Huawei MatePad 11.5 (2025) Review

Design

• Sleek, minimalist tablet
• Portable and nice to hold
• Handy optional accessories

At a glance, you’d be hard-pressed to find any differences in design between the new MatePad 11.5 and last year’s MatePad 11.5 PaperMatte Edition – which is to say that it’s a solidly designed, if unremarkable, device. Hey, it’s hard for manufacturers to make slabs of metal and glass look different – I get it. 

But if you were to put the two side-by-side, you’d begin to notice subtle improvements on offer from this year’s model. First up, Huawei has slimmed the device down to just 6.1mm, down from 6.8mm, though it is slightly heavier than last year’s model at 515g. 

That added weight isn’t really that noticeable in everyday use, though. This is still a tablet that’s nice to hold and use, especially when paired with the slightly curved siderails, and it’s easy enough to chuck into a rucksack for work or school purposes.

In fact, with its 11.5-inch display, it feels comparatively compact and well-suited for on-the-go use compared to big-screen alternatives like the OnePlus Pad 3.

This year’s MatePad also looks very clean, lacking the antenna lines present on pretty much every other metal unibody tablet in 2025. 

This is down to Huawei repurposing the rear camera housing as an antenna – an interesting design element I’ve not seen before – but as ever, it’s available in a single (tame) shade of Space Grey in the UK. A little more colour, like what you’d get from Apple’s entry-level iPad range, would inject a bit of much-needed personality into the design here. 

The only other noticeable element on the rear of the device, aside from the Huawei branding, is the contact points. This is primarily designed for the Huawei Smart Keyboard, which uses the contact points for both power and connectivity for a lag-free experience. 

The Smart Keyboard is a great addition for anyone looking to use the tablet for serious work or school purposes, providing a nice, spacious typing experience with solid feedback – though the lack of a trackpad means it’s not as capable as it could be. I do appreciate that you can detach the keyboard without removing the rest of the case, letting you shed the bulk of the keyboard while still getting protection from the case. 

There’s also the M Pencil stylus, which works especially well with the tablet’s matte-finish screen, providing that tactile, slightly scratchy experience you get with traditional pen and paper. It’s an experience only matched by dedicated note-taking e-readers like the Kindle Scribe, all while providing a full LCD colour screen experience – but more about the screen shortly. 

When not in use, the M Pencil snaps into place on the side of the tablet for both storage and charging, so it’s always ready to use when needed. 

Neither accessory is included with the base purchase of the MatePad 11.5 though; you can buy a bundle with the keyboard for an additional £50, but you’ll have to get the M Pencil separately. 

Screen

• 11.5-inch 2.5K LCD
• Matte finish feels nice and massively reduces reflections
• A myriad of eye-care technologies on offer

If there’s one reason to go for the Huawei MatePad 11.5, it’d be the screen. It’s truly the standout feature of the tablet, for a number of reasons.

First up, the 11.5-inch screen is packed with pixels with a 2.5K resolution. This makes everything feel sharp and crisp, from app icons to text and, of course, images, videos and games – and the 120Hz refresh rate helps everything feel much smoother and more responsive. 

It’s an LCD, which might make some tablet aficionados scoff, but it’s a great-quality LCD panel with vibrant, strong colours and great viewing angles. Sure, blacks have a slightly grey tinge, but for the vast majority of users, that’s easy to overlook. 

But, for me, it’s the matte finish to the screen that really makes the MatePad stand out. Of course, this isn’t a new feature – it was present on last year’s dedicated PaperMatte Edition – but the fact that it’s now on the regular tablet shows just how confident Huawei is. And I can see why. 

The “Nano-level anti-glare etching technology” is used primarily to reduce eye strain and glare, to bridge the gap between regular screens and e-ink screens that are incredibly easy on the eye. That includes elements like a blue light filter, DC dimming and circular polarisation tech that tries to mimic natural – rather than artificial – light. 

It feels nice to use as a result, especially late at night or in darker environments, with less eye strain – though admittedly, that is very hard to quantify. 

I also love the matte finish for, well, being a matte finish. It seriously reduces the amount of reflections seen in the panel, especially in brighter environments, and as mentioned earlier, it simulates the pen-to-paper experience when paired with the M Pencil stylus. 

There’s also the benefit of negating smudges, and its matte finish feels nicer to swipe your finger over than grippy glass alternatives. 

You can kick things up a notch with the dedicated e-reader screen mode to better emulate that e-reader experience, though it just makes everything monochromatic. It’s not as good as a dedicated e-reader, but if you like the idea of combining two bits of tech into one, the MatePad 11.5 is a great option. 

Cameras

• 13MP rear-facing camera
• 8MP selfie camera
• Up to 4K@30fps video capture

When it comes to tablets in general, cameras are a bit of an afterthought. After all, even if you’ve got a mid-range phone in your pocket, chances are it’ll offer a better camera experience than a tablet could ever offer.

