I can’t stop creating terrible artwork with my Huawei MatePad Pro Max

Huawei MatePad Pro Max review — (Image credit: Matt Kollat)

I went to Bangkok for the launch of the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro, a lovely (and rather capable) fitness tracker. To my surprise, the brand unveiled a whole range of new products I wasn't aware of, including a kids' smartwatch that seemed to captivate the journalists and content creators gathered.

Among these new products, one caught my eye for its remarkably slim, lightweight design and high-end specs. At just 4.7mm thick, Huawei claims the MatePad Pro Max is currently the world's thinnest 13-inch-plus tablet, with the standard model weighing only 499g.

The PaperMatte Edition I tested tips the scales at a mere 509g – impressively light for a tablet that's as big as my MacBook Air M1 (and weighs 1.29kg).

Thin enough to make you nervous

The tablet uses a full-metal unibody chassis and introduces Huawei's new Cloud Falcon Architecture, which the company says delivers up to 60% greater bend resistance than the previous-generation MatePad Pro 13.2-inch (I must confess, I didn't test this). That extra structural rigidity helps the device feel reassuringly solid despite its wafer-thin profile.

The blue version I used features what Huawei calls a luminous finish, created with a "nano-level coating" applied to the metal body (a very Huawei thing to say). The brand says this is the first time such a coating has been used on a tablet, producing subtle light-and-shadow effects across the rear panel as the device catches the light.

The MatePad Pro Max has a beautiful 13.2-inch Flexible OLED PaperMatte Display with 3K resolution, a 144Hz refresh rate and up to 1,600-nit peak brightness. The tablet boasts a 94% screen-to-body ratio, giving it an almost edge-to-edge appearance.

The PaperMatte panel uses a "high-precision nano-etching" process to reduce reflections while maintaining image clarity, and Huawei says the latest generation is 20% clearer than the previous PaperMatte display.

The display is worth dwelling on. Huawei's 13.2-inch Flexible OLED PaperMatte panel is one of the nicest screens I've used on any tablet. Videos look phenomenal, colours pop, and the anti-glare coating means it's perfectly usable outdoors, even in direct sunlight. I also spent a fair bit of time reading books and comics on it, and it comes surprisingly close to the experience of reading on paper.

The hardware package is rounded out by a 9,760mAh high-silicon anode battery, a six-speaker audio system, four microphones, and support for the Huawei M-Pencil Pro, which offers 10,000 levels of pressure sensitivity.

Combined with the optional Glide Keyboard, the tablet is clearly designed to blur the line between a traditional tablet and a lightweight productivity machine.

My brief and unsuccessful art career

Needless to say, I had to give the setup a try, as I always fancied myself an artist, even though I can't draw, play an instrument or do anything else that's worth anything artistically. Nevertheless, I have always adored people who make it look like creating artwork on an iPad with Procreate is a piece of cake. Getting my hands on the MatePad Pro Max felt like my ticket into this exclusive club.

Huawei has its own version of Procreate called GoPaint, which is free and offers what feels like a quadrillion tools to make art easier. There are sketching, painting, watercolour and oil painting options, and it includes features such as Intelligent Colour Card, which generates custom palettes from real-world photos, as well as Fluid Brush and Splatter Brush.

A camera built for creators

Speaking of photos, to make the Intelligent Colour Card feature work, Huawei has equipped the MatePad Pro Max with a new True-to-Colour Camera that's designed to capture colours as accurately as possible, providing a reliable foundation for artists like me to reproduce real-world scenes in GoPaint.

Now, I don't know about you, but walking around town and taking photos with a 13-inch tablet does make me feel like a pensioner. Nevertheless, if you're creating art, you won't care whether people are looking at you while you take photos with your MatePad Pro Max, as long as the end results look good.

Of course, if you have a Huawei phone, you can use that to take photos and send them over to your tablet. I don't, so I used the camera, which surprisingly can reach up to 10x magnification. Admittedly, zoomed-in photos in low light can look a little rough, but having access to up to 10x magnification on a tablet is impressive in itself.

