Table of Contents
Last Updated on March 29, 2020
Design
The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite, a thin aluminum plate with a glass display, feels like an iPad. The big difference is the curved glass panel of the MediaPad (which Huawei calls “2.5D”), which gives the screen a bit chunky look. The headphone jack of the M5 Lite and the USB Type-C port (which you will use for charging) are situated at the base of the left corner. There is also a microSD reader on the left, which provides expandable storage up to 256 GB.
The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite looks a lot like the M5 line which was released the previous year. It comes with flat screen, minimal bezels and a metal back with a good look, sleek enough to be used outdoors comfortably.
Last year, Huawei launched MWC’s MediaPad M5 Series as a set of high quality Android tablets–two regular and a pro version–for competition at comparable prices with Samsung and Apple. Nearly one year ago, at the CES 2019, a new entry was announced by the Chinese company: the MediaPad M5 Lite, a lower cost, step-down family oriented device.
This is not a budget version of Huawei’s old tablet; instead, it offers enough new features to optimize the tablet for younger users at a slightly more cost-effective price.
Display and Audio
And with all the more advanced tablets–including the M5 model–there, the concessions made here will help only parents or stylus-friendly users. The 10.1-inch screen of the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite provides vibrant colour, clear detail and plenty of brightness. The 1920x 1200-pixel screen allows the depiction of small imperfections such as dust on the fabric panel and metal rods.
The MediaPad M5 Lite generates up to 114 per cent of the RGB spectrum and marginally overcomes the 112 percent tablet average and 109 per cent of the Tab 4 10 Plus. This Lite tab’s display offers a total of 427 nits of luminosity, which is higher than the average class 398, the 400 nit Tab 4 10 Plus and the 405 nit Fire HD 10. Nevertheless, the 489-nit iPad is still lighter than the Huawei slate. The touch screen of the MediaPad M5 Lite provides precise touch perception. When we hit the Android interface and Chrome, we observed that the tablet reacted correctly to touches, although the reaction got slow when the slate reached its limits.
The included pen M-Pen Lite is perfect for an accessory and offers a solid feel. We noticed a smooth input during Autodesk Sketchbook, but there was a slight delay, which at first was acceptable but became more pronounced when I enlarged our digital lines.
Prepare yourself for a lot of sound. The quad-speaker set of the HuaWei MediaPad M5 blows a lot, enough to fill a big bedroom–or disturb a lot of people working at an open office, as I accidentally figured out. Its sound is extremely heavy, and its bass is quite powerful so you’ll hear loud and clear high-pitched vocals and synths while the drums are reduced.
Performance and battery life
Just know that you don’t get the quality or specs seen on the main MediaPad M5 tablets–but also won’t care for the new tablet’s target demographic (young kids). The M5 Lite arrives with an M-Pen Lite model (which can also be included in the standard M5 tablets depending on local sales policies). Although M-Pen Lite has no additional features like the Samsung S Pen or the new Apple Pencil, it’s still a nice way to make the M5 Lite more child-friendly.
While this device is intended for children with reduced processing energy needs, we have had difficulties, as we have seen the slate pause more often. When dividing the screen between 1080P YouTube and a lot of Chrome tabs, it is easy to notice that the tablet often has a refreshing time when switching between them, and it is still lagging when the divider is dragged to resize the video. Like many Android tablets, the MediaPad M5 Lite often seems wrong. For example, the Nebo note taking software for this size screen is not created in Huawei and the onboarding experiences sometimes allow you to rotate the monitor in one way to understand the next move, but the slate doesn’t let you know it is an issue. Some games not only choose low graphics setting automatically, based on the tablet specs, but they look bad too. As for the battery, it is probably the one thing that we cannot complain about, as it lasts approximately 13 hours.
Should you buy the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite?
The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is one of the longest longevity tablets ever seen, which has lasted for 13 hours and 13 minutes on the battery test. This is 3 hours longer than the average 9:50 class and similarly longer than the iPad (10:07). Similarly long was the Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus. The excellent battery life and brilliant display of the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite show that Huawei establishes solid ground for the tablet battles. Sadly, poor results, both in general and for gaming, takes some fun out of this family slate.
If you were thinking to choose Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus or the iPad for better performance, you must remember that their prices aren’t very different. Nevertheless, the MediaPad M5 Lite makes a compelling bid as an Android tablet to display content and access the internet.