Huawei Matepad T10 – great value and kid-friendly features

Huawei has a long heritage of delivering affordable gear that packs surprising bang for buck value. The latest example of this is their MatePad T10. It retails for a super sharp $299 and has a reasonable spec considering its price. So, is it any good? What tasks is it best suited for? We’ve put in the hard yards so you can find out. Read on!

The MatePad T10 sports a sleek design, with its rear decked out in a cool deep-sea aquamarine blue, finished in matte with a semi-gloss accent. The top right corner houses a 5MP F/2.2 camera. Although the rear is matte, it was also a bit of a fingerprint magnet. This issue was easily resolved: I slapped a case on it.

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Around the front, There’s a 9.7-inch 1280 x 800 16:10 LCD display. Its bezels are a little chunky, but then at this price point, that’s to be expected. The bezel also houses a 2MP f/2.4 selfie camera. Power and volume buttons and twin microphones are located on the T10’s top, while its left-hand side is unadorned. A bonus feature and a pleasant surprise at this price point are stereo speakers, with one atop the T10, and the other on its underside (which also houses a USB Type-C port, headphone socket, and a SIM/microSD card tray).

The display is plenty bright for use both indoors and under direct sunlight. It was also reasonably colour accurate. Helping all things display related is an eye-comfort mode that warms up the colour temperature. The T10 might be aimed at price-conscious buyers, but Huawei has put some effort into its digitiser. It supports 10 simultaneous touches. In use, taps and swipes (etc)  were all responsive, registering quickly and accurately.

Sound-wise, the T10 acquitted itself well. While the speakers run loud without clipping, headphones hooked up via Bluetooth or the 3.5mm jack will be a better option for movies or music. Audio gets a helping hand thanks to the handily pre-installed Huawei Listen setup. It’s a headphone specific feature and adds a 3D sound effect and equalisation.

Flipping the T10 around reveals its 5MP f/2.2 main shooter. It’s a Huawei device, so it isn’t a huge surprise that the camera app has many different shooting modes. They are all self-explanatory and include Photo, Video, Beauty, Pro, HDR, and Panorama. The pro mode gives plenty of control over photo shooting. This comes in the form of an ISO adjustment (100-1600), touch to select the focus plane, shutter speed tweaks (0.5-1/4000), exposure EV (+-4), plus White Balance. The rear camera shot accurately coloured and properly exposed images with good sharpness/contrast levels. In low light, there was noticeable pixel noise and softness. This was also the case with the front shooter, which still captured video that was good enough for zoom calls.

Under the hood sits a 14nm Kirin 710A octa-core processor, Mali-G51, 2GB RAM, and 32GB of storage. The 14nm Kirin 710A octa-core processor is quick. Powering the show is a 5,100mAh battery. It kept the T10 running with a looped YouTube video test for 12 hours and 27 minutes, which isn’t too shabby. Although battery life is excellent, charge times can be up to five hours.

Being a Huawei device, Google mobile services are not installed. Instead, you get Huawei Mobile Services. In practice, this translates into using Petal search to find apps and any apps that require Google services won’t work. In use, Petal search did an admirable job of finding apps, and provided you can live with not being able to use the Google ecosystem, the lack of Google mobile services is no longer much of a hardship at all.

Last (but by no means least), there’s another handy feature that parents will appreciate. It’s a Kids mode. The user interface is transformed into a kid-friendly experience that uses largish cartoony and kid-friendly elements when enabled. It is also effectively a sandbox, so all your content/apps won’t be trashed by your kids having a play.

The T10 is sharply priced at a pocket pleasing $299. Considering its super affordable price point, you get a lot of tablet for not very much money at all. A fast Kirin 710A CPU, 32GB of storage, and a long-lasting battery make it a great deal for anyone on a tight budget.

https://consumer.huawei.com/nz/tablets/