Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue review: Budget extravagance

Google Now

Google Now gives you a short overview of information it believes is relevant to you right now. It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well.

If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you score updates once the game begins.

Google Now on the Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue

Voice Actions can handle stuff like sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. Google Now can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.

Google Now on the Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue gets activated with an upward-swipe from the virtual navigation bar.

You can either type or talk to it and the app will give you one of its info cards (if available) and read you its contents aloud (you can disable this in the app settings). If there's no card to help with the answer to your question Google Now will simply initiate a Google web search instead.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue is powered by Huawei's own K3V2 chipset. There are four 1.5GHz Cortex A9 cores, a 16-core GPU and 1GB of RAM. The Cortex A9 processor is already a dated piece of tech, but it's still more than capable of keeping Android running smoothly on the 1024 x 600 pixels screen. The Samsung Galaxy SIII, for instance, uses a similar processor and it still gets the job done.

Starting off with BenchmarkPi and Linpack, the MediaPad 7 Vogue posted pretty good scores, on par with the original ASUS Nexus 7 Of course, it wasn't able to match the more high-end rivals in our database.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  166
• Sony Xperia Z
  264
• HTC Butterfly
  266
• Oppo Find 5
  267
• HTC One X+
  280
• LG Optimus G
  285
• HTC One mini
  293
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  346
• Sony Xperia M
  400
• Samsung Galaxy S II Plus
  409
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 351
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue 411
• Samsung Galaxy Note 420
• Google Nexus 7 421
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus 470
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 499
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 520
• Sony Xperia L
  435
• Samsung Galaxy S III mini
  499
• Sony Xperia go
  543
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  554
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  578
• HTC Desire X
  639
• Sony Xperia E dual
  800
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  831

Linpack

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  788
• HTC One
  646
• Sony Xperia Z
  630
• HTC Butterfly
  624
• LG Optimus G
  608
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  413
• Sony Xperia SP
  348
• HTC One mini
  320
• Nexus 4
  213.5
• Sony Xperia L
  191
• HTC One X+
  177
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  175
• Sony Xperia M
  168.3
• HTC One X
  160
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  141
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  185
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue 134.2
• Google Nexus 7
  124.3
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  105.2
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  86.5
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  76.8
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  107.7
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  85

When it comes to the multiple-core perfromance, the Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue behaved similarly to its quad-core Cortex-A9 powered rivals.

Geekbench 2

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4
  3227
• HTC One
  2708
• Sony Xperia Z
  2173
• HTC Butterfly
  2143
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1937
• Sony Xperia SP
  2105
• LG Optimus G
  1723
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1661
• iPhone 5
  1601
• HTC One mini
  1417
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  1292
• Sony Xperia L
  1073
• Sony Xperia M
  973
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  970
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  678

AnTuTu

Higher is better

• HTC One
  22678
• Sony Xperia Z
  20794
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  15931
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  14518
• HTC Butterfly
  12631
• HTC One mini
  11434
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  11203
• Sony Xperia M
  9902
• Sony Xperia L
  9746
• Nokia Lumia 620
  9140
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  7408
• Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2
  6650

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  7153
• HTC One mini
  6048
• Sony Xperia V
  5816
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  5053
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  4998
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  4433
• Sony Xperia L
  4279
• Sony Xperia M
  4147
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  3152

We've added some GPU benchmarks for good measure to test out the undisclosed 16-core graphics chip inside the tablet. The MediaPad 7 Vogue didn't do all too well here.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  43
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  41
• Google Nexus 4
  32
• Sony Xperia Z
  31
• Sony Xperia SP
  31
• Apple iPhone 5
  30
• LG Optimus G
  21
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  17
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  17
• HTC One mini
  15
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  13
• Sony Xperia M
  12
• HTC One X
  11

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  17.1
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  16
• LG Optimus G
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  6.4
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  6.3
• HTC One mini
  5.6
• Sony Xperia M
  3.8
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  12

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 (Octa)
  59.8
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  57.1
• HTC One
  56.4
• HTC One mini
  56
• Sony Xperia Z
  55.6
• Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
  55.5
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  54.7
• Nexus 4
  53.9
• Asus Padfone 2
  53.4
• Sony Xperia M
  53.2
• LG Optimus G
  52.6
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  41.5
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  41.3

SunSpider is based on JavaScript performance and the two browsers available on the MediaPad 7 Vogue (the stock one and Chrome) scored similar results.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  1185
• Samsung Galaxy S4 Active
  1196
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  1194
• Google Nexus 7
  1703
• new Apple iPad
  1722
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  1953
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  1992
• Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
  2253
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  2867
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  1098
• HTC One mini
  1237
• HTC 8S
  1413
• Nokia Lumia 620
  1435
• Samsung Galaxy Express
  1654
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1660
• Sony Xperia M
  1867
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  2197
• HTC Desire X
  2259
• Sony Xperia L
  2539
• Sony Xperia E dual
  2824
• Sony Xperia J
  2853
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  3578

Vellamo focuses on JavaScript and HTML 5 and is where the MediaPad 7 Vogue did quite well to match the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S III and the Oppo Find 5.

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia SP
  2497
• HTC One
  2382
• HTC One mini
  2252
• Sony Xperia Z
  2189
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• Samsung Galaxy S4 mini
  2019
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Sony Xperia M
  1800
• Sony Xperia L
  1640
• HTC Desire 600 dual sim
  1572
• LG Optimus 4X HD
  1568
• LG Optimus G
  1522
• Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue
  1510
• Samsung Galaxy Core
  1366
• Nexus 4
  1310
• Samsung Galaxy Fame
  1234
• Samsung Galaxy Young
  1072
• Sony Xperia E dual
  1065