In my quest for the perfect monitor there are two key factors: excellent resolution and great design. It’s easy to find monitors with outstanding resolution, but findiong ones that are well-designed is a lot harder. My search has brought me to the 4K Huawei MateView. IN this review I’ll look a t the screen quality, design, and any spcial features, plus I’ll tell you if I can recommend it for you.
Huawei MateView monitor
Summary
I’m really loving the Huawei MateView and have really nothing I can complain about. The key downside for me is that there’s no VESA adapter so I can’t put the MateView on a monitor arm, but honestly that’s kind of common in this type of premium, fine-design 4K monitor; the same is true of the Samsung M8 which I recently reviewed also.
Pros
- Great screen quality
- No bezel/edge
- 4K resolution
- Beautiful design
- Adjustable
- Good size & screen to body ratio
- Speaker gets loud
- Lots of ports & adapters
- Easy set up
- Touchpad controls for settings
Cons
- No VESA mount adapter
Huawei MateView: basics
Huawei MateView is a 28.2-inch 4K monitor that sits on a sleek footed stand. I opted for the Mystic Silver colour, but it’s also made in black.
The display is all screen with a huge wide viewable area and almost zero bezel or frame with about a 94% screen-to-body ratio and a barely visible 6 mm bezel.
At 3850 x 2560 resolution, it’s sharper than other HD monitors, and Huawei also boasts that it has an extra 1.5 million pixels, compared to standard 4K meaning it should seem sharper and clearer; and potentially great for fine detail or document work.
One of the other selling features is the burst of colour from the “cinema-level” colour gamut. The sales pitch here is that there’s over a billion colours in here, but since the human eye can only actually see a fraction of that, most of it will be lost on us. The Coles Notes is that you should be able to see more realistic colour and subtler transitions, and I’d say in my several weeks of use, that’s true.
Design
The design of this monitor is really beautiful; it’s one of the nicest designs out there. The back aluminum alloy panel is sleek and bright and subtle. The screen sits on a sliding stand that moves smoothly up and down, from about 2.5-inches off the surface to about 7-inches. The screen will tilt but not swivel. The construction looks durable and high-end.
The 28-inch size isn’t the biggest monitor out there (32-inch monitors offer a bit more real estate) but the remarkable barely-there bezels make this screen seem larger than it really is.
Ports and connections
Cleverly, most of the ports are built into the side of the stand, and there’s two USBm one USB-C and a headphone jack. There’s also a USB-C power connector in the back, plus HDMI and a Mini Display Port/DP connection. The monitor comes with a MiniDP to DP cable plus a USB-C to USB-C cable. I opted to use the USB-C to connect to my MacBook Pro, and it was a quick, easy and efficient connection that meant I could plug in direct instead of needing a separate adapter.
No VESA mount
I was a little disappointed to see there is no VESA mount adaptor as part of this monitor. This means the monitor can only be used on its proprietary stand. This is a disappointment for me since I would much rather have my monitor up on a monitor arm and off my desk.
Smart bar
While some monitors have buttons or joysticks to adjust settings, the Huawei MateView uses a Touchbar. By tapping and swiping along the bottom centre of the screen you’ll bring up a menu of options, and you can adjust things like brightness, input sources, colurs and access to adjustments to minimize eye strain.
Screen quality
I can definitely say using this monitor was a treat. Particularly when working on documents, the text was crisp and sharp and easy to read. When it came to using the screen for editing videos and photos, the colour quality was great, and all my video review projects looked sharp and accurate.
I also put on some nature videos to check the 4K video quality and the results were stunning.
Speaker Quality
You can opt to use the built-in dual 5 watt speakers in the Huawei mate view monitor. The speaker is cleverly concealed as part of the stand, and while it’s a little bit tinny sounding (like most monitor speakers), it does get plenty loud. It’s not high fidelity by any means but could do the job nicely of you don’t have other speakers.
Overall review
Overall, I’m really loving the Huawei MateView and have really nothing I can complain about. The key downside for me is that there’s no VESA adapter so I can’t put the MateView on a monitor arm, but honestly that’s kind of common in this type of premium, fine-design 4K monitor; the same is true of the Samsung M8 which I recently reviewed also.
In short, the video quality is outstanding, the colour looks gorgeous and the overall design adds a lot to my home office. I can definitely recommend the 28-inch 4K Huawei mate View to you. It sells for about $899CAD and you can get it from Best Buy or Amazon.
