The MatePad Pro tablet is Huawei’s premium tablet. It is therefore part of the high-end market for Android tablets while displaying a very reasonable price. A very interesting value for money, but without the services of Google. Today, can a tablet appeal without Google? Has Huawei succeeded in bringing an attractive touchscreen tablet capable of shaking an iPad Pro, a Microsoft Surface Pro, or even a Samsung Galaxy Tab S7?

Huawei is one of the manufacturers still very present in the Android tablet market. Despite the absence of Google services, Huawei intends to impose itself with tablets with an attractive value for money and notable performance.

Released in 2020, this MatePad Pro is the first Premium tablet from the manufacturer, which now dares to try on the high end. A very competitive market, since Samsung, Apple and even Microsoft offer professionals touch tablets with very high performance to provide an efficient working tool.

Huawei hence comes, a bit like an outsider, to dust off the segment and provide an alternative to those who want a versatile tablet, for entertainment as well as for work.

Pros and Cons

Key Specification

Design

Huawei has focused its efforts on the design of the tablet so that it does not stand out in the middle of other competing Premium tablets.

If the finishes remain generally neat, the design of this tablet is quite similar to what Samsung or Huawei can do. You, therefore, have a 10.8-inch tablet, a screen with a 16:10 ratio, more in length than in width. With fairly thin borders, the screen takes up 90% of the space. It is she who also has the finest borders on the market with only 4.9 mm of black edge that frames the screen. The aluminum frame helps to perfect the look of this tablet which, in concrete terms, is quite attractive. A little thick with its 7.2 mm, it is nonetheless light (460 grams), which, for the grip, is quite pleasant. The front sensor of the tablet is indeed present, but super discreet.

The touch screen of the MatePad Pro displays a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. This IPS LCD panel displays a beautiful brightness and an appreciable level of contrast. A very good screen, therefore, displays the same characteristics as an iPad Pro (with the price difference that we know).

This screen is displayed among the best digital tablets. Its only flaw remains its reflectance level: its level outdoors is not optimal. This screen should provide you with a high level of visual comfort while watching movies or your moments of productivity. Blue light is greatly reduced to your eyes.

Performance

In terms of design and screen, the MatePad Pro meets all the quality criteria. Now let’s see what it hides in its brushed aluminum frame. Huawei integrates the best chip in its catalog into its tablet: Kirin 990 chip, coupled with 6 GB of RAM. This processor makes the MatePad Pro the most powerful tablet of all Android tablets.

So you can do absolutely anything with it: work, download greedy image editing software, turn it into a laptop, play games, surf the Internet. Fluidity in navigation is at the rendezvous.

Note that the tablet offers you a multitasking mode to navigate your applications more quickly. Huawei places your productivity at the heart of its challenges and wants you to be able to work in comfort, switching from one application to another without losing focus.

Camera

The Huawei MatePad Pro has a 13 Megapixel wide-angle sensor on the back of the tablet and an 8 Megapixel front sensor. Nothing very extraordinary here, Huawei having certainly decided to focus its efforts elsewhere than on the quality of the photos. Huawei smartphones are much better equipped for this! On the video side, you can still make movies in 4K.

Multimedia

The MatePad Pro has four speakers, evenly distributed on each side, two on the right and two on the left. The volume buttons as well as the home button are located on the top of the tablet. On the connectivity side, we find here a USB-C port, a SIM card slot for those who have access to the 4G model. Note that you don’t get a MicroSD port here, but an NM card port (Huawei’s proprietary format). No mini-jack here, but this absence is no longer a surprise. Premium tablets no longer include a headphone jack either.

Four Harman Kardon speakers equip the tablet, for immersive sound. The stereo rendering puts you in a very appreciable sound environment to watch your films or during your games.

Battery Life

With its 7,250 mAh battery, Huawei announces an autonomy of 12 hours. Again, it all depends on your use, but know that the battery is used much longer!

On this point, moreover, it multiplies the good points: with its fast charge, its battery is full in less than two hours. The MatePad Pro also offers wireless reverse charging. You just have to put your phone on its shell for it to recharge. Very practical on the go!

Connectivity

Huawei unable to integrate Google services on all of its devices, the manufacturer had to adapt and offer alternatives to its users. On the operating system side, the tablet is available under Android 10, coupled with Huawei EMUI 10.1 software.

If the Google Play Store is not there, you still have the App Gallery to download your applications. The catalog grows regularly to give you access to popular applications, such as Twitter, Amazon, etc. With more and more users, Huawei continues to make regular updates to its service.

