Month With Huawei MatePad Air Sharpens Wish for Next iPad Air Display Upgrade

According to TechRadar, the MatePad Air has a 12-inch OLED display with up to a 144Hz refresh rate and 1,200-nit peak brightness. The higher-end PaperMatte version tested by the reviewer reaches up to 2,000 nits. The PaperMatte treatment is an anti-glare layer that Huawei says eliminates up to 99% of ambient light reflections and gives the screen a more paper-like texture, which the reviewer found natural for stylus writing and helpful for reducing eye strain and smudges.

The reviewer used the MatePad Air in places including the subway, airplanes and home, and said the lack of reflections made the screen preferable to the iPad Air for content consumption, note-taking, video calls and reading. The iPad Air's display remains an LCD panel limited to 60Hz with relatively thick bezels, the review said. Although the reviewer had used the M1 iPad Air for years without complaints, switching between the two devices made the difference clear. The MatePad Air's OLED panel was smoother and its thinner bezels made watching content nicer, according to TechRadar.

TechRadar said Apple already offers a nano-texture display on the iPad Pro, but the option requires an expensive configuration of 1TB or more, pushing the price to $1,899, £1,899 or AU$3,249. By contrast, in the UK the PaperMatte display is available on every version of the MatePad Air, with the cheapest model costing £699.99. The tablet is not available in the US. The base model also comes with 256GB of storage, compared with 128GB on the entry iPad Air.

The review added that the MatePad Air is 12 inches, placing it between Apple's 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Air models. It weighs 509g and uses an aluminum frame and back, making it more than 100g lighter than the 13-inch iPad Air. It measures 5.3mm thick compared with 6.1mm for the larger iPad Air, despite housing a 10,100mAh battery, while Apple's tablet has roughly 9,705mAh.

The MatePad Air is not better than the iPad Air in every area, according to the review. Apple's M-series chips still give the iPad a major performance advantage, and the reviewer would still prefer the iPad Air for video editing or other compute-heavy work. But for the reviewer's most common tasks, watching content and browsing the web, the MatePad Air's display was the preferred option. The reviewer said the experience did not make them ready to completely abandon the iPad.

Huawei has continued to launch products with features that are not widely available from other major hardware makers, TechRadar said. Recent examples include the Mate XT2 tri-folding phone, which brings Samsung-like Privacy Display technology to the tri-folding form factor, and the Watch D3, which offers medical-grade blood pressure measurements in a slimmer smartwatch. Many Huawei devices remain unavailable outside Asia, though the company occasionally launches products in Western markets.