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Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: two-minute review
The Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 is a mid-range tablet with a bright, paper-like PaperMatte display, a solid chipset, and a seriously capacious battery. It has all the makings of a great tablet, right up until you come up against its fundamental flaw.
Let’s put a pin in that for now. The display is seriously impressive, capable of exquisitely detailed images with its 280 ppi pixel density. It’s also wonderfully bright, hitting a peak brightness of 1000 nits, and has impressive color reproduction that rendered the nature videos I watched with wonderfully punchy hues.
Pretty much the only criticism I have of the screen is that it’s a little too easy to scuff. After a few sketching sessions with the Huawei M-Pencil Pro (sold separately), the display had a few light scrapes across it, something I’ve not experienced when using the best tablets on the market.
The efficiency of the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025’s Kirin T92B Octa-core processor and 12GB RAM can also be genuinely spectacular. While taking part in PUBG Mobile at max settings, I didn’t detect a touch of body charge drops or latency, making it simple to take out my opponents. Meanwhile, regardless of what number of simultaneous apps I used to be working or tabs I opened, the pill by no means appeared to expertise any slowdown.
If you fancy prolonged gaming classes or need to work on the go, the MatePad 12X 2025 gives a beneficiant battery capability of 10,100mAh. In apply, that was sufficient to stream 2.5K movies for nearly 9 hours straight, which means it’s best to have loads of battery for a medium-haul flight or a full working day. And topping it up took hardly any time in any respect, because of its 66W charging – it’s best to have the ability to go from 0% to 100% in round 75 minutes, which is incredible.
Perhaps much less thrilling is the MatePad 12X 2025’s design. While it’s razor skinny at 5.9mm and really comfy to carry, it would not have probably the most adventurous styling, and it may very well be fabricated from barely extra premium-feeling supplies than its matte plastic. Both the included keyboard case and the M-Pencil Pro are properly put collectively, although, with an ergonomic design and sturdy construct.
Unfortunately, it’s time to return to that concern we put a pin in earlier. With ongoing restrictions round entry to US-based apps, there’s an actual paucity of apps accessible on Huawei’s gadgets. Much of the software program you’ll need to use each day, from Netflix to Google Docs, merely isn’t accessible, actually decreasing the MatePad’s precise utility. In mild of this, it is onerous to suggest the pill, even with some wonderful first-party apps like its GoPaint drawing app.
I’d love to have the ability to give the MatePad 12X 2025 a glowing suggestion, because it has some actual strengths. But the dearth of mainstream apps accessible on Huawei’s pill places it at an actual drawback in comparison with different gadgets. Fundamentally, you’ll be higher off contemplating one of many best Android tablets as a substitute.
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: specs
|
OS |
HarmonyOS 4.3 |
|
Chipset |
Kirin T92B, Octa-core |
|
RAM |
12GB |
|
Storage |
256GB |
|
Display |
12-inch IPS (2800 x 1840) |
|
Weight |
555g |
|
Battery |
10,100mAh |
|
Charging |
66W wired |
|
Cameras |
50MP rear, 8MP front |
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: price and availability
- Released September 19, 2025
- Costs £499
- Includes keyboard case but stylus is extra £39.99
Launched on September 19, 2025, the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 is available now in the UK. While its initial list price was £599, it’s already seeing reductions, with Huawei selling it direct for £499.
Unlike the Huawei MatePad 11.5 released in August 2025, the MatePad 12X 2025 includes Huawei’s keyboard case in the box, which is definitely a nice extra to have. Not included as standard is Huawei’s M-Pencil Pro, but if you buy it along with the tablet, it’ll cost you just £39.99, rather than its £129.99 list price, making it a bit of a bargain.
In terms of colorways, you get just two options: the mint green that we tested here and white.