Despite everything, the App Gallery also has large absentees. This is the case with Netflix in particular. But Huawei, aware of this lack which could be prejudicial to it, does not hesitate, through its community, to explain to you the procedure to follow to install Netflix on its devices. A little technical manipulation is required, but you do have the possibility of accessing your video service on the MatePad Pro!

The lack of popular apps can be a drag on purchasing Huawei tablets. It is also up to developers to make the effort to make their application compatible. Especially since Huawei is not a manufacturer ready to disappear and the care is taken by the manufacturer to its devices makes it a major player. The App Gallery is not yet as extensive as the Apple App Store or the Play Store, but Huawei is working on it!

Huawei competes with Apple on its iPad Pro right down to accessories to make it a real working tool.

Huawei Pen-Pencil: the official stylus

The MatePad Pro has a magnetic holder on an outer edge to house the stylus and charge it. With it, note-taking is easier and more precise. You can draw, make annotations on documents, in short, the Huawei stylus does not have to be ashamed of its competitors.

Bluetooth keyboard

The MatePad Pro also has its keyboard which also acts as a screen protector. Huawei makes the effort to bring a keyboard with real keys, compared to the Apple keyboard. Note that the Huawei tablet switches to a PC interface to work, then to tablet mode when you no longer need its services in professional mode.

Conclusion!

There is only one brake that can prevent the purchase of this tablet: the absence of Google services. This absence is a constraint for many users. It a frustration when you see all the qualities of this tablet, its level of performance, its finishes. And especially its price!

If you can do without Google services, know how to install apps through APKs, you can’t hesitate for a moment. The MatePad Pro is certainly one of the best Android tablets on the market that offers such good value for money. Huawei goes to great lengths to provide a perfect user experience that meets its habits. An obligation to perform makes this race for performance very interesting and which should shake up the competition a little more soon.

The new iPad Air marks the entry of the range in the more raw design of Apple. But it is not only the external appearance that differentiates the iPad Air 4 from its predecessor, the iPad Air 3. The opportunity to compare the differences between the iPad Air 2019 and its improved version, from 2020. Let’s go!

Apple’s end-of-year conference was an opportunity to discover its new fourth-generation iPad Air. At first glance, this is a whole different tablet. But what is better compared to the third-generation iPad Air? Let’s analyze the differences between our two opponents based on the technical data sheets provided by the manufacturer.

Key Specification

The screen of the fourth-generation iPad Air is larger than the screen of the third iPad Air of the name. Thus, we are entitled to a diagonal of 10.9 inches for the iPad Air 2020 against only 10.2 inches for the iPad Air of 2019. The pixel density, on the other hand, is roughly the same on both iPad Airs. True Tone technology is also responsible for adapting the colors of the screen according to your environment and the ambient light. A real asset so as not to tire the eyes in the evening.

Design

To begin with, we notice that the iPad Air 2020 does not look at all like the iPad Air of 2019. Indeed, its chassis has been completely revamped and now looks more like the iPad Pro which was unveiled the same year. Thus, the angles are now straighter and recall the appearance of the late iPhone 4. The result is a more serious format, which brings the fourth-generation iPad Air into the tablet sector that can be preferred for the job. Just like its accessories, as we will see below.

As for the dimensions, they are 247.6 x 178.5 x 6.1 mm for the fourth-generation iPad Air against 250.6 x 174.1 x 6.1 mm for the third-generation iPad Air. The iPad Air 4 is, therefore, a bit wider than the iPad Air 3, but it is less tall and just as thick. The weight, too, has changed: the iPad Air 2020 without 4G is heavier than its predecessor. In contrast, the iPad Air 4 model with mobile data weighs a few grams less than the iPad Air 3. But frankly, there is no real difference here.

However, we notice that the borders surrounding the screen of the fourth-generation iPad Air are much narrower than those of the third-generation iPad Air. The diagonal / format ratio is indeed higher with the new iPad Air: 81.3% vs. 78.3% approximately. You should also know that the iPad Air 4 offers additional colors: space grey, sky blue, rose gold, silver and green.

For the rest, the iPad Air remains true to itself both in 2020 and in 2019.

