Artist Review: Huawei MatePad 12 X (2026) with M-Pencil Pro

Review unit on loan from Huawei Singapore

The Huawei MatePad 12 X (2026) was released in September 2025 and is a 12-inch Android tablet with a PaperMatte display and M-Pencil Pro support. This is a minor update over the Huawei MatePad 12 X PaperMatte (review) released in late 2024.

Retail price is SGD 748 and this comes with the Huawei Smart Keyboard, Huawei M-Pencil Pro and PC-level WPS 3.0. The tablet is available from Huawei Experience Stores in Singapore, Shopee SG, Lazada SG and TikTok Shop. Price for this tablet is usually lower online.

My review is from the artist perspective so the main features that may interest artists are the M-Pencil Pro with tilt and 16K levels of pressure sensitivity, the matte glass surface for drawing and the free GoPaint drawing app.

Specifications

Things included

• Tablet (built-in battery) × 1
• HUAWEI SuperCharge Adaptor × 1
• USB Type-C Cable × 1
• Quick Start Guide × 1
• Warranty Card (Dependent on market) × 1
• Polishing cloth (only for PaperMatte Edition)
• HUAWEI Smart Magnetic Keyboard (Powered by NearLink) × 1

Design

This is a beautiful tablet with solid build quality. Bezels are thin. Corners for the body and LCD are rounded off.

Many tablet makers are using flat sides for their tablets but Huawei still uses the rounded sides which actually make the tablet more comfortable to hold.

The tablet is quite thin, just 5.9mm. Weight of 555g is considered lightweight for a 12-inch tablet. I do find the tablet a bit too big for handling when drawing outdoors so it's best to set the tablet on a surface for drawing.

Audio quality is good. The 4-way speakers are loud and clear.

The USB-C port has USB 3.1 transfer speed and can output video. Aspect ratio of the external display will follow the tablet. The tablet does not have PC mode so there's no way to adjust the aspect ratio, resolution or UI scaling.

The landscape 8MP camera supports face unlock but it's not the secure type. There's no fingerprint scanner.

Auto brightness works well most of the time, but I find that it works inconsistently when I'm holding the tablet and drawing.

The M-Pencil Pro can attach magnetically for charging and pairing. The pen uses NearLink technology for pairing instead of Bluetooth, which means you can switch off Bluetooth and the pen can still work. There is a smart charging feature that charges the pen to 80% or 100% depending on the situation.

The included magnetic keyboard case is well made. It's not a wireless keyboard and it gets it's power from the back of the tablet. If keyboard connection does not work, try cleaning the connection contact points.

The keys have good travel and feedback but typing experience is not ideal as the keyboard is a bit small for my personal preference. Anyway, the small size will just take some time to get used to.

The keyboard also uses NearLink for connection. The keyboard requires power from the tablet and can not be used wirelessly. The tablet can only be deployed at two angles on the keyboard which can be limiting. There is no touchpad.

Display

The 12-inch LCD with PaperMatte surface looks fantastic. Resolution is 2800 x 1840. Pixel density is 280 PPI. Refresh rate is 144Hz, adaptive. Viewing angle is fantastic.

The anti-glare looks good and can diffuse reflections well.

Visuals are sharp and pixelation is not noticeable. There's minimal grain, colour noise or anti-glare sparkle from the matte textured surface.

The display can produce 16.7 million colours and covers the P3 colour space. Colours look good out of the box, and colours look natural thanks to the matte glass surface. I know there are many who may prefer glossy displays which can make colours look more vibrant, but I personally prefer matte surfaces because I hate reflections.

The display is laminated so there's almost no gap between the line and pen tip when writing or drawing.

One of the main selling point for me with the display is it can reach maximum brightness of 1000 nits. There aren't many tablets with LCDs that can achieve 1000 nits brightness. The limitation here is the tablet can only maintain maximum brightness when the battery life is more than 50%.

The display won't look good under direct sunlight. I don't think any displays will look good under direct sunlight, including the tandem OLED of iPad Pros. But as long as you're under shade, even in a bright environment, the display will look great thanks to the high display brightness.