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: display
- Crisp, 280 ppi resolution
- Seriously bright
- Gets marked easily
I have to say that, for a mid-market tablet, the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025’s display is pretty impressive. Its resolution can give the iPad Pro a run for its cash: packing 2800 x 1840 pixels throughout its 12-inch display, it’s able to a 280 ppi pixel density, whereas Apple’s largest high-end pill sits at 2752 x 2064 and 264 ppi. So whereas 4K movies didn’t look fairly as crisp as on my TCL C8K TV, I used to be nonetheless pleasantly shocked by how a lot element the 12X might reveal.
The sheer brightness of Huawei’s slate additionally made an impression on me. While its 1000-nit peak brightness can’t fairly rival the iPad Pro’s 1600 nits, it leaves the iPad 11-inch (2025) fairly actually within the shade with a brightness of simply 500 nits. Putting the display via its paces with some 4K BBC Earth movies on YouTube, I discovered it’s additionally able to fairly punchy distinction and first rate coloration replica. It may not be fairly as lush and daring because the OLED shows of some slates lately, nevertheless it’s a looker nonetheless.
It’s actually helped on this regard by Huawei’s PaperMatte display tech. During most of my testing, I used to be utilizing the MatePad 12X below vibrant, synthetic lighting, and this factor simply gulped down direct mild, which means I not often needed to fear about reflections marring my expertise.
On prime of this, the PaperMatte show’s etched glass was a deal with to work together with, giving the display a pleasingly tactile really feel. It doesn’t really feel fairly as sensible to write down and sketch on with Huawei’s M-Pencil stylus as devoted writing tablets just like the Kindle Scribe or ReMarkable – the nib slips greater than I’ve skilled with these rival slates – however I nonetheless discovered it nice sufficient to sketch on. And at the least this smoothness prevented the stylus from catching an excessive amount of.
Really, my solely criticism of the MatePad 12X’s show is how simple it’s to mark. I’ve solely used it for a few sketches up to now, and there’s already a pronounced pen scuff seen on the display when it’s powered down. These sorts of marks might simply construct up over time, so in case you had been to purchase the MatePad 12X, a display protector can be a sensible funding.
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: design
- Just 5.9mm thick
- Solidly built
- Not the most adventurous design
When it comes to its design, the Huawei MatePad 12X is inoffensive, almost to a fault. There’s nothing wrong with its matte plastic body or its two colorways – White and the mint-colored Greenery – per se, but a metallic build might have helped it feel just a touch more premium.
Fortunately, it is well put together, feeling substantial and sturdy enough in your hand while being light enough to hold easily. In fact, while it’s a shade heavier than the iPad 11-inch (2025), weighing in at 555g to 481g for Apple’s cellular model, it’s a little slimmer at the same time, measuring 5.9mm in depth rather than 7mm.
Huawei is reinventing the wheel here, but the MatePad 12X’s case is well designed. It follows the common mold of combining case, keyboard and stand all in one, but is flexible enough to suit every situation I was using it for. And its keys are pleasant to type on. Naturally, they don’t have the satisfying thunk of deeper travel keys, but at least they offer enough feedback that I never found touch typing on them to be a challenge.
One small oversight here compared to rivals like the iPad 11-inch (2025) or Microsoft Surface Pro 12 (2025) is that the case doesn’t embody a trackpad. While I’d usually class this as a ‘nice to have’, you’ll in all probability solely miss it if you need to crank via a whole lot of productiveness {and professional} makes use of. And right here the Huawei MatePad 12X has a lot greater points that dwarf the dearth of a mouse enter.
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: software
- Excellent first-party apps
- Too few familiar apps available
- Some unnecessary bloatware
Look. We all knew we’d have to have ‘the talk’ at some point. Most of you will be aware of the big challenge facing Huawei tablets by now, given they’ve been ongoing for over three years at this point. But it’s almost impossible to review Huawei devices objectively without bringing it up.
As a result of the Federal Communications Commission’s ban on Huawei in November 2022, many US-based brands no longer provide access to their apps on Huawei devices. Most notably, that includes the Google Play Store and full Google Suite, nevertheless it additionally impacts the overwhelming majority of apps you’ll be used to utilizing.