Performance

The fourth-generation iPad Air incorporates the all-new Apple A14 processor. It is also the first device to have the right to this chip – even before the iPhone – which had never happened before. On the iPad Air 2020, the SoC would even be 40% faster, its GPU being about 30% more efficient compared to the iPad Air 3. On a daily basis, you will therefore have no trouble. to run particularly energy-intensive video games. Moreover, the iPad Air are compatible with controllers: that’s good, isn’t it?

The third-generation iPad Air, meanwhile, is content to run with an Apple A12 Bionic. This time, the processor is engraved with a precision of seven nanometers (compared to only five for the new iPad Air 4), but remains powerful enough to be able to open many apps at the same time without flinching. It is in fact divided into six different cores, including two Vortices at 2.5 GHz each and four Tempest clocked at 1.6 GHz. To this are coupled 3 GB of RAM and a quad-core graphics chip.

Camera

Now let’s move on to the camera part. It is needless to say that the iPad Air being a tablet, it will be difficult for you to take it to take pictures with you everywhere. But this backup solution does the trick if you have no choice. In terms of numbers, the iPad Air 3 offers a single eight-megapixel back sensor. With an f / 2.4 aperture, it is capable of shooting HDR images. For their part, videos are available in 1080p at up to 30 frames per second. But the front camera only offers seven megapixels.

For iPad Air 4, the rear lens has been improved. It now has a twelve-megapixel lens. It is exactly the same as in the fourth-generation iPad Pro, which also has the right to LiDAR radar. It thus benefits from a wide-angle with an f / 1.8 aperture, capable of immortalizing landscapes much wider than the iPad Air 3. Furthermore, this sensor is capable of filming in 4K, which does is not the case with the previous version. Finally, you should know that the opening of the camera dedicated to selfies has also been enlarged with this time f / 2.0.

Multimedia

The third-generation iPad Air does offer a headphone jack, but it can be recharged with a Lightning plug. Apple provides the charger, but you should not lose it at the risk of quickly finding you in the poor state of the battery. For the network, it will be Wi-Fi or mobile data depending on the model you choose, knowing that the edition with mobile data is more expensive, just like with the fourth generation of the iPad Air. Both are 4G compatible. Note also that file-sharing can be done with AirDrop, which facilitates transfer to other Apple devices.

Battery Life

The third-generation iPad Air can last up to ten hours of multimedia web browsing. Autonomy has not been improved with the iPad Air 4, since according to its technical sheet it is the same duration that is proposed. It’s a bit of a shame, especially when you consider that a lot of users prefer the iPad Air for long trips.

The charger that comes with the iPad Air 2020 offers a one-meter-long cable with a twenty-watt AC adapter, which allows it to be powered fairly quickly. The charging time is roughly the same on the iPad Air 2019, so there is no real difference in battery life between our two opponents.

Connectivity

There are serious differences between the iPad Air 4 and the iPad Air 3 in terms of connectivity. Thus, the new iPad Air 2020 benefits from a latest-generation USB-C socket, more universal and to which you can connect many compatible devices such as the eponymous keys. In addition, the jack port has been abandoned, which means that you will have to buy special headphones or go through true wireless Bluetooth headsets if you do not want to disturb those around you. At the back, there is still the Smart Connector to connect official keyboards.

Conclusion!

This iPad Air 2020 vs iPad Air 2019 comparison was an opportunity to discover that this time, Apple offers us a real improvement from one generation to the next. The iPad Air 4 is thus more elegant than its predecessor, while the iPad Air 3 is less powerful and its screen is smaller. However, these changes come at a price: 100 euros more.

The fourth-generation iPad Air is a mid-range tablet now capable of reaching the same audience as the iPad Pro thanks to the Apple Pencil 2 and the Magic Keyboard. It will be perfect for all trades looking for an Apple mobile touch device without skipping the software part, thanks to iPadOS 14 and its many advantages.

To be honest, buying a third-generation iPad Air is therefore not very interesting since the majority of its components are pale compared to those of the iPad Air 4. But it will still be a good option to save money. , for example for the tighter budget of university students. As is often the case, Apple keeps its promise to deliver a reliable and smooth product over the long term, and the benchmarks prove that there is nothing wrong with this.

Apple has barely unveiled its 2020 iPad Pro that customers are already flocking. Despite everything, some prefer to wait a few more months before proceeding to checkout. To understand why, just look at the iPad Pro 2018 … And the brand’s release schedule, which already provides for other versions this year.

