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The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 is the company’s latest tablet, and also Huawei’s premium offering. This is the crown jewel in Huawei’s MatePad tablet lineup at the moment. The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 just launched, actually, but I’ve been using it for over 2 weeks at this point. It is very similar to other offering from the company this year, design-wise, but it’s also easy to differentiate at the same time, the moment you see it in real life. I’ll talk more about that in the design section, but this tablet definitely does feel like a premium offering. So, as long as you want or are willing to considering a Google-free Android tablet, this one is worth checking out. Let’s dive into it, shall we?
Table of contents
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Hardware / Design
The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 is… large. The fact it has a 13.2-inch display is a dead giveaway. So, yes, it’s large in the hand, and yet smaller than you may think. Why? Well, not only does it have a very thin bezels for a tablet, but it’s very thin in general. Its bezels are only 3.4mm thick, while the screen-to-body ratio is 94%. It is easily possible this tablet has the slimmest bezels than any other tablet in the industry, so the highest screen-to-body ratio too. It has a 3:2 screen ratio, and it’s only 5.5mm thick. As if that’s not enough, the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 also weighs only 580 grams despite its size, which makes it lighter than many 12-inch tablets in the market. Huawei rarely disappoints when it comes to design, and the company nailed it once again.
Huawei used “durable high-strength glass fibre” on the back
The device is made out of metal and glass. Its frame is made out of metal, while the back is covered by “durable high-strength glass fibre”. Huawei also used a special ink to give the tablet the color it has. The company used nano-scale optical coating to enhance the metallic appearance, while the micro-sand texture provides that fingerprint-resistant finish on the back. It really does do a fantastic job of detering fingerprints. If you care about the exact rating, that back glass is rated at 2H-3H Mohs for durability. Even the dual camera setup on the back doesn’t look as bad, as it blends in with the rest of the design, even though it does protrude on the back. The only thing that may bother you, visually, is the notch on the display. We’ll talk more about that in the display section, but it’s there.
Do note that I used the black version of the tablet, which is one of the two colors. It’s officially called ‘Golden Black’, and it was announced alongside the ‘Green’ model. The green variant is very light green, by the way. The sides of the tablet are not flat, they’re slightly curved, and it’s actually a joy to hold. These thin bezels are not a friend of holding the tablet in one hand, though. Also, the whole device is very slippery, which is what you’d expect from a glass build. It does feel utterly premium in the hand, and has the perfect weight in my opinion.
Accessories
Huawei does offer a really nice keyboard accessory as an option, and its M Pencil stylus too. Do note that neither of these are included in the package, though, you’ll need to get them separately. The stylus is a preference type thing, but I’d definitely recommend getting that keyboard/case accessory to everyone. It not only protects the device when you’re not using it, but it’s a really good keyboard… considering it’s so small. Everything connects to the tablet with magnets, and the case comes in two pieces. One piece is the cover for the display, where the keyboard sits too, and the other attaches to the back of the tablet, and it serves as a stand. There are even rubber feet installed on the bottom. The case has a smooth, slightly rubbery feel to it. It’s nice to the touch, but it does leave marks from greasy fingerprints and so on. In other words, it’s not the best at resisting smudges, unfortunately. Still, that’s just a small negative, as it’s a great addition for this tablet as a whole.
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Display
The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 has, as its name says, a 13.2-inch display. That panel has a 3:2 aspect ratio, and we’re looking at a 94% screen-to-body ratio. The ultra-narrow bezels (for a tablet), definitely help with the immersion here, even though there’s a notch on this display. That notch is at the top when you hold it in the horizontal orientation, and quite frankly, it didn’t bother me all that much. I got used to it quick, but I am used to notches up to this point, so… that may not be the case for you, of course.
This ‘Flexible OLED’ display is outstaning
That display has a 2880 x 1920 resolution, and it’s a ‘Flexible OLED’ display. The fact it’s a flexible OLED panel actually enabled Huawei to reduce the weight of the tablet even futher. The colors on it simply pop, and it has a 262 PPI. The brightness gets up to 1,000 nits, which is very good considering this is a tablet, actually. Do not compare the brightness directly to smartphones. This display does get plenty bright, brighter than almost any other tablet I’ve used thus far. I didn’t have a problem with it, to be quite honest. On the flip side, it’s winter here, so there’s not much sun, and I used it mostly indoors… as many of you probably will, so… there you have it.