Performance

The tablet comes with the mid-range Kirin T92B processor and 12GB RAM, and 256GB storage. There's no micro SD card slot.

Performance is smooth and responsive. Apps can launch fast. Webpages download fast. Switching between apps is swift. I did not notice any lag with general use and multi-tasking.

This Huawei MatePad may not be a MatePad Pro but the performance is still good. 12GB RAM is sufficient for multi-tasking.

I did not test this tablet with gaming but it should be able to handle light gaming.

OS and software

The tablet runs on HarmonyOS 4.3 at the time of review. The OS has too many features so I'll just cover the ones that are worth talking about.

There is of course the usual multi-tasking features for split screen, floating windows, knuckle knock two to record screen, 3-finger swipe to take a screenshot, double tap or lift to wake.

If you use other Huawei devices, there's the Huawei Super Device for cross device collaboration.

80% smart battery charging is available.

Main thing to note is there's no Google Play Store, but it is possible to install Google Play Store by installing GBox (preferred) or GSpace which are available from the Huawei AppGallery (app store).

Once GBox or GSpace are installed, you'll have access to all (almost) the apps from Google Play Store. And most websites that require Google authentication should work.

Note that if an app is available from the Huawei AppGallery, the alternative from Google Play Store may not be available. E.g. Outlook, Lazada and Edge are available from Huawei AppGallery, and these apps cannot be installed from Google Play Store.

I did encounter some issues. Krita and Clip Studio Paint cannot be installed for some reason. So if you want to install Krita and CSP, you may have to install them via APK files.

I could not restore purchases for Medibang Paint, Infinite Painter and Solid Explorer, which are apps that I had purchased in the past from Google Play Store.

Of course I'm not able to test all the apps to tell you which ones can and cannot work. So there is a risk that the app you need may not be available. If the app you need is not available, then that's obviously a deal breaker.

One thing I don't like about HarmonyOS is there are ads. The tablet comes with pre-installed shortcuts to apps. Huawei AppGallery (app store) will always show an ad when you open the app store after an extended period of inactivity.

M-Pencil Pro

The M-Pencil Pro is a digital pen that supports tilt, 10K levels of pressure sensitivity and palm rejection. The pen can attached to the tablet for charging and pairing. I don't know the battery life but there's no need to worry about since you'll always be charging the pen when you store it away.

The pen supports pinch/squeeze, double tap which can be used to call up shortcuts. The shortcuts are Huawei Notes shortcuts, or if you're using GoPaint app then you get shortcuts to drawing tools. Squeeze and double tap shortcuts cannot be customised by other drawing apps unfortunately.

The pen also has barrel rotation, but there aren't many apps that use this feature, certainly not third party apps.

There's also button at the end of the pen which by default will open Huawei Notes app, but can be customised to open other apps. The button has ring light that will appear when the pen is charging.

The default pen tip is the transparent glossy one which is really smooth on the matte glass surface.

Huawei has also included a white tip which is matte texture but is also quite smooth. And there's a soft black tip which has more texture than the white tip and is still considered smooth too, but less slippery.

The transparent and white ones are good for writing because you want to write fast when writing. By the way, the handwriting and note taking experience with the pen on this tablet is fantastic, 5/5.

For drawing, you definitely want the soft black tip.

In short, all three pen tips are smooth on the matte glass, just how smooth. It may be possible purchase replacement pen tips from AliExpress.

Line tests

I find the pen performance and line quality to vary quite dramatically across different drawing apps. So do not assume that the line quality you get will be consistent across different drawing apps. My video review actually shows the inconsistency more clearly compared to the line tests below.

And usually when there is inconsistency with the pen performance, I will test the pen with more drawing apps.

These above are line tests from Medibang Paint Pro.

1. The slow diagonal lines are quite straight. There's slight wobble but it's a noticeable pattern. Thin lines can be drawn easily even with a thick brush selected.

