Huawei Announces The MediaPad M2 10
Today at CES Huawei made a number of announcements. One of them is a new tablet called the Huawei MediaPad M2 10. It's a new tablet coming to the United States, with specs that sit somewhere in the mid range part of the tablet market. You can check out all of its specs in the chart below.
Huawei MediaPad M2 10 | |
SoC | HiSilicon Kirin 930 2GHz 4x Cortex A53 1.5GHz 4x Cortex A53 Mali-T628 |
RAM | Silver: 2GB LPDDR3 Gold: 3GB LPDDR3 |
NAND | Silver: 16GB + MicroSD Gold: 64GB + MicroSD |
Display | 10" 1920×1200 IPS |
Dimensions | 239.8mm x 172.75mm x 7.35mm; 500g |
Camera | 13MP Rear Facing |
5MP Front Facing | |
Battery | 6600 mAh |
OS | Android 5.1 + EMUI 3.1 |
Accessories | Active stylus for gold model |
Connectivity | 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS/GNSS, Micro USB 2.0 |
The MediaPad M2 10 is actually one of the first Huawei tablets that I've seen coming to the North American market. On paper, it appears to be a tablet targeting the mid range segment of the market. Starting with the SoC, you get HiSilicon's Kirin 930, which consists of two quad core Cortex A53 clusters with peak frequencies of 2GHz and 1.5GHz respectively. It's paired with an ARM Mali-T628 GPU, and either 2GB or 3GB of LPDDR3 memory depending on whether you buy the silver or gold model.
Moving on to the display, the 1920×1200 IPS panel definitely isn't as high resolution as the panels shipping on high end tablets, but it's a lot better than the 1280×800 panels that used to ship on all the mid range tablets out there. Huawei has been a bit inconsistent with their calibration across their product lines, so I'm interested to see how the panel compares to the competition in that regard. Beyond the display, you get either 16GB or 64GB of storage, and a pair of 13MP and 5MP cameras.
As for the design of the MediaPad M2, it doesn't end up cutting any corners. It ships with a full aluminum unibody, and the industrial design is very similar to that of the Mate S. It isn't the thinnest or lightest tablet out there, with a thickness of 7.35mm or 500g, but for a mid range tablet the fact that it's made of aluminum already gives it an edge over other tablets.
The Huawei MediaPad M2 10 will be available in silver and gold. The color choices also serve as a way to segment the devices, as the silver model comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of NAND, while the gold model comes with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of NAND. Both models will be available in the United States in the first quarter of this year, starting at $349 for the 2GB + 16GB WiFi model, and $419 for the 3GB + 64GB model which also includes the active stylus. Both models can have LTE support added on for $50.