In addition to announcing the Enjoy 9S and 9e smartphones, Huawei also announced a new tablet in China, a new edition of the MediaPad M5 Lite. A 10.1-inch MediaPad M5 Lite was introduced back in October, and this new variant not only comes with an 8-inch display, but it’s also quite an improvement over the previous model. This is a budget tablet, but considering that we don’t really see many tablets being announced lately, it’s definitely something to note.
In terms of the design, this tablet is nothing to write home about, though it looks rather nice. Bezels are not too thick for a tablet, but are thick enough that you can grip it properly. Huawei’s branding is present below the phone’s display, and the display itself does not have rounded corners.
A single camera is placed on the back of the device, in its top-left corner, while this tablet’s front-facing camera is centered above the display. The MediaPad M5 Lite actually comes with two speakers, and both of them are placed on the back of the device, well, somewhere in-between back and top / bottom, as both of them are located on the curved part of the MediaPad M5 Lite’s body.
The power / lock, volume up, and volume down buttons are placed on the right-hand side of the device, while Huawei’s logo also sits on the back of this tablet. The aforementioned speakers and sound in general are Harman Kardon certified, which is always good to hear, especially when it comes to budget products. This device also supports Huawei Histen sound effects.
In terms of specs, this tablet is not exactly a slouch, it is fueled by the Kirin 710, which is one of Huawei’s most powerful mid-range processors. This is a 64-bit octa-core processor, and it is clocked at 2.2GHz in this case.
The device ships with 3GB / 4GB of RAM and 32GB / 64GB of expandable storage. The Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite features an 8-inch fullHD (1920 x 1080) display with a 2.5D curved glass on top of it.
Android 9 Pie comes pre-installed on this tablet, along with Huawei’s Emotion UI (EMUI) 9.0 skin. A 5,100mAh battery is also included in the package, and the device also comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
A 13-megapixel camera (f/2.2 aperture) sits on the back of the MediaPad M5 Lite, while an 8-megapixel unit (f/2.0 aperture) can be found on the device’s front side. The device has been announced in Dark Gray and Champagne Gold color variants, and will go on sale today in China, while it will probably hit more markets in the near future. We’re still not sure which markets will get it exactly, but chances are it will roll out to either India or Europe, if not both, we’ll have to wait for more info.
Huawei has actually announced four different variants of this tablet, two Wi-Fi only, and two Wi-Fi + 4G units. The most affordable model comes with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, while it supports Wi-Fi only, and it costs 1,199 Yuan ($178). The 4GB RAM variant with 64GB of storage and Wi-Fi only support will set you back 1,399 Yuan ($208). Those very same RAM and storage variants were announced with 4G support as well, and the price of those 3GB and 4GB RAM variants is 1,499 Yuan ($223) and 1,599 Yuan ($238), respectively.