A testament to the tablet's user-friendliness and the GoPaint app is that I often found myself doodling in the evenings instead of scrolling on my phone. Most of my artwork involved tracing photos and using the Intelligent Colour Card to recreate a colour palette similar to the original image, but I still felt like an artist. Below, you'll find a selection of some of my finest pieces (please contact me if you'd like to purchase any).

Image 1 of 7

Huawei MatePad Pro Max artwork — (Image credit: Matt Kollat)

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The software problem Huawei still can't solve

Moving beyond creating artwork, things get a bit more dicey. Huawei says it spends huge amounts of money on R&D, but even that can't replace third-party app support. This is fine for the brand's smartwatches and audio products, both of which work well with Android and Apple devices, but tablets, laptops and smartphones really suffer from the lack of software.

Huawei's own apps are thin on content and entertainment, and without other companies providing those, there is only so much you can do on the MatePad Pro Max. For example, news articles are coming from Taboola, and Huawei Books is full of titles I've never heard of. Neither YouTube nor Netflix currently offers a native Huawei tablet app through AppGallery. You can't access WhatsApp, either. The list goes on.

The lack of third-party app support might also affect artists. It's one thing to create artwork in GoPaint, but many creatives rely on Adobe's ecosystem as part of their workflow. The lack of native support for some of these tools creates friction that simply doesn't exist on an iPad.

For now, Huawei doesn't offer a viable alternative to many of the apps people are used to using, which makes it hard to recommend the MatePad Pro Max to anyone who doesn't like bending the rules a bit.

Even if you are, there is simply no way to create a full Android experience on the tablet. There are platforms that let you download Android apps to your Huawei tablet (for example, GBox), but even these have their limitations. Some apps refuse to run – or even download – on the virtual user GBox creates, which further limits the MatePad Pro Max's versatility.

Luckily, these workarounds bring the tablet much closer to the standard Android tablet experience. You can download Netflix via GBox, which lets you not only watch movies but also play games. You can also download and run apps such as Google Play Books, which pairs nicely with the tablet's paper-like display.

Of course, none of this is officially recommended by Huawei. As you can imagine, the company won't start telling people to use sideloaded software on their flagship tablet, but it certainly makes the overall experience much smoother.

Brilliant hardware, frustrating software

You can use the tablet without Android apps, of course, but even apps as brilliant as GoPaint or Huawei Notes won't replace the complete software ecosystem that other tablets enjoy. And in all honesty, Huawei alone won't be able to plug holes in its app offering as quickly as new apps appear. Even Apple and Google don't have the resources to do that.

All that said, I love the MatePad Pro Max. From a hardware perspective, it's one of the most impressive tablets I've used in years. The display is gorgeous, the design is astonishingly thin and light, and GoPaint genuinely made me want to spend less time scrolling and more time creating.

The problem is software. Without full native app support, Huawei is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. The company has built a tablet that can rival Apple's and Samsung's best hardware, but the ecosystem still isn't there.

That's a shame, because if hardware were the only thing that mattered, the MatePad Pro Max would be one of the easiest tablets to recommend.

One thing is for sure: I enjoy having the tablet with me and look forward to creating more terrible artwork in the future.

The MatePad Pro Max is available now at Huawei UK for £899 (RRP £999). The keyboard is an extra £200. If you buy the tablet now, you'll also get a free M-Pencil Pro (worth £129) and a 12-month Extended Warranty Service (worth £19.99).

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Matt Kollat is a journalist and content creator for T3.com and T3 Magazine, where he works as Active Editor. His areas of expertise include wearables, drones, action cameras, fitness equipment, nutrition and outdoor gear. He joined T3 in 2019.

His work has also appeared on TechRadar and Fit&Well, and he has collaborated with creators such as Garage Gym Reviews. Matt has served as a judge for multiple industry awards, including the ESSNAwards. When he isn’t running, cycling or testing new kit, he’s usually roaming the countryside with a camera or experimenting with new audio and video gear.