The viewing angles are really good here too, and the touch response is great. I really don’t have a single complaint about this display. It’s bright enough, vivid, has good viewing angles, good touch response, and so on. I’m not really sure about the protection on top of it, but I didn’t get a single scratch in two weeks, so… take that into consideration.
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Performance
first and foremost, let’s just say that the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 is fueled by the Kirin 9000s chip. That is Huawei’s new Kirin processor that fuels the Mate 60 series of devices too. Having said that, Huawei also included 12GB of RAM here. Fast RAM and UFS storage modules are used, in case you were wondering, LPDDR5X and UFS 4.0. With that in mind, the Kirin 9000s is not exactly the most powerful chip on the market, but it’s more than powerful enough. You will not notice it lacks behind some of the competition in the power department.
The fact it runs the Kirin 9000s is not a bad thing, at all
The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 was immensely fast in basically any scenario. Multitasking was a breeze, as was opening and closing apps, consuming multimedia, and anything else you would regularly do on a tablet. Granted, this is the experience I’ve been getting on Huawei’s tablets for a long time now, even the ones that are far more affordable than this one. Huawei’s EMUI plays a huge part in the equation, and Huawei is obviously doing a good job in that department, but we’ll talk more about that later on, in the software section. I did not notice any lag or anything like that during my usage here.
Some of you are probably wondering about gaming, though. Well, I can’t really get into this without mentioning the AppGallery app store first. This tablet does come without Google services, but it includes Huawei’s own services and app store. AppGallery grew immensely since the US ban came to play, and there are tons of apps and games there. Still, you will not find some high-end games that you’d find on the Play Store, games like Genshin Impact, for example, which is usually my last step in testing the gaming performance on devices. I could install some games from APK repositories, but I wanted to stick with what most people will stick with, AppGallery.
Games from the AppGallery ran perfectly fine
With that being said, I tried out Asphalt 9: Legends, Shadow Fight 4: Arena, and Rise of Kingdoms. All three games ran perfectly fine on the tablet. There was a skipped frame here and there, as is on any device, but in general, the performance was great. If you do decide to sideload Genshin Impact, or something like that, I’m guessing it won’t run as well as it does on more powerful hardware, but I’m still expecting solid performance out of this hardware. Those of you who are interested in benchmarks, to see what tier the Kirin 9000s falls into when it comes to sheer power, check out the stats below.
Benchmarks
Benchmarks are not our favorite tests to do, simply because they don’t really indicate real-life performance of each device. Still, they do show off the hardware prowess of devices, and a number of other indicators mixed into the equation, so… we do run them during testing. On the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2, we utilized Geekbench 6, PC Mark, and 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Text benchmarks.
Geekbench 6
Kicking things off with Geekbench 6. The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 did not exactly impress. It scored 1,025 points in the single-core test, 3,092 points in the multi-core test, and 2,312 points in the GPU test. That is considerably lower than the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, for example, who doubles the single-core test, and almost doubles the multi-core test. It scored a lot better in the GPU benchmark, it’s not even closed, i’ts better several times over. That’s not something you’d notice in real-life usage, hence our dislike of benchmarks in general. Such results are also to be expected considering the SoC differences.
PC Mark Work 3.0
The MatePad Pro 13.2 managed to score 10,444 points in the PC Mark Work 3.0 benchmark. This test simulates using your phone for work stuff, basically, so it’s somewhat more useful than Geekbench. The MatePad Pro 13.2’s score is a lot better here, though unfortunately we cannot compare it to the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, as Samsung’s tablet is incompatible with the app. Huawei’s tablet did trump the OnePlus Open in this test, and it was very close to the Google Pixel Fold, which has a slightly higher score.
