Huawei MediaPad T3 10 Tablet Review

Indoors, it somewhat depends on the position, whether the GPS module finds enough satellites to locate us reliably. When it does work, which is mostly near windows or in the attic, with an accuracy of 17 meters (~56 ft), our location position is more of an estimate. Outdoors, the accuracy is also not very high: 9 meters (~30 ft) was the maximum that we measured on a cloudy day.

Then the Huawei MediaPad T3 10 went into our backpack. We also packed the Garmin Edge 500 professional navigation unit and then jumped on our bike, to test the accuracy of the GPS sensor. On a 6.5 km (~4 miles) route, the Garmin Edge 500 measures 300 meters (~328 yd) more than the tablet. Already, that is not such a good sign. Finally, the bridge section in particular shows that the MediaPad T3 10 is considerably less accurate in tracing the route than the Garmin Edge 500. Although it should be enough for leisure navigation, there are devices that are clearly more accurate. 

Cameras are often neglected components in tablets. Obviously, the tablet should have cameras, but the quality is by far not as important as in a smartphone, since there are only few people who really want to take pictures with an unwieldy tablet. Thus the cameras in MediaPad T3 10 do not offer a very high resolution. The buyer is offered 5 megapixels in the back and a meager 2 megapixels in the front. As a result, the pictures of the front camera appear slightly artificial, the color areas spotty, and there are apparent color auras around the objects. Moreover, the colors appear quite pale. While this might still be acceptable for non-demanding selfie pictures, anyone who has more ambitions will not be able to do much with the front camera of the tablet.

The main camera of the tablet shows a pronounced blue tint, large color areas appear spotty here as well, and color auras also appear here. Compared to other mobile cameras, the pictures appear dark and slightly dim, and objects have visible color auras around them. In dark areas, the dynamic is okay. Here too, you should not have demands that are too high, and the image quality is mediocre even for a tablet camera.

With the main camera, videos can be recorded at a maximum of 1280x720 pixels. Colors also appear quite pale, and bright light sources quickly lead to overexposed objects. The change of exposure occurs quite fast, but the sharpness has to be manually adjusted from time to time.

Its predecessor, the MediaPad T2 10 Pro, was considerably more expensive but also had a clearly higher resolution than our current test device, where you have to be content with 1280x800 pixels. On such a large screen, that is really noticeable and the display appears less sharp than that of the Full HD comparison devices. The IPS screen has the 16:10 format, so in landscape format it is a little higher than 16:9 and there is not quite as much space in the width. With an average of 409 cd/m², the screen of the MediaPad T3 10 is in the middle of the field of comparison devices and is slightly brighter than the predecessor. 92% evenness of the brightness distribution is a very good value, and thus large color areas appear evenly illuminated.

Unlike the four speakers of the MediaPad M3 Lite, the T3 10 offers a much simpler speaker arrangement with only a single speaker at the bottom edge. This can become relatively loud, but could not quite convince us in other areas in the test with the ARTA software: there is hardly any bass, the mids are presented too low and the highs too high.

After the practical listening test with various music genres and movie sounds, we can confirm this: sometimes the highs seem too shrill to our ears, which becomes noticeably uncomfortable particularly at high volumes. Because of the missing low frequencies, the sound appears quite thin.

You can connect speakers and headphones via the 3.5 mm port or Bluetooth. The transmitted sound signal is clear and clean.

Unfortunately, our measurement device does not provide us with any usable data about the power consumption of the Huawei MediaPad T3 10 and therefore we cannot make any statements here. But what we can say is this: the included power supply is way too small. It merely provides 1 Amp of power. This had already been a problem with the MediaPad M3 Lite, since charging took forever there. The owners of the MediaPad T3 10 also need to be prepared for that: the battery took up to 4:30 hours and more before it was fully charged.

Perhaps a more powerful charger from the smartphone at home might help? We try it with a 2.1-Amp charger, but apparently the charging management limits the amount of power so that charging takes just as long. You probably have no choice other than to wait for the 5 hours, until the tablet is charged, but overnight that should not be much of a problem. If the resulting battery life is correct, we can put up with that. So let us take a look.

As already suspected, the Huawei MediaPad T3 10 is not a revolution, but an update. In this, the somewhat confusing model policy by Huawei stands out negatively: in the previous generation there was a stronger Pro model in the mid-range, now there is a slimmed down top model (M3 Lite) and a weaker mid-range model, which is the T3 10. It can offer a cleanly built and quite light case, the equipment is appropriate, and the software is good. You can even make phone calls with the LTE model which is not a given in LTE tablets. 

You should not expect too much from the built-in cameras, which are more of a makeshift solution, rather than being usable for serious photography or videos. The screen has average brightness; the brightness distribution and contrast are good, although it only offers a low color space coverage.

Unfortunately, the Huawei MediaPad T3 10 sits between two chairs: neither can it present itself as a price-performance winner, nor can it advertise outstanding performance in a single task. Thus, it is an average tablet, with which you have to put up with quite long charging times.

After the performance segment where the processor performance is compelling and the storage performance is also quite high in part, we are of two minds, since on the other hand the graphics solution does not manage to deliver sufficient performance for gaming or other more demanding contents on the screen. The battery life is good, but on the other hand, you have to put up with miserably long charging times.

Overall, the Huawei MediaPad T3 10 is not a particularly good deal, but rather an average device in its price range. Only the high processor performance for a low price can be useful in some situations. Aside from that, there are stronger competitors in the same price range, such as the Galaxy Tab A from Samsung, which lasts much longer and offers considerably higher graphics performance.