Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite Complete Walkthrough: Premium Feeling Budget Tablet
Here at CES, Huawei just announced their newest addition to the MediaPad line up. This model is the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite and as the name suggests it’s their newest budget model Android tablet.
I managed to get some time with it so figured I’d do a complete walkthrough on it for you guys. If you’re not familiar, a complete walkthrough is where I try and go through as much about the device as I can so you guys are better prepared should you be in the market to go buy one.
With that said, there’s a lot to go through so let’s get started with the styling.
Despite the Lite moniker, it’s made out of a metal unibody with diamond cut edges and a sandblasted finish and I have to admit feels solid (much like the MediaPad M5’s I did a video on when they came out last year).
On the front, we have a 2.5D curved glass screen featuring a 10.1″ FHD IPS display with a resolution of 1920×1200.
Huawei says it also uses ClariVu 5.0 to automatically adjust the contrast and color saturation for videos and images based on what’s on the screen.
Above that screen, we have a 5MP fixed focus camera for selfies that looks and sounds like this, by the way.
Did you see my complete walkthrough on the other thing Huawei launched at CES this year? Check out the new Matebook 13 laptop video I did.
Below the screen, we have a fingerprint sensor to unlock the device. One interesting thing they did with the fingerprint sensor though is that they added a program called Kid’s Corner that if you set up your kid’s fingerprint it’ll automatically bring them into the Kid’s Corner app (far away from all of your apps, etc.) where they can only play the games or use the apps you’ve selected in there as well as setting a time limit for usage (requiring a pin code to exit it).
On the left side of the tablet, we have a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-C port that also supports quick charging that can supposedly fully charge the 7500mah battery in 2.9 hours, and also has USB OTG and USB tethering support, and our MicroSD card slot.
On the right side, we have our power button and out volume rocker.
On the top, we have two of our four speakers tuned by Harman/Kardon.
On the bottom, we have the other two speakers.
Those speakers, by the way, sound like this.
On the back, there is another 5MP camera but this time it has autofocus, unlike the front one.
For performance, we have a Kirin 659 Octa-core processor paired with 3GBs of RAM and a 32GB ROM.
The MediaPad M5 Lite also supports 802.11ac wifi in 2.4 and 5Ghz bands as well as Bluetooth 4.2
Check out Huawei’s new Watch GT complete walkthrough for a watch with battery life for weeks (but actually though).
Something else that’s a welcomed addition in the box is an M-Pen Lite stylus that supports 2,048 points of pressure sensitivity and is great to see doesn’t cost extra for.
For software, we are running Android 8.0 with Huawei’s UI skin on top called EMUI 8.0. And since it is a pretty standard version of EMUI-flavored Android let’s just quickly go through some of the things Huawei has included on the device out of the box.
Google Apps
First up, we have the entire usual Google Suite of apps we’re used to seeing around on Android devices including Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, etc.
Microsoft Apps
A more peculiar thing to see here though is the inclusion of the Microsoft Office suite as well. Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook.
Huawei Apps
We have some of the usual apps Huawei adds into EMUI devices as well including:
- Tablet Manager – An app for managing memory and storage on the device.
- Kid’s Corner – We already covered.
- Themes – Let’s you choose from various themes and icon packs for the device.
- Game Suite – Which automatically identifies game apps and allows you to customize performance and battery saving settings for them as well as mute notifications should you want it to and locks the hardware buttons so you don’t accidentally touch them and jump out of the game.
- Tips – An app for getting the most out of the device.
- Tools – Including a weather app, voice recorder, Huawei’s music app, HiCare the customer service app, a backup app, phone clone app to transfer data to and from the device to another one, a SIM toolkit app, etc.
- Stylus – There are also two included apps for use specifically with the M-Pen Lite. One is a note-taking app called Nebo and the other is a calculator that can convert hand-writing.
Games & Other Apps
- Games – There is a few games included as well. Spiderman, Kingdoms, Dragon Mania, Puzzle Pets, and Asphalt Nitro.
- Other Apps – Ebay, Netflix, Facebook, and Booking.com round out the bloatware pre-installed.
- Ambient Light and Blue Ray Filter – Adjusts the color temperature based on the room or time of day to help reduce eye strain.
- Distance Sensor – They actually use a proximity sensor here to judge how close you are to the screen and suggest you back up a little (more of a thing for kids and I’m told you can absolutely turn it off).
- Posture Detection – Not quite sure how this one works, but apparently it can detect how your posture is and make suggestions to correct it, as well.
Samsung also launched a laptop around this same price at CES! Check out the Samsung Flash complete walkthrough here.
And lastly, we have the usual settings for EMUI 8.0.
So, for all this, what do you pay? Well, for this model, $299 in the US. Now, I am among those that don’t really see the big need for a tablet. It always feels like a device stuck somewhere between the portability and personal nature of a phone and the power and productivity of an actual laptop.
And some tablets out there are close to the price of some super capable laptops nowadays and I just would always choose the laptop with a proper desktop OS for that kind of money. But, with that said, tablets, while still not making a ton of sense to me as a needed item become a much easier sell to me as something that maybe you just want and ends up becoming that extra screen in the house, the car, on trips, etc. when the price fits accordingly. $300? Definitely more of a tablet-like price in my opinion.
And that’s that. Let me know what you guys think of the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite, this video, etc. follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @TheUnlockr for more tech stuff from CES 2019 and don’t forget to subscribe and ding the bell next to the word subscribe to be notified when I do new videos.
As always, thanks for reading!