Browsing the Huawei AppGallery, virtually all of my go-to apps are absent. Spotify? Gone. Netflix? Gone. Facebook? Gone. Amazon? Gone. None of them can be found as direct downloads. Although some are accessible as third-party APKs, this exposes you to potential safety dangers that downloading them immediately wouldn’t. Sure, the odd app like Uber will fireplace up a browser model so you’ll be able to nonetheless ebook a trip, however you’re nonetheless shedding all of the comfort that having an app put in in your desktop gives.
Inevitably, this additionally has a big influence on the video games which can be accessible on the MatePad 12X. I in all probability spend extra of my life taking part in cell video games than is strictly good for me, and but, except for PUBG Mobile and Candy Crush Saga, I barely acknowledged any of the opposite video games on the Huawei AppGallery. The few I had heard of had been these video games you see marketed on-line with adverts that don’t remotely mirror the gameplay, which didn’t fill me with confidence about digging via the charts at random.
What’s irritating about that is that it is solely out of Huawei’s management and, in actual fact, the apps it does management are well-made and supply nice options. For instance, Huawei’s GoPaint app is a fairly nice drawing app for one thing simply bundled in with an operating system, feeling loads like if ProCreate got here preinstalled in your iPad. It’s full of brushes and mixing choices, and I had no finish of enjoyable whipping up watercolor-style footage on it.
Likewise, Huawei’s Notes app is severely versatile. I might rapidly create notebooks with each template I would want, from musical staves to SWOT evaluation charts. Its handwriting-to-text function isn’t flawless, however given the chicken-scratch I produce any time I scribble by hand, it did a fairly commendable job.
Not each app that comes put in on the MatePad 12X feels this important, although; there’s nonetheless a whole lot of bloatware on this pill. I’m positively over manufacturers making an attempt to cram icons onto the homescreen simply to make their gadgets really feel full-featured. Even when, as right here, many are simply advised downloads quite than recordsdata taking over area, it’s fairly annoying to have your display full of junk you’re not desirous about.
Ultimately, software program continues to be Huawei’s Achilles’ heel. Despite some vibrant spots, there’s simply not sufficient big-name apps on the MatePad 12X for me to shake the sensation that I’m lacking out on all of the enjoyable different persons are having on their tablets.
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: performance
- Decent chipset and RAM
- Handles multitasking without any slow down
- Games show no FPS drops or lag
The real shame about this lack of software is that, beneath the hood, the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 has some pretty decent power. Not only does it rock a Kirin T92B Octa-core processor, but it also packs 12GB RAM, the same amount of memory as our pick for the Best Android tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 Plus. But what does this all imply in the true world?
Well, first, I needed to see the way it fared with a variety of productiveness duties. This wasn’t simple with out full entry to Google’s famously memory-hungry internet apps, however I attempted to open as many background duties as doable. First, I loaded a few video games and a few apps earlier than opening the browser, the place I opened a variety of tabs, together with Shein and Asos, a number of Reddit threads, a information web site, and a 4K YouTube video. Once I began sketching in a free on-line photo-editing instrument, I used to be happy to see there wasn’t any vital slowdown.
Broadly talking, the identical appears to be true of video games. Loading up PUBG Mobile and setting the graphics settings to most, I didn’t discover any vital FPS drops; each second remained clean and jitter-free. Meanwhile, there was no trace of lag or latency, making it simple for me to get the drop on most opponents I got here throughout earlier than they acquired me.
Using the Huawei M-Pencil Pro for numerous duties, it turned clear that it’s properly value the additional spend. It was at all times comfy and simply manoeuvrable in my hand, and by no means so mild that it felt flimsy or insubstantial. While sketching on apps just like the GoPaint app, it was tremendous responsive – there was no noticeable jitter or lag, and no apparent parallax between the stylus nib and the brushstrokes it created.
Probably the one space the place the MatePad 12X 2025’s efficiency is a bit more combined is its digital camera. It’s crisp and captures loads of element, however not fairly as a lot as I’d anticipate from its 50MP lens. And whereas it’s not likely honest evaluating it to the iPhone 16 Pro I’m used to capturing on, I did really feel a number of the pictures had been missing within the HDR pop I’ve come to anticipate. Ultimately, it’s not a nasty digital camera, however as with every pill, I doubt it’s going to change into your go-to snapper.
