Huawei MediaPad M5 8.4

Published on 28 Feb 2019 1 min reading time Categories: Tablets

There’s an all-new design for the M5, and it no longer looks exactly like an scaled up Huawei Mate phone. There are still plenty of similarities though, including the aluminium unibody and great build quality.

Gone is the stripe at the top of the rear, replaced by an antenna line which hugs the edges.

MediaPad M5 8.4 review

The lozenge-shaped fingerprint scanner stays below the screen on the front, though, and it works well.

The MediaPad M5 comes in two colours - Champagne Gold and Space Grey – and brings everything up to date by replacing the microUSB port with a reversible USB-C port.

Unfortunately, as with many recent phones, the MediaPad M5 ditches the traditional headphone jack and bundles an adapter in the box so you don’t have to use USB-C headphones. It isn’t a deal-breaker but it’s frustrating considering the decision to remove the jack wasn’t because of waterproofing (there is none) or a lack of space.

Plus, the little USB-C to 3.5mm adapters are annoying, as they’re too easily lost or left behind.

As mentioned, there’s a nano-SIM slot for LTE so you can pop in a data SIM and get online when out of Wi-Fi range. If you need to, you can even insert a phone SIM (as opposed to data-only) and use the MediaPad like a giant phone.

However, that’s only on the SHT-AL09 model. There’s a Wi-Fi only version (model SHT-W09)and it’s unclear which regions will get which version.

What we do know is that the tablet will come in 32, 64 and 128GB versions, and all have a generous 4GB of RAM. They also have a microSD slot for adding up to 256GB of extra storage.