Is Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet good for kid?

Is Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet good for kids? The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite’s fantastic battery life and brilliant screen suggest that Huawei is making solid ground in the tablet wars. An Android tablet that’s great for watching content and perusing the internet, the MediaPad M5 Lite makes a convincing offer. Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet comes with 10.1″, 1920 x 1200 IPS, 224 PPI screen, together with 64 GB large storage, bringing every moment to life effortlessly, while the ClariVu technology enhances the brightness and clarity flawlessly. It houses quad stereo speakers tuned by Harman Kardon, delivering concert hall audio effect and providing with multi-layered and penetrating 3D surround sound. Discover more in Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet review.

Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet specs

Price and Availability – Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet

At $299, the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is priced to undercut Apple’s comparable $329 iPad (though that’s often marked down to $279 on Amazon). This tablet doesn’t come in any configurations other than the model we tested, which packs 32GB of storage and includes the M5 Lite pen, a USB Type-C charging cord and a power adapter.

Compare Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite vs Samsung Galaxy Tab

Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet review

Design

A thin slab of aluminum alloy with a glass screen, the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite looks kind of like an iPad. The major difference is the MediaPad’s curved glass panel (which Huawei dubs “2.5D”), which makes the screen look a bit chunky.

At 1.1 pounds and 9.6 x 6.4 x 0.3 inches, the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is similar to the Apple iPad (1.1 pounds, 9.4 x 6.6 x 0.3 inches). The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus (1.1 pounds, 9.7 x 6.8 x 0.3 inches) and the Amazon Fire HD 10 (1.1 pounds, 10.3 x 6.3 x 0.4 inches) are slightly larger.

The M5 Lite’s headphone jack and USB Type-C port (which you’ll use for charging) sit on the device’s bottom left corner. A microSD reader, which offers expandable storage for up to 256GB, is also on the left side.

Case – Huawei tablet with a stable case

Huawei has given the MediaPad M5 lite a metal case with a small decorative seam on the back. The top and bottom edges of the tablet have a lot of holes for the four speakers, as well as additional openings for the microphone along the top. This means that there is a row of holes all along the top of the device. The main camera is positioned on the back and stands out by about 2 mm. The fingerprint reader is placed below the display and is noticeable, despite its seamless finish, by the small indentation it makes in the otherwise flat surface.

The buttons are positioned on the left side of the tablet and are also made of metal but are a little loose. The same can be said for the SIM/SD-card slot, which can be found on the right side of the MediaPad M5 lite. Compared to other tablets of this price range, the MediaPad M5 lite is very light and rather small.

Display

The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite’s 10.1-inch screen offers vibrant color, sharp detail and plenty of brightness. Watching the Toy Story 4 Super Bowl ad on the M5 Lite, I saw accurate hues in Woody’s brown hat and Buzz Lightyear’s green and purple armor, as well as the strong yellow in a stuffed bird harassing the toy spaceman. The 1920 x 1200-pixel panel also made it easy to see slight imperfections, such as dirt on the fabric wall and the metal rods Buzz is zip-tied onto.

Producing up to 114 percent of the sRGB spectrum, the MediaPad M5 Lite very slightly beats the 112 percent tablet average and the 109 percent of the Tab 4 10 Plus. The 2018 iPad (119 percent) rated slightly higher, while the Fire HD 10 (104 percent) rated slightly lower.

The MediaPad M5 Lite emits up to 427 nits of brightness, making it brighter than the 398 category average, the 400-nit Tab 4 10 Plus and the 405-nit Fire HD 10. The 489-nit iPad is even brighter than Huawei’s slate, however. The colors of the Toy Story 4 ad retained their tones as I moved 30 degrees to the left and right of the screen.

Kids Corner

One of the primary differences between the MediaPad M5 Lite and other tablets is the Huawei device’s focus on family members. Not only is there a restricted, parent-controlled interface built for kids — dubbed Kids Corner — but also, a child can jump straight to this interface by unlocking the screen with their fingerprint. A four-digit PIN stops kids from jumping to the full version of the M5 Lite.

Also, the M5 Lite encourages good tech-usage habits, which might reassure parents concerned about handing a big, bright, glowing screen to their developing child. For example, the tablet will encourage kids to keep their faces far from the screen and to use proper posture. Its cameras detected the opposite, bad habits from me (guilty as charged) during my testing.