3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test
The 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test is a rather invasive benchmark. It runs 20 rounds of benchmarks on devices, for about 20 minutes. It shows us sustained performance that devices are able to take on. The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 had a best loop score of 1,016, while the lowest one was 1,009. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, on the other hand, scored 3,825 points in the best loop, and 3,092 in the lowest. Samsung had a much higher score overall, but the stability was better on Huawei’s tablet. It had a stability factor of 99.3%, compared to 80.8% of the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra.
Video export test
The last benchmark of sorts that we did has to do with video exporting. We run the same video across devices to test how long does it take a particular device to export it, via CapCut. It took The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 21.67 seconds to export a fullHD video at 30 fps. It was slower than the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra,, but faster than the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Fold. You can check out the comparisons below for more info. Do note that the shorter the graph, the better the result.
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Battery
The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 comes with a 10,100mAh battery on the inside. This thing has a truly large display, and a large battery is required. Is this enough, though? Well, yes, but there’s a catch. It took me quite some time to bring it to a level that required a charge, to be quite honest, but I don’t generally use tablets all that much on a daily basis. I use it as an occasional device, though for the purposes of reviews, my usage increased considerably. That managed to show me that the battery life is not as good as I expected, to be quite honest. It seemed to me that I reached for a charger a lot sooner than I thought I would. To bring a bit more clarity to the table, I decided to run a discharge test, as I noticed that prolonged media consumption does hit the battery life hard, as does gaming. The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 has outstanding standby battery life, though.
Video streaming test
Having said that, I fired up a YouTube video at max resolution when the tablet was at a full charge. That’s something we usually do. I was wondering how long will it take it for the tablet to get fully discharged. As a side note, the brightness was manual and tuned up to 100%, and the sound was on. It took the tablet 14 hours and 47 minutes to die, which is a slightly better results than we got with the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Fold, but worse than what the OnePlus Open provided, for example.
Charging
What about charging? Well, in that area, the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 is not bad at all. It’s actually one of the fastest charging tablets out there. It comes with an 88W charger, and I managed to full charge it in an hour and 10 minutes. That is a lot faster than the Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra, for example. That tablet takes over 2 hours to fully charge. Those of you who are wondering about wireless charging, no, it’s not available here.
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Camera
The Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 has two cameras on the back, and one on the front. A 13-megapixel main camera (f/1.8 aperture) is backed by an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera (f/2.2 aperture, fixed focus). The main camera can record in up to 4K resolution, at 30 fps. The wide-angle camera records up to 1080p at 30 fps, the same goes for the front-facing camera. Speaking of which, the front-facing camera is a 16-megapixel unit (f/2.2 aperture), while there is also a dToF sensor next to it, for face recognition. Face recognition works great, by the way, in case you were wondering.
Not many people use their tablet cameras to take pictures, nor should they. Not only does it look very weird, but tablet cameras are usually not nearly as good as the cameras on your phones. The camera setup here won’t win any awards, but for tablet cameras, they’re actually more than usable. If the lighting is good, you can use both the main and secondary rear-facing camera for some more than usable shots. They can provide enough details, and even do a good job in HDR conditions. The thing is, the colors are at times too saturated, and in other scenarios the images look too washed up. Also, the moment you don’t have as much light in a shot, even during the day, the images do get noticeably worse.
Daylight camera samples:
What about low light? Well, first and foremost, I didn’t really shoot images outdoors in low light conditions, as once again, I don’t think anyone will do that with a tablet (or at least almost anyone). When it comes to indoor shots, well, they’re okay, as long as there’s a light source to boost them. If you go into a room with no light in it, other than the one coming from the room next to it, things do get tricky. The images get very blurry, and you can’t really do anything about that. The Night Mode is there, and it does help a bit in such scenarios, but not much. Chances are you’ll want to use the standard mode most of the time, even in low-light conditions.
Low light camera samples:
The front-facing camera is actually really good for a front-facing camera. The darkness does present an issue, but as long as there’s a decent amount of light present, this camera is not half bad for what it’s supposed to be. It actually looks great for video calls and what not, as that’s its purpose, basically. You can also choose to trigger Beauty Mode from the get-go, if you’d like your face to get a boost. I kept it off, and the results were actually quite good.
