The latest Huawei Smart Office 2022 launch that kicks off at the same time as Mobile World Congress 2022 in Barcelona certainly had a slew of surprises including new MateBook series laptops but the most unusual one was certainly the launch of their MatePad Paper slate that’s half tablet and half e-book reader.

What is the Huawei MatePad Paper

If you’re generally familiar with Amazon’s Kindle e-book readers, you’ll immediately grasp what the new Huawei MatePad Paper is about as it’s a scaled up, upgunned e-book reader cum tablet with significantly more powerful hardware under the hood.

Weighing about 360g, the Huawei MatePad Paper features a large 10.3-inch e-ink display up front with thin bezels to offer an 86.3% screen-to-body ratio but it has a slightly thicker spine on one side dubbed a ‘Book Spin’ design to make it easier to grip. With a screen this large, Huawei gauges that users will turn the page 45% less than a much smaller e-ink reader.

While e-ink readers aren’t typically noted for being sharp or optimised for viewing images, Huawei has integrated what they called Huawei E Ink Display Enhancement Solution that upscales the typical 16 shade grayscale palette seen in most e-ink readers to a more nuanced 256 grayscale along with text sharpening for crisper looking fonts.

There’s no mention of what processor it has under the hood but the Huawei MatePad Paper has 4GB RAM, 64GB of storage and can act as a USB drive of sorts when paired with other Huawei devices.

It is also compatible with their second generation M-Pencil stylus to allow users to draw, doodle and sketch in grayscale on the display with a low 26ms latency while retaining 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity to mimic an actual pen. 

Seeing the efficiency and low power draw of e-ink readers, Huawei estimates that the Huawei MatePad Paper will have a whopping 4 weeks of standby time on a single charge which is impressive.

How much is the Huawei MatePad Paper

At launch, Huawei has not stated availability for the Huawei MatePad Paper but they did state that it will come in black, khaki and blue at a price of 499 Euros which is about RM2,362. We’ll keep you posted on any updates when we get them!