Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 hands-on review

There’s not a great deal of new Android hardware at CES 2016 but Huawei has a new 10in which it hopes will catch your eye. Here’s our Huawei MediaPad M2 hands-on review. Also see: Best new tablets coming in 2016.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 review: Release date and price

The MediaPad M2 will begin shipping the first quarter of 2016 so it should be available very soon. It’s also starts at a reasonable $349 which will get you the Wi-Fi only model with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage.

If you want more storage you can upgrade to 64GB which also comes with 3GB of RAM for $419 while those needing mobile data on the go can get the MediaPad M2 with 4G LTE for $469.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 review: Design and build

There’s not a great deal you can do with the design of a tablet and the MediaPad M2 looks exactly like many 10in landscape orientation devices which have gone before it.

That said, we so like the understated style. The aluminum alloy, full-metal body feels sturdy and gives it a premium finish. At 7.35mm and 490g the tablet is not record breaker but it’s suitably svelte.

We’re told the device only comes in white but you’ll also be able to get a model with gold trim. You’ll notice the rounded button below the screen which looks very similar to that of a Galaxy Tab S2 which is a fingerprint scanner.

What’s interesting here is there’s not two, but four speaker grilles. While many tablet simply have a measly mono driver, the MediaPad M2 can provide a more powerful sound. The two top speakers are for treble and the bottom ones for bass. We were quite impressed with how well we could hear the device over the noise of the busy CES show floor.

Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 review: Hardware, specs and software

Despite the name, the MediaPad M2 10.0 has an IPS screen which is 10.1in in size. It uses a Full HD (1920 x 1200) resolution and we found it to offer decent viewing angles and a nice pop of colour.

As mentioned earlier, you can get the MediaPad M2 with either 2GB of RAM with 16GB of storage but the premium model has 3GB and 64GB respectively and would be an advisable upgrade since the standard model we saw only had 8.45GB of free space.

Inside is a Kirin 930 octa-core processor which is 50 percent 2GHz and 50 percent 1.5GHz.  We can never test the performance properly at a show like CES but things appeared to be good during a hands-on play.

Other specs include a 6600mAh battery, a 5Mp front camera and a 13Mp rear camera. To compete with many rivals, there is an option stylus for the MediaPad M2 which allows 2048-level pressure sensitivity.

We expected the MediaPad M2 to come with Android 6.0 Marshmallow but instead it is pre-installed with 5.1 Lollipop. We hope an upgrade will come soon.

Huawei also installs its own Emotion UI 3.1 which has good features like the ability to run two apps side by side, but we still don’t approve of the lack of a proper app menu.