Huawei’s MediaPad M5 Lite is a premium tablet for adults that can also be handed off to kids without any worries.
Huawei showed up to CES 2019 with something that a lot of other companies did not. That’s a tablet. Huawei debuted a “lite” model of its MediaPad M5 series that debuted at Mobile World Congress 2018 about 11 months ago. This was a surprise from Huawei, but a good surprise nonetheless.
With the MediaPad M5 Lite, Huawei is finally targeting the mid-range with its tablets. Not only with the specs, but also in terms of price. The MediaPad M5 Lite comes with a $299 price tag, which is a good “middle of the road” price for a tablet. These days, tablets are either super cheap (like Amazon’s Fire tablets), or pretty expensive, because they are looking to replace your laptop and they just can’t, yet. Huawei has hit a sweet spot with the MediaPad M5 Lite that is virtually untouched in the market right now.
It’s clear with the MediaPad M5 Lite that Huawei is targeting kids with this new tablet, and thus competing with Amazon’s line of Kids Edition tablets. Huawei has included a few features that are for kids, including Kid Mode. Within Kid Mode, there is a Kid Space, which essentially works like fencing around content you want your kid(s) to actually use. Kids won’t be able to leave an app and explore the rest of the tablet, without knowing the PIN number for the tablet. There is also Kid Zone which has a ton of apps that are suited for kids to use. One of the cool features here is that when your child puts their finger on the fingerprint sensor to unlock the tablet, it will recognize that it is a kid, and jump straight into Kid Mode. So even when you aren’t around, you won’t need to worry about them getting into apps and websites that you don’t want them using.
Huawei didn’t just put together a new tablet and launch it in the MediaPad M5 lineup, the “Lite” model actually shares a lot of the design characteristics as the 8.4 and 10.5-inch models announced last year. This includes the full-metal unibody, which gives the MediaPad M5 Lite a solid high-end look and feel when in the hand. Huawei also kept the quad speakers here, this way no matter how you are holding the device in your hands, you will still get some incredible sound out of this tablet. Speaking of sound, these speakers are all tuned by Harman Kardon, so you can expect some deep bass, as well as crystal clear mids and highs. Finally, the MediaPad M5 Lite is powered by a USB-C connection, so customers won’t need to hunt around for a micro USB cable to charge this one.
The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is worthy of our “Best Of CES 2019” award for many reasons, and that includes not giving up on the tablet market. Tablets haven’t done too well in the past few years, leaving many manufacturers to ditch tablets and just focus on smartphones. But Huawei hasn’t given up, and besides Amazon, it is the only company releasing a tablet under $300. The main competitor to the MediaPad M5 Lite is going to be Amazon’s tablets, and Huawei does definitely beat Amazon’s offerings on many levels. And this is why the Best Of CES 2019 award belongs to the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite.