Artist Review: Huawei MatePad Mini with M-Pencil Pro

Review sample provided by Huawei Singapore

Huawei announced the Huawei MatePad Mini with the China ROM on 4 September 2025. Fast forward many months later, this tablet with the global ROM is finally made available on 24 April 2026 in Singapore.

The official retail price of the Huawei MatePad Mini (12GB + 256GB) in Singapore is SGD 748 and that includes the Huawei M-Pencil Pro and the official flip case. The tablet can be purchased from Shopee SG and Lazada SG.

On the product page, there's a mention of a free battery replacement within a three year period. Awesome. And you get two PaperMatte Display Care service whatever that means.

Bottom line: This is one of the best mini tablets in 2026 if you can look past the limitations with HarmonyOS.

I was actually looking forward to using this tablet as a phone but unfortunately there's no cellular support.

Specifications

Things included

Here in Singapore, the tablet is bundled with the Huawei M-Pencil Pro and the official flip case.

The flip case comes in two parts. There's the back cover which can magnetically attach to the flip cover. This is a convenient design that lets you use the tablet without the flip cover.

There's a magnetic flap that prevents the pen from dislodging accidentally. Cover material feels like PU leather to me. The case is well made.

The flip cover can prop up the tablet horizontally. There's an area on the flip cover with magnets to hold onto the bottom of the tablet.

Design

The Huawei MatePad Mini looks stunning.

The tablet is just 5.1mm. Sides are rounded and comfortable to hold, just like other Huawei MatePad tablets.

Weight is just 260g which is considered lightweight. This is a tablet you can hold for long periods of time without discomfort.

My first impression, and currently impression, is the tablet looks amazing and feels great in hand.

The bezels measure 2.99mm. That's like less than half of the bezels from the Apple iPad mini. It's quite incredible to see bezels so thin. But the downside is if you hold the tablet with your thumb on the display, that may interfer with the pen performance.

Shown above is the Huawei MatePad Mini beside the Xiaomi Pad Mini and Apple iPad mini. The Huawei and Xiaomi tablets have 8.8-inch displays and the iPad mini has 8.3-inch. Huawei MatePad Mini uses OLED and the other two use LCD, and in particular the display quality of the iPad mini looks lousy, almost embarrassing, beside the other two tablets.

The Huawei tablet definitely looks and feels more premium compared to the other two tablets.

The USB-C port only has USB-2 transfer speed and does not output video. Charging speed is up to 66W.

The two stereo speakers are loud with good clarity, but lacks bass just like most tablet speakers.

The tablet is available only in green. The huge camera module houses a 50MP f/1.8 wide lens and an 8MP f/2.2 ultra-wide lens and a flash. The camera bump is huge so you'll need the back cover to prevent the tablet from wobbling too much on the table.

Display

The Huawei MatePad Mini uses a 8.8-inch OLED display with adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. Resolution is 2560 x 1600 so visual are sharp without pixelation.

Aspect ratio is 16:10 so watching videos won't have thick black bars.

Peak brightness is advertised as 1800 nits and that's probably the HDR brightness. I'm not sure if that's the outdoor under-the-sun brightness but the display certainly looks really bright. Thanks to the extreme 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio and high brightness, the OLED looks substantially brighter with auto-brightness when compared to LCD.

The display quality almost perfect.

I say almost perfect because OLED has Pulse Wave Modulation (PWM) and people with sensitive eyes may be affected by PWM. If you are not sure whether your eyes are affect by PWM, it's best to go to an electronics store to look at phones, tablets or TVs with OLED displays, or look at the Huawei MatePad Mini in person.

The front 32MP f/2.4 camera is located at the top right corner, and is a punch hole camera within the OLED display. The camera will block some UI design behind it, but touch still works if you have to tap on some button behind the camera.

The camera supports face unlock, and there's fingerprint unlock.

Auto-brightness works well.

The display is comes with the PaperMatte surface in Singapore. In China, there's also the glossy display option.

The matte glass surface provides excellent anti-glare. If you look at the display from extreme angle, you can still see reflections but when looking from the front, there's absolutely no reflections even if that's a light source pointing at it.

Many people like to say that glossy displays have more vibrant colours. True. But the colours on this matte glass display still looks extremely vibrant to me. I hate reflections so I love the matte surface. I would be incredibly disappointed if the tablet is sold only with the glossy display.

Reading experience is good thanks to the matte surface. I would recommend switching over to black background with white text because the display is kinda bright and can cause eye strain if you're not used to the extra contrast.

8.8-inch is not a good size for reading comics or PDFs because text can look quite small.

Viewing angle is extremely wide and the display is laminated.

I don't have any benchmarks for you except to say that the performance of this tablet is responsive and smooth. There's 12GB of RAM so multi-tasking is not an issue.

I did not try gaming but of course you can game on this tablet, but whether you can run graphics intensive games at the highest settings will depend on the game. i can't provide much info on gaming unfortunately.

OS and software

The tablet runs on HarmonyOS 4.3 and there's no official support for Google Play Store.

Huawei's app store is called Huawei AppGallery and the apps there are mostly in Chinese, and most of the popular English apps are just not available, e.g. Facebook, Instagram, NetFlix, Google apps, Youtube, etc. There is Microsoft Edge but no Microsoft OneDrive.

