Huawei MatePad T 10s Review

Tablets are surely getting more attention than they used to since more people work and study at home. They’re bigger than a phone, yet more affordable than laptops. So it’s definitely something to consider, especially when on a tight budget.

Now here’s a new budget-friendly tablet from Huawei, the MatePad T 10s, and keep on reading to see if it’s for you.

Design and Construction

The MatePad T 10s looks a lot like the MatePad T 8. It comes in the same color too, which is Deepsea Blue. It looks sleek, professional, and it feels light to hold for a tablet. Its metal body has a matte finish on it, and if you’ll look at the back a little closer, the vertically aligned thin bar near the rear camera is made out of polycarbonate material. Other than that, you can find some Huawei and Harman Kardon branding.

On the right are its power and volume buttons, as well as two microphones.

There’s nothing on the left, but on top, you’ll find a loudspeaker.

Moving over to the bottom part, there’s another loudspeaker together with its USB Type-C port, headphone port, and a dual SIM tray for 1 nano-SIM card and a microSD card that’s expandable up to 512GB.

We get some thick bezels all around that we’ve seen in most of Huawei’s tablets, and in landscape mode, you can spot the 2MP front camera, together with the LED notification, and some sensors at the top bezel.

Overall, the MatePad T 10s is light and has a straightforward design. It can be quite a smudge magnet so we highly advise slapping a case on.

Display and Media

Upfront is a decent 10.1 inches IPS display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200px, and a pixel density of 224 PPI. The quality doesn’t really stand out, but it’s good enough for watching videos, browsing the web, scrolling through social media, as well as reading e-books. You can take advantage of the e-book mode that filters blue light to reduce eye strain.

The brightness levels indoors are good, but you really have to toggle to max under extra bright lighting conditions to see the display clearly.

If you’re into watching movies and playing games, you’d be happy with the MatePad T 10s’ audio quality. With support from Harman Kardon, the sound produced on this one is above average. Considering its price, I wouldn’t ask for more.

Cameras

As for cameras, we get a 5MP at the back and a 2MP front camera. Of course, don’t expect too much from these lenses as tablets today aren’t really built for photography.

But nonetheless, the quality on this one isn’t that bad. The rear camera produces decent sharpness with not-so-vibrant colors.

The same can be said with the front camera, but it’s good enough for video calls. It also comes with a Beauty mode, in case you really want to take selfies for social media upload. For video quality, the front camera has a 720p resolution, while the rear shooter allows you to shoot up to 1080p.

So there’s not much fuss in the camera department, but generally, its shooters should suffice for your Zoom calls or quick snapshots.

Software: OS, UI, and Apps

The MatePad T 10s runs on Android 10 skinned with Huawei’s EMUI 10.1. And as expected, it doesn’t have Google Mobile Services, and instead, it relies on Huawei Mobile Services with its own app marketplace called the AppGallery.

So the AppGallery has grown its catalog at a rapid pace and already has most of the popular apps. If the app is not available we can go to a reliable third-party app store like APKPure or APKMirror and sideload it. There’s no problem there, but it does require extra work.

If you use a lot of Google apps, it can be extra challenging to sideload specific apps such as YouTube and Gmail without having the Play Store fully installed and running. Although, if you don’t mind, you can always use the browser for it, and create shortcuts to your home screen.

The MatePad T 10s also gets the features Huawei Share and Multi-screen Collaboration which is nifty if you already own a Huawei smartphone. Since you have a big screen, you can also take advantage of the Multi-Window feature for better multitasking. There’s also the Huawei App Multiplier to allow spontaneous operation of the same app. Other notable features are tablet clone, Kids Corner, and there’s an FM Radio available.

When it comes to note-taking features, the MatePad T 10s have the Notepad and Calculator. There are other note-taking apps available in AppGallery so you don’t have to restrict yourself with these two.

Quickly on storage, we have 64GB with 46GB of usable space. If you need extra space to store your videos, photos, and music, there’s a dedicated microSD card slot for up to 512GB. Pre-installed apps are kept to a minimum and you can always uninstall if you like.

Hardware: Performance and Benchmarks

As for internals, the MatePad T 10s packs a Kirin 710A chipset, paired with a Mali G51 GPU, and 3GB of RAM. Performance is deliverable. You get a smooth experience, as long as you don’t keep too many apps running in the background. It’s also capable of gaming, but expect laggy gameplay when using heavy titles such as Asphalt 9 and Mobile Legends.

For some numbers, here are the benchmark scores we got:

• AnTuTu v8 – 156,583
• Geekbench 5 – 305 (Single-Core), 1,288 (Multi-core)
• 3DMark SSE – 981 (OpenGL ES 3.1), 1,055 (Vulkan)
• PCMark Work 2.0 – 6,375
• AndroBench – 317.55 MB/s (Seq. Read), 166.51 MB/s (Seq. Write)

For security, you can only unlock the device with a pin, pattern, or password. Yup, there’s no face-unlock or fingerprint scanner here.

Connectivity and Battery Life

When it comes to connectivity, the MatePad T 10s packs the basic phone features such as LTE connectivity, WiFi 802.11 AC, Bluetooth 5.0, and OTG.

Battery-wise, it packs a 5100mAh capacity with 10W charging. If you’re a heavy user, you’ll most likely charge the device twice a day. But if you’ll use it for casual limited use, then it can last you a whole day.

We ran it through PC Mark’s battery test and got a total score of 9 hours and 52 minutes. Meanwhile, in our standard video loop test, which involves playing a 1080p video on loop in Airplane mode at 50% brightness and volume with headset plugged in, got us a decent 10 hours and 30 minutes of playback.

Conclusion

Okay, let’s finally talk more about the price. Locally, the Huawei MatePad T 10s is available for PHP 12,999USD 222INR 18,778EUR 211CNY 1,613. And honestly, we think it’s a pretty good deal. It’s not the best out there, but you get what you pay for, and maybe even more with the ample storage and high-quality audio.

Then again, there’s the no Google services issue, and that’s probably where most of your decision making goes. If you’re up for the slight hassle of sideloading apps or relying on browser versions, then yes, go for it! But if you’re not, and you highly use Google apps most of the time, then you might want to look elsewhere.

Huawei MatePad T 10s specs:
10.1-inch (1920×1200) IPS Display, 224PPI
HUAWEI Kirin 710A
Mali G51 GPU
3GB RAM
64GB storage
Up to 512GB via MicroSD
5MP f/2.2 rear camera
2MP f/2.4 front camera
4G LTE (on LTE model)
WiFi 802.11 AC
Bluetooth 5.0
Sound by Harman Kardon
Huawei Share
USB Type-C
EMUI 10.1 (Based on Android 10)
5,100mAh battery
240.2mm x 159mm x 7.85mm
450g
Deepsea Blue