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Software
Android does come pre-installed here, though we’re not sure what version. It doesn’t say in the tablet’s settings, but if I had to guess, I’d say Android 13 is included here. It doesn’t really matter all that much, as Huawei’s HarmonyOS (4.0) skin is in the forefront here, and the tablet does come without Google services either way. Huawei’s own services come pre-installed aka HMS. Along with that, you’re getting the company’s AppGallery app store. There are plenty of apps included there, but the selection is nowhere near as rich as on the Google Play Store, the same goes for games. Luckily, the company also includes Petal Search on the tablet, which can find the app (basically any app) on an app repository for you, and allow you to easily sideload/install it.
There are some caveats here. A very small percentage of apps requires Google framework specifically in order to function properly, so you may run into issues in that regard. Also, even if you sideload Google apps, they won’t work. You can, however, utilize GSpace, which is essentially an emulator for Google apps. It actually works really well these days, and it allows you to install basically any Google app and stay logged in via your account. Yes, push notifications will also work. We’ve been using GSpace across a number of devices, and so far, so good. Though do note that GSpace is not technically Huawei’s product, so be warned. The same goes for installing apps from app repositories.
HarmonyOS 4 was extremely smooth here
Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about what HarmonyOS 4 brings to the tablet. If you’ve used the previous version of the software, the changes are minimal, especially in the front-end. Everything works a bit better, essentially. During my usage, I was unable to get this tablet to feel laggy at all, and those animations in HarmonyOS are outstanding. Navigating through the OS feels great, even though I did have a number of nitpics, but that’s only a personal preference. I’m not the biggest fan of the notification shade here, due to its looks most of all. It’s just as functional as any other on Android, though. The quick toggles also do feel more like something you’d find on iOS, but that’s just due to the style Huawei is going for. The app drawer is not there from the get-go, but activating it is simple through the settings.
Widget stacks are a possibility
Huawei has some of its own widgets on offer here. It does allow you to create widget stacks, if that’s something you’re interested in. That’s not something you can activate on most Android phones and tablets. There are some exceptions out there, like Samsung and its One UI. There is an app drawer located at the bottom when you’re on the home screen. It disappears when you enter an app, though, unfortunately. It would be much more useful to have that app strip there at all times, as this display is huge. That bar wouldn’t be a nuisance, and it would help with multitasking. You can, however, call upon a pop-up drawer called ‘Smart Sidebar’. You can do that by swiping from the side and holding until you see the icon changes. That sidebar is customizable, and from there you can activate multi-window mode, or open apps in windows. So, there is at least some multitasking prowess here.
If you swipe from left to right on the homescreen (main page), you’ll access something called ‘Assistant TODAY’. That is basically Huawei’s replacement for Google Discover. You do get news recommendations from there, while you’ll also find some app shortcuts there, and so on. It’s semi-customizable. The app grid on the home screen is customizable. You can also enlarge folders so that you can access app in folders directly with a single tap, and so on. There are a number of such tiny features that are not available in stock Android.
Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 Review: Should you buy it?
Is the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 for you? This tablet is definitely not for everyone, not only due to its price, but its size as well. If you’re looking for a budget tablet, there are other offerings from the company to consider. Such as the Huawei MatePad 11.5-inch or MatePad 11.5-inch PaperMatte Edition, which I reviewed rather recently. Those tablets will satisfy what most people need without a problem. If you’re looking at a premium-tier, and want that larger display that simply pops, advanced facial scanning, more capable cameras, etc., well, the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 is a great choice. It looks very sleek, feels premium in the hand, it has a gorgeous display, great performance, and so on. Just keep note that Google services are not included, so as long as you’re fine with that… this tablet is definitely worth considering.
You should buy the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 if you:
…need a truly large tablet
…don’t care about having Google services
…want a truly outstanding display on a tablet
…need a tablet with great performance
…care about charging speed
…love using tablets as small laptops
…want to use a stylus
You shouldn’t buy the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 if you:
…are heavily involved in Google’s ecosystem
…play a lot of games
…don’t have a considerable budget