[rwp-review id=”0″]
Just like the TalkBand B1 we have reviewed earlier, the Huawei MediaPad X1 is an odd device with an identity crisis: is it a phone, or is it a tablet? How you’ll judge the MediaPad X1 largely depends on how you look at it: as a tablet with a phone functionality, it’s decent at best; as a phone that functions as a tablet, it’s a tough pill to swallow.
Design
The MediaPad is a 7-inch device that is a product of a love affair between an an iPad Mini and a Galaxy phone. Though at face value it looks like a Samsung tablet, thankfully the device feels high quality. The back is 95% aluminium with a pinky-finger-width plastic bands at the top and bottom. The front has quite thin bezels giving you plenty of screen to look at. The device is also thin at 7.2mm and rather light as well: roughly ~240g which is not bad at all for its size.
The MediaPad also has no buttons at all except for volume and power, which are on the side. They’re placed very close to each other though, and whether that’s a good thing largely depends on how big your thumb is. Since they’re on the same side of the phone, taking a screenshot proved to be an ordeal.
The home, back, and menu buttons are built into the navigation bar in the software, further freeing up bezel space. Overall the MediaPad does not feel cheap at all and is comfortable to hold and use.
Display
The MediaPad X1 sports a 7″, full HD display giving you 1920×1200 resolution at 323ppi. It’s sharp and the LTPS technology gives you vibrant colours with very good viewing angles. I had no problems with the display at all – and the fact that you can change colour temperature is such a mind-blowing feature that I am surprised why no other manufacturer has done this before.
Text is crisp and I had no problem at all browsing websites, except that they took long to load but that’s for later. Games look sharp (depending on the game) and the colours are good.
Hardware, Software, and Performance
The unit is powered by quad core, 1.6GHz Cortex A9 processor and runs android 4.2.2, which is a dated OS. What is more unfortunate is the Emotion UI which absolutely drains resources, rendering the device incredibly sluggish to use and navigate. Websites take a while to render and scrolling is not always smooth. I’ve run a few games and the frame-rate varied from good to sluggish.
The nice thing about the UI though it that it borrows heavily from the “winter board” themes of a jailbroken iOS, allowing you to change themes and completely ditching the app drawer for pages of icons. It’s a bit jarring at first, but as always you can install a custom home screen, which will also resolve some – but not all – of the sluggishness. What it won’t remove though is the bloatware installed, which includes an app store in Chinese.
In terms of daily use performance, it is average at best so expect jittering and lag when using many apps. It sometimes performs well but at other times it feels like it has a bad case of bronchitis, so there is inconsistency in performance; not running any application except for the system to exist consumes ~65% of the memory. Battery life however is really good, with 5000mAh giving you plenty of juice to power through a few days depending on your use.
Overall Impressions
The MediaPad X1 has potential combining both phone and tablet and will have its niche market. I see it primarily as a tablet with a phone functionality, rather than the opposite, but it certainly will appeal to some regardless. The biggest drawback though is the software, which really slows down the system and limits its overall usefulness.