There’s also a specific in Kids Corner for filtering blue light, a setting that some argue will help kids fall asleep, which is a daily challenge for parents. If enabled, this filtering is always on, which may be a godsend. However, I wish you could set it based around the hours of the day.

Unfortunately, though, this system is a little limited in this first outing. You start with four apps in Kids Corner: an audio recorder, a camera, a Kids Painting app and a gallery app called Multimedia. You can add as many Google Play store apps as you prefer. Further, there’s only one child profile allowed per device. The Kindle HD 10 offers up to six profiles: two for adults and four for children.

Huawei doesn’t include a kid-friendly web browser, so your only options are to give your kids Chrome with unrestrained access to the web or to give them no web browser at all (your best bet, most likely). Contrast this with the ample parental controls on the iPad and those on the Fire tablet platform, and you can see that the MediaPad M5 Lite is lacking.

Kids Corner Features:
-App management: Set which apps your child can access. They won’t be able to open any other apps.
-File access restrictions: Choose which photos and videos your child can see on your Tablet.
– Time limits: Manage every aspect of your child’s usage by setting daily access frequencies, usage durations, and break times.
– Fingerprint access: Enroll your child’s fingerprint to help them access Kids Corner from your Tablet lock screen with just one touch.
– Restrict outside data access: Prevent unwanted fees or charges by blocking third-party app activities (e.g. sending unwanted text messages). This feature is not supported on Wi-Fi only tablets.
– Filter blue light: Reduce eye strain, and protect your child’s vision by filtering out blue light.
– Smart vision protection: Kids Corner comes with many features that help protect your child’s vision. Your little one will get reminders to correct their posture, or to move into environments with better lighting when using the Tablet. Continued use of the Tablet will be paused until they follow the suggested usage guidelines. How does it work?
Kids corner will remind your child to correct their posture, when their eyes are too close to the screen (i.e. less than 25 cm away), or if the Tablet detects that they are lying down.
Your child will get a reminder to move into better lighting if the Tablet detects that the environment is too bright (or too dark).
Maybe this is some option that would satisfy you.

Touch Screen and M-Pen Lite Stylus

The MediaPad M5 Lite’s touch screen offers accurate touch reception. As I tapped around the Android interface and Chrome, I noticed that the tablet responded to my touches correctly, though the responses became a bit slow when the slate was taxed to its limits.

The included M-Pen Lite stylus is good, for an included accessory, offering a solid feel for drawing on the glass. Doodling in Autodesk Sketchbook, I noticed smooth input; however, there was a slight lag that was acceptable at first but became more pronounced when I increased the width of my digital lines.

I only wish the stylus charged via USB Type-C like the pen that Huawei includes with the M5 Pro, instead of requiring AAAA batteries, which you can’t find in most brick-and-mortar stores. Have fun telling Junior that his pen won’t work until an Amazon package arrives.

Audio

Get ready for a lot of sound. The Huawei MediaPad M5’s quad-speaker array blasts a lot of volume, enough to fill a large bedroom — or disrupt many people’s work in an open office, as I accidentally discovered.

But as I listened to a medley of music on the slate, I noticed that its sound is very top-heavy, without much low end, so it removed the bass on Arctic Monkeys’ “Do I Wanna Know?” This means you’ll hear high-pitched vocals and synths loud and clear while the drums get reduced to mere cymbals.

Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet performance review

I saw the reason for the Lite in the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite’s name when I put the machine’s Kirin 659 processor and 3GB of RAM to the test. While this machine is meant for kids who may have lower demands for processing power, I encountered difficulties, as I saw the slate pause more often than not. When I split my screen between a 1080p YouTube video and half a dozen Chrome tabs, I noticed that the tablet often spent a moment refreshing tabs when I switched between them, and it lagged even more when I dragged the split-screen divider to re-size the video.

On the Geekbench 4 general-performance test, the MediaPad M5 Lite scored a mediocre 3,845, which is less than the 4,290 category average. We saw higher scores of 5,983 from the iPad (Apple A10 Fusion) and 4,097 from the Tab 4 10 Plus (Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 with 2GB of memory), and we saw a lower 2,916 from the Fire HD 10 (MediaTek Quad-core CPU with 2GB of RAM).

Over on the 3DMark Ice Storm unlimited graphics test, the M5 Lite notched a 11,746, which is less than the 20,537 tablet average. We saw slightly better scores from the Tab 4 10 Plus (13,801) and the Fire HD 10 (13,435), while the iPad boasted a much higher 37,117.

