The Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 is now official in the Philippines, and it’s making quite a statement right out of the gate.

Coming in at P49,999, or roughly $885 converted, this isn’t a tablet you buy on a whim. But much like its impressive 13.2-inch sibling that we praised earlier this year, this new model truly echoes that high-end feel. You get a sleek metal frame, that distinctive circular camera module, and a stunning, edge-to-edge OLED display. Beyond just looking good, Huawei is clearly aiming for “PC-level productivity” here, bundling in fantastic NearLink accessories and a HarmonyOS experience that seems more optimized for tablets than ever before.

The question then isn’t just about what this device offers, but whether its blend of design excellence, promising productivity features, and a Google-less experience ultimately justifies its premium price tag. Let’s find out.

Design and display excellence

Back in February, we praised the Huawei MatePad 13.2-inch 2025 as a top-tier tablet in terms of its build and design. Now, the new Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch arrives, echoing that luxury aesthetic with its familiar circular camera module, sleek metal frame, and expansive, narrow-bezel OLED display.

Huawei’s reputation for crafting top-tier mobile devices really shines here. The latest MatePad boasts an impressive build quality that feels every bit as robust as you’d expect from the brand. There’s pretty much zero flex in the chassis, and the subtly rounded edges contribute to a remarkably comfortable and premium in-hand feel. Meanwhile, unlocking the tablet is as quick and effortless as a tap, thanks to a side-mounted fingerprint sensor integrated right into the power button.

And despite its substantial 12.2-inch display — only slightly smaller than its 13.2-inch sibling — this model is astoundingly slim at just 5.5mm and surprisingly light. Tipping the scales at a mere 512 grams for the tablet itself, or 928 grams with the company’s Glide Keyboard cover attached, it makes a typical 1- to 2-kilogram 13-inch laptop feel like a brick. Good luck finding a laptop replacement that’s as portable as the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025, especially once you factor in the keyboard’s weight.

Another standout feature is the audio system. The MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 is equipped with four speakers, finely tuned by Huawei Sound, alongside four microphones. The speaker output is nothing short of excellent; they can reach impressively high volumes, easily filling a decent-sized room without succumbing to muddiness or distortion. The vocal clarity is particularly noteworthy, suggesting the brand has optimized the sound profile for dialogue-heavy content like movies, TV shows, and YouTube videos.

With four integrated microphones, audio pickup is superb, and the noise cancellation proves quite effective. This is a boon for users who frequently rely on their tablets for video calls. Whether you’re in a bustling coffee shop, a noisy restaurant, or even a park where wind and traffic can be distracting, the latest MatePad Pro 12.2-inch should keep your conversations clear.

However, the OLED screen is where the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 truly distinguishes itself. This is, hands down, one of the best panels available in a tablet form factor, especially considering its size, anti-glare properties, and the delightful matte finish. The picture quality is simply stellar. Huawei dubs it the “Ultra-bright Tandem OLED PaperMatte Display,” and we concur that it represents some of the best display technologies in the industry right now.

The company says this panel uses a unique Tandem OLED architecture, allowing for significantly higher brightness output — an official rating of 2,000 nits. This comfortably surpasses the already-impressive 1,600 nits of the current-generation Apple iPad Pro. Furthermore, its nano-level etching technology creates an anti-glare and anti-reflection coating, a feature we found incredibly useful when battling tricky indoor lighting in a cafe.

The 144Hz maximum refresh rate, meanwhile, delivers a silky-smooth and responsive experience, though it feels a bit overkill for everyday usage. To conserve battery life without sacrificing much fluidity, we recommend setting it to 120Hz or using the default auto setting. With a sharp 2.8K resolution, the display is perfectly suited for a wide array of tablet tasks. From casual web browsing and social media scrolling to crafting spreadsheets, presentations — or “decks,” as they’re now called — and, of course, gaming, everything looks crisp. The 3:2 aspect ratio is a welcome return to form, providing more vertical screen real estate for content and reducing the need for constant scrolling. Just take note that this aspect ratio isn’t optimized for wide-format video playback, which dominates most modern media.

On a related note, this tablet isn’t optimized for streaming services like Netflix that rely on Google’s Widevine DRM protection. As you might expect, the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 lacks out-of-the-box access to Google Play and its associated services. Consequently, it doesn’t support Widevine certification for streaming HD content on platforms like Netflix, nor can it cast to Chromecast and Google TV devices. While we successfully sideloaded a Netflix APK onto our review unit, the streaming quality was unfortunately capped at SD quality (480p).