With that in mind, the Huawei MatePad 11.5’s combination of a 13MP f/1.8 rear-facing camera and an 8MP f/2.2 selfie camera is fine for basic tablet-focused tasks like making video calls, taking the occasional in-the-moment photo and even scanning documents – but with hit-and-miss dynamic range and poor low-light performance, it’s not a camera offering you’ll be using for much else. 

It’s a similar story with video recording, with the rear camera offering a solid 4K@30fps with decent saturation and detail, but the front-facing camera’s 1080p@30fps output doesn’t quite match in terms of overall quality. 

If you are looking for a great all-round camera setup for photos and videos, take a look at our selection of the best camera phones – they offer a night-and-day experience compared to even the most capable tablet cameras around. 

Performance

• Kirin 8020 chipset
• 8GB of RAM and 256GB storage as standard
• Surprisingly smooth everyday performance

With Huawei unable to utilise chipsets from American firms like Qualcomm, it instead utilises its own Kirin 8020 chipset within the Pad 11. Paired with a healthy 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, you might not expect too much from Huawei’s relatively unknown processor – but I was pleasantly surprised with the performance on offer. 

In general use, the MatePad 11.5 doesn’t act like your typical budget-friendly tablet, despite the chipset being in line with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 in terms of raw power. Apps open with surprising speed, animations are slick, and there’s no real stuttering when swiping around the OS, even on ad-laden websites in Huawei’s proprietary browser app. 

That extends to gaming too, with the Pad able to run games like Archero 2 without any noticeable lag or stuttering – and it doesn’t really get warm in use either – but I wouldn’t push it to the likes of Call of Duty Mobile. However, finding high-quality games like those on Huawei’s platform might be a bit of a struggle. More on that shortly.

It also means it’s a solid workhorse for productivity, with the ability to run apps side-by-side in its landscape orientation. 

Of course, this is a budget-focused tablet and you shouldn’t expect flagship-level performance – and this would probably be borne out in benchmark testing if Huawei hadn’t installed blocks on benchmarking apps on my sample – but it delivers a reasonable effort in everyday use, along with that Huawei magic that makes everything feel snappy.

Software

• Huawei’s take on Android is slick and speedy
• No access to Google Play or associated services
• Can sideload some apps, but some still won’t work

For all that the Huawei MatePad 11.5 does well, the software experience remains the core sticking point and the reason that most people will probably all-out avoid the tablet.

Of course, I’m talking about Huawei’s lack of access to Google Play Services. It’s not Huawei’s fault, but the Google-free HarmonyOS 4 takes a lot of getting used to, with many of the apps you’re likely familiar with simply unavailable on Huawei’s competing AppGallery. 

Huawei tries to close the gap with apps like Petal Search, which finds APKs for apps online and installs them on your device, but apps that still require Google’s framework to operate – Uber, some banking apps and, of course, all the Google apps – still won’t work. 

Huawei has tried to fill the gaping holes left with apps like WPS Office that support Microsoft files for work, and the Go Paint app is essentially Huawei’s answer to the excellent Procreate app for iPad – but these still don’t make up for the void of apps you simply won’t be able to get. 

There are open-source workarounds like microG that provide some access to Google services, helping bridge the gap, but it’s still not a perfect execution. 

In reality, it meant that I struggled to set the tablet up, having to find alternatives to apps like Google Docs for work, and without access to my Google Password Manager, manually logging into every app was a headache. 

Once it’s out of the way, you’ve got a semi-fine tablet experience, but the advanced skills you need for all this mean it’s simply not worth the effort for most – especially as you can pick up tablets like the Honor Pad V9 for a similar price without any of the faff. 

And that’s a bit of a shame because, app availability aside, Huawei’s HarmonyOS is a nice, polished, easy-to-use Android skin with all the bells and whistles you’d expect. It also sports a number of iOS-like elements that should make the transition for iPad users easier – though I highly doubt that’ll happen all too often. 

Battery life

• Massive 10,100mAh battery
• Strong everyday battery life
• 40W wired charging support

Battery life is another strong suit of the tablet, with a significantly larger 10,100mAh battery than last year’s 7,700mAh alternative – and this translates to a strong uptick in longevity. 

Combined with the power-sipping chipset and the relatively compact 11.5-inch screen, the MatePad 11.5 seemingly keeps on going. An hour of HDR YouTube playback drained just 8% charge, compared to the 14% charge from last year’s MatePad. Huawei says it’s good for 14 hours of video playback, and based on my experience, that’s largely on the money.

Of course, this will depend greatly on what you’re up to; playing games and running apps side-by-side will drain the battery faster. 

Running flat isn’t as big a problem as it was last year either, with boosted 40W charge speeds compared to the glacial 18W of last year’s entry.

Should you buy it?