A sad story played out when I tried to run PUBG Mobile on the MediaPad M5 Lite. Not only did the game automatically select the Low graphics setting, based on the tablet’s specs, but it also looked bad. It stuttered out of the gate, in the basic entry-level, nothing’s-happening-yet mode. As Tom’s Guide staff writer Adam Ismail said, “It looks like a PS2 game.”

Android Oreo & EMUI – Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite – 10.1 android 8.0 tablet software review

The MediaPad M5 Lite 10 is shipped with Android 8.0 Oreo. Well, that is good, but it is very unlikely that it will ever get an update to Android 9.0 Pie. I might be wrong of course, but based on the past, it is very unlikely. Huawei has to get better with updates.

But alright. On top of Android 8.0 Oreo runs the EMUI in version 8.0. It is exactly the same interface we got with previous tablets from Huawei. Even their smartphones have almost the same UI and features. For my taste, the UI is a bit overloaded though.

As usual, we don’t get an app drawer out of the box but you can activate it in the settings. I also am not a big fan of the pre-installed SwiftKey keyboard on tablets. But again, you can just replace it. You have to active those gestures for the fingerprint scanner in the settings too.

As you can see, there really is a lot to customize here. My advice with Huawei tablets is always to go through all the settings once. Chances are that if you don’t like something, you can probably change it in the settings.

In addition to that, there are also a lot of pre-installed apps. You can uninstall a lot of them but not all.

So I think Android 8.0 Oreo and the EMUI are fine but not perfect. Personally, I prefer vanilla Android or the UI from Samsung or Lenovo. But, as I said, you can customize a lot here anyway. At least everything runs smoothly.

Webcam

Taking the MediaPad M5 Lite outside for a coffee break, I found that its cameras have the same issue as most tablet cameras: extreme sensitivity to light, which leads to blown-out photos.

Shooting a selfie with the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite’s 8MP, front-facing camera, I saw acceptable detail in my face and hat, including the stubble of the former and the stitching of the latter. Everything in the background, however, looked extremely blurry.

You can get decent photos from the tablet, provided you’re in exceptionally well-lit areas indoors. So while I got delectable-looking photos of sugary treats at the nearby Whole Foods’ pastry counter, life doesn’t take place in perfect lighting.

Battery Life

The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is one of the longest-lasting tablets we’ve ever seen, surviving 13 hours and 13 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test (web surfing at 150 nits). That’s 3 hours longer than the 9:50 category average and similarly longer than the times from the iPad (10:07) and Fire HD 10 (9:04). The Lenovo Tab 4 10 Plus (13:06) posted a similarly long time.

Communication and GPS – Huawei tablet with LTE

Our test version of the MediaPad M5 lite is equipped with a modem that supports GSM, 3G and LTE networks. The category 6 LTE connection allows for download rates of up to 300 Mb/s and upload rates of up to 50 Mb/s. Huawei’s telephone app is also installed on the tablet and with a suitable SIM card the device can also be used for making phone calls. This also works without a headset.

At close range, users can connect their tablet via Bluetooth 4.2 or the integrated Wi-Fi adapter, which supports the standards a, b, g, n and ac (both 2.4 and 5 GHz networks). In our tests, the MediaPad M5 lite only reaches subpar transfer rates, which are below the results of our comparison devices.

The app “GPS test” is used to control how well the MediaPad M5 lite can position itself, using GPS, A-GPS, Beidou or GLONASS. Outdoors, the device can locate itself within five meters, but it is not able to locate itself indoors.

We tested the MediaPad M5 lite in comparison with our reference device Garmin Edge 520. The result was that the Huawei tablet can record long, straight routes very well. It has more difficulties in curves or when the direction changes constantly. In this case, only the basic direction is recorded, and we are often located beside the paths. The M5 lite is therefore only suitable for very simple navigation needs.

Editor’s recommendations

• Razer Blade 15 Advanced 2020 review – is it good for gaming?
• Huawei MateBook D 14 laptop 2020 review and RAM upgrade
• Surface Pro 3 vs iPad Pro drawing 2020 – is it worth buying?
• Microsoft Surface Book 3 vs Dell XPS 15 – are they good for gaming?
• How much is Apple 2018 13.3 in MacBook Air 13.3 price in USA?