It is possible to install Google Play Store by installing MicroG, GBox or GSpace and the latter two are available from the Huawei AppGallery. When you install apps from the Google Play Store, some may not work properly, e.g. may not be able to restore past purchases, can't sign in automatically with Google or Facebook authentication, cannot sign into cloud storage with Google, OneDrive or Dropbox. When that happens, you'll have to spend time troubleshooting, install the same app again from GBox or GSpace or APK, or just give up and use the web version instead. e.g. maps.google.com instead of Google Maps app.

I've two versions of Medibang Paint Pro because one can't restore my past purchase.

One version of Kindle cannot load my ebooks from the cloud.

Some apps are just not available for some reason, or for no good reason.

Another downside of HarmonyOS is there are many ads and bloatware and you have to spend the time to remove them. Huawei AppGallery almost always shows you a fullpage ad if you have not opened it for sometime.

You can't export an artwork directly to cloud storage such as Google Drive, DropBox or OneDrive as Huawei file manager has no direct integration.

HarmonyOS does have many useful features of course. There's the side panel that I like that can store more apps, and you can drag an app out for multi-tasking split-screen view.

The Huawei MatePad Mini supports both Huawei M-Pencil Pro and M-Pencil 3.

M-Pencil Pro supports palm rejection, tilt and pressure sensitivity. You can also pinch or double tap the pen for some shortcuts, but those shortcuts only work with selected Huawei apps. There's a button on the back of the pen to quick launch an app. You can also write in a text box, or tap on the sleeping display to create a quick note.

The pen can attach to the side of the tablet for charging and pairing. The pen uses NearLink for pairing instead of Bluetooth. This means you can disable Bluetooth and not disable the pen. NearLink is said to have better latency but I have no way to test.

The default transparent plastic pen tip is very smooth on the matte glass surface. This is good for writing since you want to write fast, but for drawing it's not ideal as it's difficult to control the pen.

There are two other types of pen tips provided by Huawei with slightly more texture but they are still too smooth for drawing.

Third party pen tips are available on AliExpress and I highly recommend you get the full silicone tip instead of the metal tip or the felt tip. The silicone tip has more resistance and allows you to control the pen more easier. Third party pen tips will affect pressure sensitivity slightly.

Drawing experience

The pen has some issues with diagonal line wobble. You don't always get diagonal line wobble though, so the pen performance is not consistent. When sketching, I can definitely see the wobble affect some of my lines, as such accuracy is affected.

If you want to place the tablet on the table to draw, you will need the back cover to prevent the tablet from wobbling from the camera bump, but even the back cover there's still a slight camera bump.

Because the tablet is so small and light, you can easily hold it in one hand with your pen in the other hand.

For drawing I prefer to hold the tablet horizontally but I find my thumb going onto the display often and affecting the pen performance. That's the downside to having such thin bezels.

This was sketched at a cafe.

Having a small and light tablet that you can bring around easily is wonderful.

The drawing experience is not ideal because of the thin bezels, diagonal line wobble and smooth pen tip. For sketching, it's alright but if you need drawing precision and accuracy, then the line wobble will be the deal breaker.

Palm rejection works well by the way.

One feature to switch off first is "Slide across bottom to switch apps" under Gestures settings. When drawing, my resting palm has the tendency to switch app unintentionally and that is incredibly annoying.

Krita does not work well with this tablet because the UI is designed for desktops. Clip Studio Paint is not available from GSpace or GBox. Infinite Painter is not available from GSpace but available from GBox.

Note taking experience is wonderful. The tablet, pen and app are able to capture my handwriting style quite accurately.

Battery life

Battery life is about 10-12 hours with auto brightness and performance mode off. There's fast charging so I don't really have to worry about battery life depleting in one day of use, not that I can deplete it in one day unless I use the tablet non-stop for hours.

Conclusion

The Huawei MatePad Mini is a beautiful well made tablet with premium build quality, amazing display, good sound and responsive performance.

Downsides would be the lack of official support for Google Play Store and the lack of cellular support. But you can install Google Play Store, and get internet from your phone's hotspot so that's not too bad.

I wish Huawei can make the pen performance more consistent because that would make this the ultimate portable digital sketchpad. The iPad mini has good pen performance but the tablet specs are ancient: 60Hz LCD with a dim display going for SGD 849 for 256GB storage and Apple Pencil Pro is another SGD 199. If you want a small form factor tablet but not gonna be using it for drawing, consider the Huawei MatePad Mini or Xiaomi Pad Mini instead.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful design
+ Excellent build quality
+ Comfortable to hold
+ Really light
+ Bright, sharp, vibrant OLED display
+ Brightness up to 1800 nits
+ 120Hz refresh rate
+ Laminated display
+ Responsive performance
+ Good audio
+ 66W fast charging with Huawei charger
+ 10-12 hour battery life
+ Fingerprint unlock
- HarmonyOS has many ads
- No official support for Google Play Store
- Slow diagonal lines may have wobble or jitter depending on app
- Lines may have pressure variance depending on app
- USB-C only has USB 2 speed
- No SD card slot
- No cellular model in Singapore
- File manager has no integration with Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox
- No 100% backup option
- Default pen tip too smooth for drawing
- Bezels can be too thin for thumb holding

Availability

The Huawei MatePad Mini is available in Singapore from Shopee SG and Lazada SG.