The midrange Huawei MatePad 11.5"S is a great art tablet for creative pirates

Huawei has been on quite the journey. With geopolitical tensions between China and the West meaning its access to many platforms and pieces of hardware and software we take for granted, the Chinese tech giant's fast rise was somewhat stalled in the western hemisphere. Undaunted, Huawei has started making its own chipsets and its own suite of apps and software, and in the Huawei MatePad 11.5"S (2025), the most polished – and addictive – of the lot makes it worth the purchase all on its own.

But is GoPaint enough to overcome the challenges of having to download familiar apps via APK packs and make the latest MatePad a genuine iPad alternative? I've had the MatePad 11.5"S for over a month to find out.

Huawei MatePad 11.5"S (2025): Key specifications

Design and screen

The MatePad has always been well built, and this model is no different. The metal chassis is sturdy but not too heavy (only 510 grams) and the texture of the back makes it comfortable to hold. It comes in two colours, grey and violet; I got the much prettier one, the violet, to test.

While some other tablet makers supply only the tablet itself, with everything else as payable add-ons [looks sternly in the direction of Apple], the MatePad comes with a keyboard, protective case with integrated stand and an M-Pencil as standard. This should not be undervalued in today's endlessly frustrating upselling economy.

The screen, unlike many others, is not an OLED or AMOLED, but it comes with a feature many other tablets sadly lack. The TFT LCD (IPS tech) screen is a 10-point multitouch offering, and the near-3K resolution is nice and sharp despite not being an OLED display.

It's a teeny bit bigger than the 11-inch M4 iPad and a teeny bit thicker too, but the minuscule extra thickness won't be too much of an issue as I imagine many people are like me and will immediately wrap their pretty lil' tablet in the protective coat of the magnetically fitted case and keyboard combo anyway.

And perhaps most importantly, it's extremely pleasant to look at and use for extended periods of time thanks to the PaperMatte coating that's become Huawei's trump card in the last couple of years. The coating means that glare is drastically reduced, which makes it ideal for drawing and artworking because you're not fighting reflections, even in bright light, and the texture of the screen becomes more realistic, especially when using watercolour and oil paint canvases and brushes.

Features and performance

As a result of Huawei's lack of access to mainstream western software platforms (such as all of Google and many other apps and suites we take for granted), they've come up with their own app store, browser apps, office apps and creative apps.

The best of the bunch is GoPaint, a painting, drawing and artworking app that features hundreds of brushes, surface templates and even assistance to the hand-stability-challenged like me (hold a rough circle for a second to create a smoother one, make lines and paths snap into place, get tutorials on every feature in-app, etc). I'm a useless visual artist, but I love spending time on GoPaint, and I'll be darned if I haven't improved just a teeny tiny little bit since getting swallowed up in its addictive features.

Another helpful tool is Huawei Notes, a more feature-filled note-taking app than your average Notes, with sketching tools, turning handwriting into more legible text, and easy sharing built in.

The native app store contains thousands of apps and games of all types, including many clear copies of more famous games and apps, but you can also get the originals by going a little 'pirate' (but still perfectly legal, in most cases at least ahem). Find APK packs for your desired apps, unpack those and then install, and you should be able to mostly replicate your usual Android experience here. Not completely though, and I know that lack of ready Google access will be a deal-breaker to many.

If you're getting a new iPad, you're buying PC performance in a tablet, especially if you get the higher-spec variants.

Not so here. Despite promises on the packaging of "PC-level performance", the spec sheet will put a quick stop to any 3D-modelling-on-my-tablet pipe dreams. To be fair to Huawei, the 8GB of RAM and an octa-core processor (Huawei's own development, branded 'Kirin') along with 256GB of SSD storage, it certainly matches similarly priced Chromebooks and entry-level Windows laptops, but anything above basic productivity, on top of artworking and drawing.

The HarmonyOS loaded onto the MatePad is a Linux-developed operating system built on Android 12, and while it replicates the Android user experience mostly successfully, performance is sadly lacking a fair bit.

Geekbench tests put the Huawei far behind the likes of the latest iPads (or even many older iPads), placing it near budget and midrange smartphones such as the Xiaomi Poco or Samsung Galaxy A52 in CPU and GPU tests. If you can do a task on a basic Chromebook, you should be able to a similarly heavy task here, but this is honestly not much more than basic browsing, productivity and drawing/artworking power.

Price and availability

At the time of writing the UK Huawei site lists the Huawei MatePad 11.5"S PaperMatte for £449.99. This puts it above budget tablets like sister brand Honor, but at a more affordable level than iPad and Samsung tablets, and the performance and feature set reflect that. It's a fair price in my mind, as long as you realise what you're buying this tablet for (and perhaps more importantly, what you're not buying it for). The Huawei brand is not officially available in the US, unfortunately.

Buy it if...

• You like drawing
• You want to get better at drawing
• You want ultraportability with good basic productivity features

Don't buy it if...

• You need top-spec tablet performance
• You want a true laptop replacement
• You're reliant on the Google ecosystem