Huawei kind of zipped by this one in its rush to unveil products at today's CES press kickoff event. Granted, it's not as flagshippy as, say, the Mate 8, but the MediaPad M2 is still a compelling product in a sea of samey Android tablets.
The device takes lessons learned from its little sibling, the M2 8.0, and applies them on a larger scale — after all, if you really want a media-centric tablet, it helps to do better than eight inches, right?
The tablet's yet another solidly-built device from Huawei. At first glance, it looks a fair bit like Samsung's 10-inch offerings. The model we took a look at had a shiny white bezel surrounding the display, which houses an ovular fingerprint reader/home button on the bottom.
The display itself clocks in at 1920 by 1200 pixels and looks plenty sharp playing back videos. As with the Mate 8, there's a snappy octa-core processor inside, and things moved along nicely. There's also a big, beefy active stylus — actually, the thing looks more like a magic marker than a stylus, really.
The real selling point here are all those four speakers, which are positioned along the top and bottom corners. It's a shame they're not front-facing — Huawei likely made the decision for aesthetic purposes. As it is now, the Harman/Kardon-drive grilles don't actually face the user — hopefully, Huawei will create a custom dock for the thing that will ensure that the sound isn't muffled.
They do get pretty loud, however, and manage to do so without sacrificing clarity — though we'll wait until we can play around with them outside of a crowded, noisy press event to really pass judgment on the things. It's also worth noting that the tablet vibrates quite a bit when playing music at loud volumes. It's not off-putting but could try your patience, should you find yourself watching a full-length movie with the sound cranked.
