The iPad Pro Has Its First Worthy Android Replacement

The M5 iPad Pro is arguably the best tablet on the market, with few Android rivals capable of matching up. The Galaxy Tab S11 may have been the closest adversary so far, though the M5 iPad Pro still features the better chip. Fast-forward to March 1, and we have a new competitor in the Android camp that targets Apple's iPad Pro directly. The Honor MagicPad 4, teased online in recent days, debuted at the Mobile World Congress (MWC 2026), in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday. The Chinese company made it clear that the Honor MagicPad 4 is going after the M5 iPad Pro, by comparing its new tablet against Apple's best iPad.

As a reminder, the iPad Pro doesn't just have the most powerful M-series chip Apple has made to date, the same one that powers the cheapest M5 MacBook Pro. The iPad Pro also features a tandem OLED display that allowed Apple to shrink the tablet's thickness down to 5.1 mm, without impacting the tablet's performance or battery life. Also, the iPad Pro features thin bezels, with the display taking up almost the entire front. Honor challenges the iPad Pro's key features with the MagicPad 4.

Honor launched a MagicPad 3 Pro in October in China, which had a thickness of 5.79 mm. That tablet was slightly thicker than the iPad Pro. The Honor MagicPad 4 is 4.8 mm thick, which is 3 mm thinner than the iPad Pro (5.1 mm) and 0.8 mm thinner than the iPad Air 3 (5.6 mm). While the difference is small, Honor is known for pushing the limits of device thickness. The company's Honor Magic V foldables have been the world's thinnest foldables in previous years, with Samsung releasing an ultra-thin foldable only in 2025.

Honor didn't just reduce the MagicPad 4's thickness. It also shrank the bezels. The Honor MagicPad 4 features a 3.9 mm "Ultra-Narrow" bezel, according to Honor, compared to 7.6 mm for the 13-inch M5 iPad Pro. This gives the Honor tablet a screen-to-body ratio of 93%, compared to 89% for the M5 iPad Pro. The Android tablet weighs 450 grams, significantly lighter than the 13-inch M5 iPad Pro (579 grams).

Coming up with a design similar to the iPad Pro would not be enough. The Honor MagicPad 4 also has to deliver similar performance and experiences as the M5 iPad Pro, and the Android tablet's specs indicate that may be the case. The Honor MagicPad 4 features a 12.3-inch OLED panel which Honor calls "industry-leading," a direct challenge to the iPad Pro's OLED panel. The MagicPad 4 screen supports 3K resolution, 165 Hz refresh rate, and 2,400 nits of HDR peak brightness. All these figures are higher than the iPad Pro, which features a display with 2.7K resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate (ProMotion), and 1,600 nits peak brightness.

Powering the new Honor tablet is Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, rather than the Elite version of the chip that the company used for the Honor Magic V6 foldable, also announced at MWC on Sunday. The tablet will come in 12GB/256GB or 16GB/512GB configurations, according to Honor's preorder pages for the tablet. Despite its thin profile, the tablet features a 10,100 mAh battery. It's smaller than the Honor MagicPad 3 Pro's 12,450 mAh battery, but still impressive. The M5 iPad Pro has a slightly larger battery at 10,290 mAh.

When it comes to software experiences, the Honor MagicPad 4 can work as a Windows PC when connected to a keyboard dock by offering users a desktop-style multi-window Android experience, similar to what's possible on the iPad Pro in iPadOS 26. The Android tablet also works with iPhones and Macs, as compatibility with Apple's ecosystem has been a theme of Honor's MWC press event. The Honor MagicPad 4 can transfer content to and from the iPhone, and supports Mac Screen Sharing.