Company tablet: we check how Huawei MatePad 11 will cope with mobile work

I work in an editorial office every day, but after hours I develop my other passion: I run a shop where I sell handmade jewelry. My company - so far - is a one-man business, but I must admit that it is developing really satisfactorily. Unique, handicrafts made in small quantities are becoming more and more popular, and my shop is getting more and more popular every month. I was even more pleased when I was offered to check the capabilities of the latest Huawei tablet in my work.

To manage the store, I usually use a laptop and - most often - a smartphone. Let's face it, a sole proprietorship usually involves being at work all the time. After all, no one else will answer my e-mail for me and will not complete the order. Modern phones have great possibilities, but I was already thinking about buying a tablet that combines the mobility of a smartphone with greater possibilities comparable to a computer. Will the latest MatePad 11 be the answer to this need?

MatePad 11: light, slim and intuitive

The first nice surprise in the package with the shipment from Huawei was ... the wealth of its contents. I expected to find a tablet and possibly a charger in the box, but in addition to the MatePad 11, the set also includes a magnetic Smart Magnetic Keyboard, a Huawei M-Pencil stylus and a dedicated mouse.

Let's start with the MatePad 11 itself. The first thing I noticed was the minimalist design of the device. The back panel is made of matte plastic, while on the front we find an 11-inch FullView display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Thin frames deserve a mention: as the manufacturer calculated, the screen occupies as much as 86 percent. the front panel of the device. The device has a Snapdragon 865 processor, 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal memory. The battery capacity is 7250 mAh, which is enough for a whole day of intensive or about 3 days of occasional use.

I take the device out of the package, a few moments of configuration - after a few minutes the equipment is ready for operation. Huawei MatePad 11 is the brand's first tablet that supports a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which I decide to check by turning on the series in high definition. I immediately note the great sound quality: MatePad 11 is equipped with a Harmon Kardon stereo sound system consisting of four high-amplitude tweeters and woofers. As expected, programs load instantly, and the image is smooth and of excellent quality. I haven't dealt with the HarmonyOS 2 operating system before, but despite some concerns, I don't have any problems with its operation - its operation is intuitive, consistent with the operating systems I know (after all, it is based on Android, which is well known to most users). I am pleased to note that the system can be operated with the gestures I like - swiping from the side edge takes us back one step, and swiping from the bottom shows the menu of active applications. The lack of a control bar at the bottom (typical "arrows") means that the entire screen is available working space.

Keyboard and pencil, or how to create a small command center

After the initial familiarization with the tablet, I move on to what interested me the most - the connection of accessories, i.e. the magnetic keyboard and stylus. The Smart Magnetic Keyboard doubles as a stand, which turns the tablet into a micro-laptop in seconds: you can comfortably work on it at your desk or... on your lap when you need to do something on the go. No one needs to be convinced that typing on the keyboard is much more convenient than on the touch screen, which is why MatePad gets a huge plus from me for connection speed and convenience.

The second advantage turns out to be the inconspicuous Huawei M-Pencil of the 2nd generation, which sensationally increases the efficiency of work. The stylus, which resembles a typical pen, has a silver finish, a platinum-plated nib and supports 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity. We are not in danger of losing it, because in a clever way we can attach it to the magnet hidden in the upper edge of the tablet. It provides excellent control when writing and sketching, which will be appreciated by many people working in graphics and design professions. I liked the Huawei FreeScript function, which converts handwriting into digital text in real time. Thanks to it, we can, for example - holding the phone in one hand to the ear - conveniently type the query in the search engine with the other hand, like with an ordinary pen on a piece of paper.

Mobile like a smartphone, universal like a laptop

When running my shop, I relatively rarely spend long hours in front of the computer, much more often I need to do something quickly here and now - make an urgent video call, reply to an inquiry, solve a current problem with the order. Mobility is therefore crucial for me, and the MatePad 11 turned out to be a great companion for this. The equipment works practically without delays and allows for efficient operation of all necessary programs. In addition, it works great for cooperation on multiple screens of paired devices when we want to connect it to a laptop or smartphone. We have, for example, a mirror mode that allows you to work directly on documents using the aforementioned stylus. In turn, the extend mode transforms the tablet into a secondary screen, which gives us extra space to display more content. Particularly useful was the cooperation mode, in which we can conveniently transfer files between HarmonyOS and Windows using the "drag and drop" method. It is worth mentioning here that MatePad 11 supports Wi-Fi 6 connectivity, i.e. it offers data transfer three times faster than in the case of WiFi 5.

Speaking of Wi-Fi, it is worth paying attention to one issue - MatePad 11 does not have a SIM card slot, which means that to connect to the Internet outside the home (and the range of public Wi-Fi networks), we need to share a hot spot from your phone. Understandable, however, that in order to keep the price of the device affordable, the manufacturer had to make some compromises. For me, the lack of a SIM slot was not a problem, after all, sharing a hot spot from the phone takes only a few seconds. The more that the tablet has another very useful function - reverse charging. So, if necessary, we can recharge the smartphone with it.

After a few days with the new Huawei tablet, I found out that the tablet was much more useful in my daily business than I initially thought. This type of equipment is sometimes treated with neglect, according to the principle that "if something is good for everything, it is good for nothing". Meanwhile, MatePad 11 really is for everything: as comfortable as a smartphone, versatile as a laptop, irreplaceable when mobility matters.