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: battery
- Huge 10,100mAh battery capacity
- Seriously fast 66W wired charging
- Can stream almost nine hours of 2.5K video
Huawei certainly hasn’t skimped on the battery in the MatePad 12X 2025. At 10,100mAh, it’s not quite as epic as the OnePlus Pad 3, with its 12,140mAh, but is pretty capacious all the same.
Trying to get a sense of how long it would last when really pushed, I set the MatePad 12X 2025 to stream continuous 2.5K videos and measured how much it depleted the battery. After seven hours, the battery had dropped down to 20%, suggesting that you should get around nine hours of continuous high-quality streaming from one charge. This is pretty competitive and not far off the 10 hours the iPad 11-inch (2025) offers.
Even better, topping it up is incredibly fast. Using a 100W charger – which is plenty to hit the Huawei’s 66W max – I popped the Huawei on to charge for an hour. In that time, it charged 78%, meaning you can expect it to be fully charged after around an hour and 15 minutes – that’s a truly absurd charging time, given its enormous capacity.
All in all, this means you’ll get a lot of use out of the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 before it falls flat, and you won’t have to wait long for it to spring back to life afterwards.
Should I buy the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025?
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|---|---|---|
|
Display |
Bright, low-reflection screen with impressive pixel density. Colors and contrast are great, although some OLED screens pop more. |
4 / 5 |
|
Design |
Relatively unadventurous style but well-made, with a great keyboard case. |
3.5 / 5 |
|
Software |
Huawei’s first-party software is decent, but the lack of well-known third-party apps available make it hard to recommend. |
2.5 / 5 |
|
Performance |
Impressive performance, with its octa-core processor and 12GB RAM. Makes short work of multitasking and gaming alike. |
4 / 5 |
| Row 4 – Cell 0 | Row 4 – Cell 1 | Row 4 – Cell 2 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 review: also consider
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 |
OnePlus Pad 3 |
iPad Air (2025) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
OS |
HarmonyOS 4.3 |
OxygenOS 15 |
iPadOS 26 |
|
Chipset |
Kirin T92B, Octa-core |
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite |
Apple M3 |
|
RAM |
12GB |
12GB/16GB |
8GB |
|
Storage |
256GB |
256GB/512GB |
128GB/256GB/512GB/1TB |
|
Display |
12-inch IPS (2800 x 1840) |
13.2-inch 144Hz LCD (3392 x 2400) |
11-inch / 13-inch LED (2360 x 1640 / 2732 x 2048) |
|
Weight |
555g |
675g |
460g / 616g / 617g |
|
Battery |
10,100mAh |
12,140mAh |
28.93Wh / 36.59Wh |
|
Charging |
66W wired |
80W wired |
Not disclosed |
|
Cameras |
50MP rear, 8MP front |
13MP rear, 8MP front |
12MP wide rear, 12MP ultrawide front |
How I tested the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025
- Tested it over a week
- Completed multiple performance tests
- Ran battery draining and charging tests
I tested the Huawei MatePad 12X 2025 over the course of a week. To test out its software, I used all of its first-party productivity apps and multi-tasking features. I assessed the quality of its display by watching multiple 4K HDR videos and seeing how accurately it reproduced artwork in graphics apps.
To put it through its paces in terms of performance, I ran multiple apps simultaneously while opening a wide range of browser tabs, including video streaming and web apps, to see if I could detect any potential slowdown or performance issues. I also played multiple online games on max graphics settings to look for frame rate dropping and obvious lag.
When it comes to my personal experience, I’ve been testing and reviewing gadgets for many years. I’ve also spent a lot of my career using mobile devices and laptops for productivity purposes, and I’ve reviewed multiple graphics tablets, which has given me a lot of first-hand experience in assessing styluses and the color accuracy of displays.
- First reviewed: January 2026
- Read more about how we test