, but contrast is affected under direct sunlight.

555g is not that heavy for a 12-inch tablet but holding it for long periods of time for drawing can still get tiring. So ultimately, this tablet would work best when placed on some support while drawing.

Handwriting performance is excellent.

This was drawn with Sketchbook. I didn't have much issue except I wish the double finger tap to under could be more instantaneous. Medibang's undo felt more instant.

One other issue that affects drawing experience is with sharing artworks. When you tap "share" from the drawing app, you can't export the artworks directly to Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox. Those cloud storage services are not integrated with Huawei's file manager. So the alternative is to export the artwork to internal storage, then open the cloud storage app and upload.

The free GoPaint drawing app is quite good and has many features. What surprises me is there are no ads.

Conclusion

The Huawei MatePad 12X is a beautiful and well made tablet. It has almost all the features you would expect from a good tablet. A tablet like this from Apple would easily cost you at least two times more.

I really enjoy drawing on the matte textured glass surface. The experience is much better than drawing on glossy glass. Pen performance is fantastic, predictable and consistent.

The main downside is the lack of official support for Google Play Store. You can install Google Play Store and install apps but there's no sure way of finding out whether the apps you use will have any issues.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Solid build quality
+ Vibrant, bright, sharp display
+ Auto-brightness works well
+ Matte glass surface
+ 8 hours battery life
+ Good audio quality
+ Accessories are well made
+ Has face unlock
+ Has wide and ultra-wide cameras
+ Gbox allows access to Google Play Store and it works quite well
+ Excellent pen performance
- No official Google Play Store support
- GSpace that allows access to Google Play Store does not work well, e.g. installed apps have issues
- Too many ads
- Huawei file manager has no intergration with Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, DropBox

Availability

The Huawei MatePad 12 X PaperMatte edition is available on Shopee SG and Lazada SG.