The Huawei MatePad Air is a thin and light tablet that the manufacturer launched this week in China. With a good screen, it mounts a fairly old SoC and its own Harmony OS.

The trade restrictions imposed by the United States have caused enormous damage to Huawei, as they not only prevent American companies from doing business with the Chinese company, but also prevent those companies from having any business relationship with third parties that sell Huawei technology. We see this in fewer products coming to the consumer market as well as the use of alternative operating systems and chips. But society lives on…

In case it hits the international market or you’re interested in buying from retailers like Aliexpress, say the Huawei MatePad Air has 11.5 inch LCD display and a resolution of 2880 x 1840 pixels. Its refresh rate is 144 Hz and the maximum brightness reaches 500 nits. The screen is compatible with the second-generation Huawei M-Pencil stylus with a pressure sensitivity of 4096. Thin and light, it uses a metal frame with a thickness of 6.4 mm and a weight of 508 grams.

The tablet uses a SoC from Qualcomm, but it is quite outdated. It is about Snapdragon 888, another sign of business restrictions preventing you from accessing newer technologies. The base configuration includes 8GB of RAM and 128GB of ROM, although it can be expanded up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage.

More modern in connectivity, supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 and has optional support for 4G mobile broadband networks. It is equipped with a quadruple speaker system and its battery has a capacity of 8300 mAh with a fast charging of 40 watts. It is equipped with multiple sensors, GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo, ambient light sensor, gravity sensor, compass, gyroscope and color temperature sensor.

Since the tablet can’t run Android, and like other recently launched products, it comes pre-installed with its own Harmony OS. It is a microkernel-based and Open Source distributed operating system developed for mobile devices. It includes its own app and services, though it obviously falls short of the enormous amount of Android software.

The Huawei MatePad Air is sold in China in a variety of colors and priced at 2899 yuan, around $412 to replace. It’s a shame for Huawei, but there are more interesting solutions in its market offer.