2. Lines can taper quite well, but the taper could be slightly sharper.

3. Line transition from thin to thick and back is smooth. As I draw with minimal pressure, the line breaks.

4. Consistent line width can be maintained with consistent pressure. Occasionally, this diagonal line may be affected by wobble, but it's not obvious here.

5. Dots can be drawn easily.

6. There are no issues with cursor tracking. Line is always directly beneath the pen tip.

And below are line tests from Infinite Painter

1. There's some wobble with the thin lines but it's not too obvious. For this app, it is more difficult to maintain consistent line width when drawing with minimal pressure. This is also the case with the included free app GoPaint.

2. Lines are not able to taper sharply, and taper with a rounded end instead. Some drawing apps may let you adjust the taper to get sharper tapers, e.g. Clip Studio Paint.

3. Note the diagonal line wobble. When drawing with minimal pressure, the line does not break here like it did with Medibang Paint

4. Note the diagonal line wobble.

So as you can see there are some differences with pen performances when comparing Medibang Paint and Infinite Painter, even when the same pen is used. Infinite Painter has more diagonal line wobble and lines cannot taper nicely, but it can handle minimal pressure without line breaking. Medibang Paint has some issues when drawing with minimal pressure.

Tilt can be inconsistent too. I find the transition from thin to thick to be quite abrupt. Sometimes when drawing thin and I tilt the pen low, tilt effect won't work. But if you tilt the pen low at the start, tilt works. Performance varies depending on the drawing app.

Drawing experience

A 12-inch tablet is a big tablet to work with. You can use apps with many UI elements and still get a large canvas to draw with.

My main drawing app is Concepts and it mostly works fine on the Huawei tablet.

There is a tendency to produce wobbly lines when drawing, as you can see with the curve drawn in the photo above.

If you look close at my line art, you will be able to see areas where the wobble affects the line art. And when there's obvious wobble, I may have to undo and redraw, which uses more time. Alternatively, one can set the brush to be smoother at the expense of introducing more latency.

Here's a sketch I drew in a cafe. The main thing I was thinking about was how smooth the pen tip was, and I was already using the soft black tip which is supposed to have more grip.

I enjoy drawing on this tablet, but I don't think the pen performance is good enough for professional work mostly because of the inconsistent pen performance across different drawing apps.

You cannot be sure before buying the tablet that the pen will work well with your favourite drawing app. And then there's the risk of not being able to install your drawing app for some reason due to HarmonyOS or you may not be able to restore the drawing app you already paid for.

Battery life

Battery life is quite similar to the previous model.

I measured 6-7 hours at maximum brightness, and 8-10 hours with normal usage.

Charging speed is up to 60W, and drops to around 30W when battery level reaches 80%.

Conclusion

The Huawei MatePad 12 X 2026 looks beautiful, feels premium and has responsive performance. Battery life is good.

Downside is the inconsistent pen performance that depends very much on the drawing app used. So for drawing, most of the time you have to think about workarounds to get the pen to perform. For writing, the pen works great.

Pros and cons at a glance
+ Beautiful tablet with solid build quality
+ Responsive and smooth performance
+ Bright, sharp, vibrant display with 144Hz refresh rate
+ Pen and keyboard case included
+ Google Play Store can be installed
+ Huawei Super Device integration
+ Free GoPaint app has many features
+ Matte glass surface has good anti-glare
+ Display is laminated
+ Excellent handwriting note taking experience
- Keyboard kinda small for typing
- Keyboard is not wireless
- Auto brightness does not work well when drawing
- All pen tips are quite smooth on the matte glass surface
- Pen shortcuts not customisable with other apps
- Pen performance varies depending on drawing app
- There are issues with line wobble
- Drawing with minimal pressure may cause line breaks, or inconsistent line width
- Issues with restoring purchases from apps installed through GBox
- Many bloatware and ads within HarmonyOS
- Huawei tablets are not officially sold in USA

Availability

The Huawei MatePad 12 X 2026 can be purchased from Shopee SG, Lazada SG and the Huawei retail stores.