Although Huawei has radically slowed its launch rate due to the United States blockade, the Chinese firm has continued to produce quality devices until the last moment, and proof of this is the existence of the Huawei MatePad 10.4, one of the latest devices in the company. Brand in the field of tablets.
With the MatePad 10.4, we come across an Android tablet (without Google services) with a very elegant and careful design and average power, but plenty seasoned with high-quality sound. The tablet has gone through our analysis table to see how it behaves in different situations, such as being used to write this same analysis from beginning to end.
Very good design, sufficient performance and spectacular sound
With the MatePad 10.4, we have a device somewhat more in width concerning Apple models and more ergonomic, although we lose some screen surface. The Huawei tablet has an excellent touch with a metallic back built-in quite matte aluminum, although fingerprint-friendly. The frame is also made of aluminum, and the setting with the front glass is made so that we notice the angle but not the separation between materials. In distribution, it is quite classic in buttons, front and back, and we have a tray for the microSD on one of the long sides.
The screen is of quality and very customizable, and it behaves quite well against fingerprints.
The 10.4-inch screen has excellent visibility and allows us to see it normally outdoors, and it has excellent viewing angles and resists fingerprints well, perhaps better than the rear, even though it is glass. The colour representation arrives somewhat saturated from the factory, but we can adjust this from the tablet settings. The touch control is also very precise and fast, and in general, we are facing a large screen that we can use both vertically and horizontally in a quite comfortable way thanks to the dimensions and weight of the tablet.
Before we jump to other things, let’s talk about sound. Perhaps we are facing the great strength of this tablet because its stereo speakers have a lot of power and offer exceptional quality. The sound does not distort at any time, even taking it to its maximum, and it offers magnificent bass and bass; and in terms of power, we have measured up to 95 decibels roaring through its speakers. We are facing a great tablet for multimedia consumption. A great friend of Netflix, Disney +, and company and of Spotify, Tidal and company. Without a doubt, the best of this is Huawei MatePad 10.4.
Huawei’s MatePad has an accessory that multiplies its possibilities, and this accessory is none other than its keyboard. Under the name of ‘Huawei Smart Keyboard,’ we find a compact and plastic keyboard compatible with this MatePad and other tablets with Bluetooth. The part that is attached to the MatePad is separated a bit from it so that we can use the back as support and thus keep the screen upright while using the tablet as if it were a laptop and although a little more travel is missing on the keys, the design is elegant, and the textured plastic protects well against dirt and fingerprints. The keyboard is battery powered and recharges with a USB type C.
Huawei MatePad 10.4 Review
The main enemy of this tablet is in its software, in the absence of Google Play and its replacement by an App Gallery that provides few solutions.
In performance, we are talking about this tablet (Kirin 810, 4GB, 64GB) remaining fluid all the time. We have not had frame drops during the tests and have fast multitasking and gestures that respond to the millisecond. Where this MatePad 10.4 suffers, the most is when going from heavy games to the system. In software, Huawei maintains its habit of offering to install everything during configuration, but we can avoid this by keeping a characteristic interface of the brand and without excess apps. The operation is very clean and, although the days are numbered before the arrival of HarmonyOS shortly, this Android 10 runs very well on the MatePad 10.4.
Speaking of autonomy, the truth is that we expected something more than the 7,250 mAh battery that this Huawei MatePad 10.4 mounts. Having become accustomed to moving above 7 hours of screen on mobile devices, running into an average use of approximately six hours on this MatePad 10.4 has been somewhat painful. It is possible that the tablet could do more than it does on the mat. It would be energy-saving, but we have 18W fast charging to recharge the device when running out of battery.
We get to the cameras, and we find ourselves in front of a midline tablet with a pair of 8-megapixel cameras. As for the performance of the sensors, what we find are two available cameras that operate without fanfare. The rear, for example, allows us to take more documentary than artistic photographs since little detail is appreciated in general, and it has some problems with the dynamic range. When we talk about selfies, we are faced with a performance similar to the butt, with practical photographs that serve us for social networks and tend to burn the backgrounds as they have a narrow dynamic range. The camera is functional and offers good quality in video conferencing, so it does its job in this regard.
The experience with the Huawei MatePad 10.4 writing this review
We were interested in knowing first hand when analyzing this Huawei MatePad 10.4 is its ability to act as a work platform, so we have used it to write this same analysis. The workflows are as varied as there are users in the world, but we use the tablet to write an analysis, so we need the application in which it is written and the process that translates the ‘photo shoot’ to the article.
The App Gallery has few apps, but sending users to external repositories complicates everything even more.
When it comes to locating an application on which to write this analysis, we come across the first stumbling block of the analysis. Huawei’s App Gallery becomes the main store for the brand’s ROMs as soon as Google Play is prohibited, but we come across a store that is still very empty of alternatives—especially compared to the billions of apps that populate Google Play.
We opened the App Gallery searching for an offline text editor (questions learned by force of blows) that supports the markdown format of fast writing adapted to the web. It is an important issue that supports these codes because in the computer, for example, we use IA Writer. In this case, App Gallery does not offer us alternatives for this type of editor in its storage, but it does send us to APKPure, an external repository that does not always make things easy when it comes to downloading and installing .apks (due to the format of some files). It is not safe to install external applications that Huawei’s store does not supervise.
