Huawei is taking on Amazon's Kindle with its new MatePad Paper e-book reader

Huawei is dipping its toes in the waters of e-book readers. This is the new MatePad Paper and it's the Chinese giant's first-ever e-book reader.

The MatePad features a 10.3-inch Eye Comfort FullView E Ink display with a resolution of 1872 x 1404 pixels. That's remarkably larger considering Amazon's latest Kindle Paperwhite is just 6.8 inches large. Even Amazon's flagship Kindle is just 7 inches.

One nifty thing about the MatePad Paper is that its owners can use it with Huawei's M-Pencil to take notes. Speaking of notes, it also has built-in microphones that can be used to record voice notes.

Its ability to take notes give it a leg up on typical e-book readers. Furthermore, it runs Hauwei's HarmonyOS 2 and even Huawei's App Gallery. However, app compatibility is unknown at this point.

As for e-books, Huawei is touting its Huawei Books store which claims to have around 2 million books in its library.

ALSO READ: For your entertainment: How the new Huawei MatePad became my companion during WFH days

Unfortunately, Amazon's Kindle app and Google Play Books aren't currently on Huawei's App Gallery, so your collection might not cover over. Still, the MatePad Paper supports standard e-book formats as well as PDF.

Performance should be good. Huawei says the MatePad Paper is powered by its Kirin 820E chip with 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage. That's a lot of storage for e-books.

Claimed battery life is up to 28 days in standby mode . It also has a fast-charge feature where 1.5 hours of charge is enough for up to 6 days of reading time. The MatePad Paper charges via USB-C.

This is clearly a high-end e-book reader but it isn't the first. Kobo's Elipsa also has a 10.3-inch display, is compatible with a stylus, and has note-taking capabilities.

Availability and pricing

No word yet on local availability and pricing details, but reports say the Huawei MatePad Paper will cost €499 (S$753) in Europe. That makes it a rather pricey e-book reader. We'll update this article once we have local availability and pricing details.