First of all, let’s start by recalling the precepts of the iPad Pro. This range of Apple tablets is the most luxurious of the brand, and as its name suggests it is intended above all for professional or intensive use. Indeed, its technical sheet is beyond all other models, whether it is the family of historical and classic iPads, the more compact iPad Mini or even the ultralight iPad Air whose thickness is reminiscent of MacBook. eponymous.

Key Specification

	iPad Pro 2018	iPad Pro 2020
	CHECK PRICE	CHECK PRICE
Chipset	Apple A12X Bionic (7 nm)	Apple A12Z Bionic
Display	11 inches	11 inches
Memory	64/128 GB	128/256 GB
Camera	12 MP	12 MP
Fingerprint Sensor	No	No

Design

The shell of the iPad Pro 2020, like that of the iPad Pro 2018, takes the guidelines of the iPhone 4, more straightforward and straight than the curves introduced with the iPhone 6. The result is a more sober appearance, more serious, and therefore well and truly suited to more professional use. As there are two sizes for each edition, one of the products will obviously be easier to take on a trip than the other, and this is where the customer’s choice can be decisive. Count 247.6 x 178.5 x 5.9 mm for the 11-inch iPad Pro, against 280.6 x 214.9 x 5.9 mm for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro .

The new Magic Keyboard, on the other hand, is different from the Smart Keyboard Folio. Indeed, it is more complete since it also includes a trackpad, even if there is still no numeric keypad in the program. Note that the old iterations of this family of accessories are still compatible with the iPad Pro 2020.

In addition, the fourth-generation iPad Pro also benefits from an interesting asset for confidentiality: its microphone can be physically disconnected. This was not the case with the iPad Pro 2018, and for those who want to preserve their privacy, this is a real plus.

The iPad Pro 2020 is available in two display sizes. The first therefore offers an IPS LCD touchscreen with an 11-inch diagonal, while the second reaches 12.9 inches, almost as much as a MacBook Pro. The duo has an array of sixteen million colors with proprietary True Tone technology, offers a refresh rate of 120 Hz and can reach a brightness of 600 nits. A glass pane protects the screen from scratches; it is also compatible with several styluses, including Apple Pencil. This tool is favored by graphic designers, tattoo artists and architects to make sketches as faithfully as possible.

There is also no difference between the iPad Pro 2018 and the iPad Pro 2020 at the screen level. A subcontractor could even confirm that the component used is exactly the same. On the other hand, each of the versions with a 12.9-inch screen is more borderless than its little brother: the device size/screen size ratio thus reaches 85.4% on the large model against 82.9% on the other. The pixel density is similar, however, at 265 PPI in both cases.

Performance

Camera

As for the technical characteristics, the iPad Pro 2018 counts on a single 12-megapixel rear lens with an opening f / 1.8 and a size 1/3 ″. The iPad Pro 2020, on the other hand, also offers a 10-megapixel ultra-wide-angle with an f / 2.4 focal length. Both photo modules use the same LED flash, can record in HDR and shoot with 4K definition. In short, the fourth iPad Pro will clearly be the most effective for shots, but only certain trades will see a real advantage: others will prefer to use the camera of their mobile, much easier to carry everywhere.

Multimedia

Battery Life

All these technical characteristics are exactly the same on the iPad Pro 2018 (except certain series which were limited to 4 GB of RAM). But when we look at the Li-Po battery, one difference is noticeable: it’s capacity. Thus, the smaller iPad Pro 2020 offers only 7,540 mAh battery, while its predecessor reaches the 7,812 mAh. On the other hand, the most imposing iPad Pro 2018 seems to keep the same autonomy as the third-generation model. Either way, the gap between the cheapest products is really small, and we shouldn’t feel it every day. For the rest, it’s still the same everywhere: we are entitled to a GPS, Bluetooth and USB-C with the fastest speeds of the moment in both directions.

Connectivity

Conclusion!

To conclude, the iPad Pro 2020 is more of an update to the iPad Pro 2018 than a real new benchmark. Indeed, even if the CPU of the fourth generation tablet is announced as more efficient than the A12X bionic of the previous one, it offers similar performance and apart from an additional lit core, it is not that different. For the battery, the differences are also insignificant.

It is, therefore, the double lens on the back, coupled with LiDAR, truly unique on an iPad, which will make the difference for real specialists. Otherwise, the question will be iPad Pro 11 or iPad Pro 12.9,

Here are the best prices, updated in real-time, for the iPad Pro 2018 which costs (to a few tens of euros) the same price as the iPad Pro 2020 and can therefore be considered as an excellent alternative: