Huawei is not new to making TVs, but the telecommunication equipment maker’s latest TV will make you do a double-take and ask, “Is it a TV anymore?” The new Huawei MateTV, as it is called, is described as a “Huawei Smart Display”. It completely changes what a TV is and how you use a TV. The MateTV also marked the first Huawei TV to use the branding “Mate,” which is a hint that this is a smartphone-inspired TV. And an oversized smartphone it probably is, as it is powered by Huawei’s very own HarmonyOS.
The Mate treatment means specs that sound suspiciously like a flagship phone on steroids. It’s powered by a chip that’s up to 10 times faster than the usual “TV brains,” with GPU performance also 10 times higher, letting you cold-launch heavy apps in just 2 seconds. Huawei even claims you can run big mobile games right on your TV—yes, Fortnite on a 98-inch slab of glass and metal is a thing now.
In case you are wondering, this is the first time that a flagship smartphone chip has been used to power a TV. And it has not one, but two chips. There is the AI SoC, and the Honghu Vivid, and it has 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage to further ensure a smooth operation. Honghu Vivid is a Huawei-developed image display chip engineered especially for the MateTV series of TVs.
Design-wise, the MateTV [CH] keeps it ultra-premium. At just 36.9 mm thin with bezels measuring a ridiculous 0.8 mm, it’s basically all screen, boasting a 99% screen-to-body ratio. Toss in a Super MiniLED black-diamond display, quantum dot layer, 178-degree wide viewing angle, and Huawei’s in-house “鸿鹄 Vivid” chip with HDR Vivid support, and you get cinema vibes right in your living room.
Interaction also gets an overhaul. HarmonyOS 5 delivers AI smarts like facial recognition, AI search, and even “knowing you” features. The 328-point touch sensor setup means you can literally control the TV with hand gestures—pinch, zoom, swipe—like it’s a giant tablet mounted on the wall. There’s even handwriting input with a special stylus kit for doodling, note-taking, or teaching the kids.
Oh, right. We forgot to mention that in addition to a regular Apple-ish remote with ancient tech called “buttons”, it also supports a stylus, and a futuristic game controller-like pad called “telepathy floating touch” controller. This thing is like some sorcery. It uses an advanced, super-sensitive capacitive sensor to enable it to become the “vessel” to touch the huge-ass display, and yes, it supports multi-touch, just like on a smartphone.
You will not be touching blindly—the TV will show a representation of your digit. You don’t even need to physically touch the pad; it can sense your digits hovering over it. The most insane part is that the digit representation will change in size depending on how far your finger is over the pad. With the pad, you can achieve the aforementioned gestures, as well as use it as a game controller. Absolutely bonkers.
About the stylus, a.k.a. “telepathy pen,” it is loaded with insane innovation too. Using a combination of a pressure sensor on the pen, NearLink technology, and a detachable sensing module allows you to write directly on the TV. This lets you mark on your presentation in a business meeting directly on the TV’s display.
The sound department also gets a boost with tech like 3.2.2 spatial sound, and Huawei Sound featuring Hi-Fi-grade drivers, producing 80 W of bombastic sound.
The Huawei MateTV starts at 8,999 yuan [CH] (~1,260 USD) for the 65-inch model, with sizes all the way up to a 98-inch monster at 24,999 yuan (~3,500 USD).
Images: Huawei [CH].