Similarly, YouTube also proved installable, but its resolution was capped at 1080p with a maximum of 60 frames per second. That said, if streaming high-definition videos from platforms protected by Google’s Widevine DRM certification is a priority for you, this device might not be the ideal choice.

Can it replace your laptop?

Beyond the impressive hardware, the MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 aims for nothing less than PC-level productivity. Huawei positions this tablet as a truly competent laptop replacement, a claim that gains significant traction when you factor in the included Huawei Glide Keyboard and third-gen Huawei M-Pencil stylus. Both accessories leverage the new NearLink standard, which we particularly appreciate for its promises of faster speeds, lower latency, better power efficiency, broader compatibility, and more reliable connections compared to Bluetooth. For those getting the tablet early, both of these essential accessories come standard.

We’re already familiar with Huawei’s M-Pencil, a comfortable stylus boasting 10,000+ pressure-sensing levels to deliver accurate performance whether you’re jotting notes, sketching, or painting. It supports wireless charging and pairing, and a simple double-tap gesture on the stylus body allows for seamless switching between brush and eraser in supported apps like Huawei Notes.

You can magnetically attach the stylus to the MatePad Pro 12.2-inch itself, or if you’re using the Glide Keyboard, conveniently stow it in the keyboard case’s dedicated slot for charging and easy access whenever inspiration strikes.

@revuphilippines The HUAWEI MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025, the newest addition to the #HUAWEIMatePad lineup, is now available for preorder in the Philippines! Early birds will receive a free bundle valued at P28,895 (roughly $511). Is this #3in1TabletPC for you? Find out in our review, now up on #RevuDotComDotPH ♬ original sound – Revu Philippines

In action

The keyboard case itself is a fantastic accessory — one we’d wholeheartedly recommend purchasing separately if it weren’t already bundled. Its exterior features a smooth, water- and oil-resistant texture, all while maintaining a slim and lightweight profile. The keyboard offers large keycaps for comfortable typing and surprisingly decent key travel for such a thin form factor.

Huawei has also packed in over 40 keyboard shortcut combinations and an all-new HarmonyOS smart key, enabling familiar laptop functions like taking screenshots or switching tabs without ever touching the trackpad. Speaking of which, the built-in trackpad is spacious enough that we never felt the need to connect an external Bluetooth mouse while writing parts of this review, though that option is definitely available. Unlike the M-Pencil, the Glide Keyboard draws its power directly from the tablet, which contributes to its highly portable design. Thankfully, our testing showed it consumed very little battery, even with near-exclusive use of the keyboard case throughout our review period.

On the software front, the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 ships with HarmonyOS 4.3 out of the box. This latest iteration of the company’s homegrown ecosystem feels like it’s actually optimized for tablet use. When connected to the Glide Keyboard, for example, the tablet automatically switches to PC mode, allowing certain apps to open in a windowed format, much like they would on a traditional desktop operating system. Additionally, this new MatePad brings Multitask View, a feature seen on the tri-fold Huawei Mate XT, which lets you seamlessly switch between three full-screen apps by simply swiping from the left or right edge of the screen. This feature is even more impactful and useful on a 12-inch tablet.

Beyond Multitask View, you also get the option to run two apps side-by-side in split-screen view, turn them into smaller windows using the “floating apps” feature, and access a quick dock of mini-apps by swiping from the side. All of these additions contribute to a significantly more convenient multitasking experience on a more mature OS that caters to both smartphones and tablets.

Even better for getting work done, the device comes with the paid desktop version of WPS Office preinstalled. This robust Microsoft Office alternative not only sports a familiar, Office-like user interface but also offers high compatibility with popular Microsoft Office file formats like .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx. WPS Office also boasts strong cross-platform compatibility, allowing you to access and work on your files across various operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android. This, coupled with cloud-storage support and real-time multi-person collaboration, provides impressive flexibility for working on projects across different devices.

Huawei Notes has also received a welcome update, now featuring its own resource center with free stickers, cover, and paper templates. This allows for more personalized and visually appealing notes, a nice addition we’ve hoped other OEMs would incorporate into their own note-taking apps. It’s encouraging to see the brand listening to its user base, and we hope this feature expands further in future versions of the Notes app.

