Tablets are a dime a dozen these days, and even more than phones, they all look roughly the same: silver aluminum unibody on three sides, with an all-glass panel on the front sporting a display wrapped by bezels about a half-inch thick. That’s how tablets from Apple, Xiaomi, Samsung, Oppo all look like.
Huawei, however, is the exception. Its MatePad Pro series has really deviated from the conventional tablet look and design in the past two years. The 2025 Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 doesn’t use a silver metal frame, for example, opting for a fiber glass like material that’s lighter than metal with a unique texture.
The borders, or bezels, that wrap around the screen is also the thinnest in the industry, giving the tablet an industry-best 94% screen-to-body ratio. The display is also an OLED panel, with refresh rates up to 144Hz, and a tremendous anti-reflective matte texture that’s embedded into the display panel at a nanotexture level.
I wrote about this antireflective technology when Huawei first introduced it back in 2023. The company calls it “PaperMatte,” and in addition to just the screen not showing reflection as easily, the surface texture is also grippier, providing more friction against a stylus, resembling an e-ink display screen.
You have to see and try for yourself to truly get what Huawei has achieved here. It’s the best looking screen in the tablet industry in my opinion, and my favorite to touch and swipe too.
And with the tablet being so thin — under 5.5mm — it really looks surreal when placed on a flat surface and look at it from certain angles, as if I’m staring at a magazine instead of a mini computer.
Huawei, as has been the case the last two years, has declined to reveal the silicon powering the tablet — but it is very likely running on Huawei’s self-developed Kirin silicon based on 7nm architecture. Huawei’s self-built silicon tech are a bit behind the leading silicons from Qualcomm right now, but this is due to ongoing U.S.-sanctions that is beyond the control of Huawei’s consumer products team.
Whatever the case, like the last few Huawei devices I’ve tested, performance is absolutely fine. Yes, technically speaking, the silicon probably isn’t 2025 flagship level, but it’s probably on par with a 2022 or 2023 flagship silicon, and chips back then were running fine.
I edited a five minute video on CapCut, purposely making the video complicated with multiple tracks and adding transitions and effects, and I was able to scrub through the timeline smoothly without lag during the editing process. Then I exported the video and it took about four minutes to render the five minute clip. Sure, not the fastest time — I’m sure my iPad Pro could do it in half the time — but this is acceptable performance. It’s not slow per se, just not 2025 blazing speed.
The reality is, if you’re interested in buying Huawei consumer products now, you very likely are aware of the shortcomings that were imposed by the U.S. government. It’s just something consumers have to accept or not.
The other shortcoming is the tablet cannot run native Google Mobile Services. But there’s been a workaround via MicroG, a third-party independent software that spoofs the Google Mobile Services. I’ve spoken to multiple Android insiders and enthusiasts who say MicroG is perfectly safe, but it’s still ultimately an unofficial method of accessing Google apps. But it works very well. YouTube, Google Maps, Drive, Docs all run on the MatePad as if they were native.
The MatePad Pro 13.2 comes with a very nice keyboard case that, despite being very thin, has an excellent full sized keyboard and trackpad. The keys have excellent travel too. In the YouTube video above, you can see me typing at my peak typing speed on it.
And in another ingenious Huawei-specific hardware feature: the keyboard still works when detached from the tablet. The connection is not made via Bluetooth, but instead via Huawei’s “NearLink” tech, which consumes far less power and has lower latency. This is why the keyboard does not need to be charged (if it ran on Bluetooth, it would need to be).
The stylus, known as M Pencil, is a separate purchase. But it’s also excellent, and probably the second best stylus in the entire tablet industry behind the Apple Pencil. It can detect over 10,000 levels of pressure, and perhaps the matte screen adds to it, but the drawing/sketching experience just feels excellent.
On the software front, the global version is still running Huawei’s EMUI software based on Android, so all Android apps work on the tablet. As mentioned, Google apps work fine if you use MicroG, and many Microsoft apps and Huawei’s native apps have been optimized for the large screen to run on two panes. There’s also an excellent multitasking system that allows two apps to run at the same time in free resizable window mode.
In all, the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 2025 is yet another typical Huawei product, meaning it has tremendous, arguably best-in-class hardware (minus the silicon), and an overall design that zigs where other zag. I don’t know the official global retail price of this tablet, but in China where it has already gone on sale, the tablet can be had for about the equivalent of $550. I’m assuming the global price will bump it up to the $600—$700 price range.
