Having an office setup at home has become quite common in the last 6-8 months. And Huawei’s latest product lineup tries to help you do exactly that. It features the MateView, MatePad 12.6 and MateBook X Pro. But how do each of these perform?

Huawei MatePad 12.6

The MatePad Pro 12.6 is a tablet available at Dh3,399. HarmonyOS 2 runs the show and its a nice familiar experience. You’ve got a dock at the bottom and little options to arrange the user interface like switching between small and large folders. Notifications are accessed by swiping from the left edge whereas all your controls are on the right. The 12.6-inch size of the OLED display also hits a sweet spot. Its bright and lets you take full advantage of content, at 2,560 x 1,600 resolution. Again, having multiple applications open, different windows and just general multitasking is thanks to Huawei’s software.

HarmonyOS 2 is great for that but its limitation to not be able to use Google services is crucial. To counter this, Huawei’s done something smart. The software features Petal Search, which alongside AppGallery helps you find your favourite applications. But its not as intuitive as you might t hink. Searching for applications is easy and about 60 per-cent of the time, you will find the application you are looking for. But even if you do, the install process is a bit complex if you do not have experience side-loading applications in the past.

Otherwise, relying on AppGallery allows you to find native applications. This includes a lot of local choices and some popular ones like Snapchat or TikTok. Sometimes, even Google applications such as Keep show up here but when you click to download them, the tablet runs into an error.

Something else to not is software optimisation. Often times, the applications you have downloaded do not take up the whole display. This means you have bars to the side which can dent user experience to some degree. But other than that, the responsiveness thanks to the Kirin 9000E chip and 8GB of RAM is great. You’ll get 256GB of on-board storage, which can be doubled using Huawei’s NM card solution.

Huawei MateBook X Pro

Away from Harmony OS 2, you find a typical laptop experience with the MateBook X Pro. It sports an aluminium chassis and stands out for its size and weight. Given that it aims to be a companion laptop during commute, it skimps out a bit on port selection with only two Type-C USB ports, a 3.5mm jack and a Type-A USB port but inside, you will find an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 1165G7 chip. This delivers a great performance package although its not ideal when it comes to chassis temperatures. The MateBook X Pro heats up quite a bit especially on its underside.

Up front, the star of the show is a 13.9-inch LTPS display. This is uniform and pairs well given the touchscreen support of the machine. You find 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage here too. However, we felt that while the keyboard was satisfactory, the trackpad on the laptop felt mushy.

The beauty of having a laptop and a tablet from Huawei is that they can cross collaborate. Being able to interact with Windows and HarmonyOS 2 so seamlessly is great. The wireless experience is good with a hint of latency when moving your cursor but we wouldn’t say it is bad for casual video watching or typing.

Huawei MateView

The Huawei MateView is its entry into the smart monitor lineup, with a 28.2-inch 3:2 4K+ IPS display. It has a rich selection of ports, and hooking up your PC to the monitor is straight-forward. Having that 3:2 ratio allows for some great vertical space so if you’re scrolling web-pages or feeds, this is ideal. But programs that rely on landscape use, things like video editing for instance will feel a bit cramped up.

Multimedia looks pretty good, but of course, you’ll have to adjust to those black bars on the top and bottom. We also noticed that the panel wasn’t as uniform as it could be, with brightness higher towards the centre than the edges. Something that is unique to the monitor is the Smart Bar. We feel some things like navigation are just done faster with a typical joystick that you would find on monitors. But for fine tune control, the Smart Bar helps especially when you are sliding across to choose options or adjust brightness.

The monitor also brings in support for wireless connectivity. Although, you’ll have to keep the latency in mind, its a bit higher than between the MatePad 12.6 and MateBook. More so, the 3:2 ratio of the MateView with a 16:9 ratio of the MatePad 12.6 means you willll have some black bars on the top and bottom.

Conclusion

Looking at Huawei’s lineup from an overall perspective, there is definitely value to be had. Each device caters towards a different working style and of the three, we have particularly enjoyed the MatePad Pro 12.6. Huawei also has a bunch of bundle options available on its website and we think the bundle with the MatePad Pro 12.6 and the MateView is the most stand-out in terms of value and the features you will be able to take advantage of.