Now, for the elephant in the room: Google apps. Yes, you can still install Google apps on this Huawei tablet using GBox or other third-party applications like microG. Aside from the YouTube quirks we noted earlier, we encountered no issues using the tablet with our essential Google apps like Gmail, Drive, YouTube, and YouTube Music.

Ultimately, whether the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 can really replace your laptop hinges entirely on your workflow and how reliant you are on Google’s ecosystem. If your daily grind primarily involves using the web browser, social media apps, document editing and writing, or basic office tasks like spreadsheets and presentations, then this tablet, with its excellent accessories and a more refined HarmonyOS, stands a very good chance of becoming your primary work machine.

Decent horsepower, exceptional battery life, and fast charging

Under the hood, the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 is powered by a HiSilicon Kirin T92A octa-core processor. This chip likely shares its architecture with the Kirin T92 found in the larger 13.2-inch model we reviewed earlier. Our unit came configured with 12GB of physical RAM and 512GB of native storage (no microSD slot here). For graphics, it’s got the Maleoon 920 GPU, which is pretty capable and can handle demanding games at medium to high settings.

We threw some real-world tests at it: Fortnite ran quite smoothly with the 30 FPS setting and resolution dialed to 58%, and the Epic Games version of Solo Leveling: ARISE also played admirably. On Antutu Benchmark, this new model just scraped past the 1-million point mark. Look, you’ll definitely find tablets with more raw gaming power out there, especially at this price. But for most mobile gaming, the latest MatePad Pro holds its own.

On the flip side, one of the biggest upsides of the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 is its long battery life, thanks to a massive 10,100mAh cell. The tablet lasted over 11 hours in our PCMark battery-rundown test. However, it’s worth noting that this benchmark primarily simulates smartphone-like daily usage, which doesn’t always reflect how a tablet is typically used.

To give you a more practical sense of the MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025’s endurance, we ran several real-world battery tests covering video streaming, gaming, and productivity tasks. For example, two hours of Netflix streaming in SD resolution consumed 20% of the battery, while two hours of YouTube streaming at 1080p showed a much more efficient drain of 12%. Both of these video tests were conducted at half brightness. An hour of playing Fortnite also reduced the battery by 12%. When it came to productivity, 30 minutes of PDF and spreadsheet work in WPS Office resulted in just a 3% battery drop, and reading comics in PDF format for a similar 30-minute session saw a comparable 4% drain.

Perhaps even more impressive is the charging experience. The Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 supports a whopping 100-watt fast charging, just like its larger sibling. Based on our testing, it can go from zero to full in about an hour. The company’s claim of reaching 85% battery in just 40 minutes also proved to be quite accurate. Considering the sheer battery capacity here, this rapid charging is a huge win for this tablet.

Final thoughts

So where does the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 land? It’s a beautifully crafted tablet with an absolutely stunning display, robust audio, and the genuine potential for PC-level productivity, especially with its impressive NearLink accessories and a maturing HarmonyOS. The long battery life and blazing-fast 100-watt charging are definite highlights. However, it’s impossible to ignore the Google-shaped elephant in the room; for users deeply embedded in Google’s ecosystem and reliant on HD streaming from Widevine-protected platforms, the experience will certainly have compromises.

Not to mention, all this high-end design and cutting-edge display tech doesn’t come cheap; with a price tag of P49,999 ($885), the Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 is a significant investment that demands careful consideration of its pros and cons.

The Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025, billed as a 3-in-1 PC-level tablet, is officially available for preorder in the Philippines. Priced at P49,999 ($885), you can secure yours from July 11 to July 17 via online platforms Shopee, Lazada, TikTok Shop, and the Huawei Online Store and even in Huawei Experience Stores nationwide. To sweeten the deal, early birds will receive a free impressive bundle valued at P28,895 ($511), packing in a Huawei Glide Keyboard, Huawei M-Pencil, Huawei Watch Fit 3, a Bluetooth mouse, and a PC-level WPS Office Suite license.

Huawei Philippines’ press release

Huawei MatePad Pro 12.2-inch 2025 specs

• 12.2-inch Tandem OLED PaperMatte display, 2,800 x 1,840 resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, 2,000 nits peak brightness
• HiSilicon Kirin T92A chipset
• Maleoon 920 GPU
• 12GB RAM
• 512GB storage
• Dual 50-megapixel main, 8-megapixel ultrawide rear cameras
• 8-megapixel front camera
• HarmonyOS 4.3
• 10,100mAh battery with 100-watt fast charging
• Quad speakers with HUAWEI Sound
• Color: Green

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