Honor Pad 9 Review: A Great Affordable Slate

Honor’s split from ex-parent company Huawei has reinvigorated the company in Europe, particularly benefitting its smartphones and tablets. 

Being able to access all Google apps and services is considered crucial for Android devices in the West – their omission on many Huawei products is the main reason we can’t recommend them. 

Meanwhile, Honor has been very good at making tablet hardware for a while now, and that’s no different on the Pad 9, its affordable 2024 slate to rival the iPad and other Android offerings. 

On paper, it offers an array of premium features for an impressively low sub-£300 price. That largely translates to good real-world usage, though a couple of key shortcomings also come to the fore. 

Design & Build

• Premium aluminium and glass design 
• No IP rating 
• No fingerprint sensor 

The Honor Pad 9 might be priced like a budget tablet, but it looks and feels like a flagship. We’ve seen this blend of aluminium and glass countless times before, though it’s still impressive on such an affordable device.  

The ‘Space Gray’ model I tested has a matte coating on the back, helping to limit the build-up of fingerprint smudges and other visible dirt. It might be more of an issue with the ‘Cyan Lake’ version, which looks like a bright turquoise.  

However, I’d recommend getting a case or cover either way. The device still feels a bit slippery in my hands, and I’m often worried about it sliding off the table. 

The distinctive circular rear camera module (making it look similar to the OnePlus Pad) helps a bit, given it sticks out quite a lot from the back of the device. Though this is unnecessary – rear cameras aren’t that important on a tablet, and the Pad 9 isn’t that thin (6.96mm) anyway. 

At 555g, it’s heavier than both the Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ and 2022 iPad (10.9-inch), even if both of those have smaller screens. Don’t worry, it’s still very comfortable to hold for long periods of time. 

The Honor Pad 9 might be priced like a budget tablet, but it looks and feels like a flagship

While the Pad 9 feels very well made, there’s no official IP rating for dust or waterproofing. It should still be fine if briefly caught in the rain, but I wouldn’t recommend anything more extreme. Given how portable it is, that’s a bit of a shame but also understandable at the price.

Clicky power and volume controls can be found on one side, though the former is unnecessarily fiddly. Pressing both buttons together simply takes a screenshot, while holding down the power button only triggers the Google Assistant initially, with around five seconds required for power options. 

The USB-C port is in its usual position at the bottom, but there’s no fingerprint sensor of any description. While the front-facing camera works very quickly for face unlock, it’s much less secure. 

Screen & Speakers

• 12.1-inch LCD display 
• 120Hz refresh rate 
• Quad stereo speakers 

The Honor Pad 9 is built around a large 12.1-inch, 2.5K (2560×1600) display. It’s only an IPS LCD panel, but I really didn’t miss having OLED. 

The screen combines excellent detail with rich, punchy colours, making it ideally suited for watching videos or gaming. Visibility is also very good; the 628 nits of max brightness I recorded actually exceeds Honor’s claim of 500 nits. As a result, using the device outdoors on a bright sunny day isn’t an issue. 

The display has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz, though the default ‘Dynamic’ mode will automatically adjust between it and the standard 60Hz. This gives you excellent fluidity and responsiveness to swipes and gestures without the big hit to battery life, though you can manually set it to 60- or 120Hz if you’d prefer.

However, dropping all the way down to 1Hz relies on LTPO, a type of OLED screen. However, even without it, you’re probably not missing out on a huge improvement in power consumption. 

The screen combines excellent detail with rich, punchy colours, making it ideally suited for watching videos or gaming

The Pad 9 combines that very good display with quad stereo speakers – two at the top, two at the bottom. They deliver punchy, room-filling audio that avoids distortion, even at high volumes. Clarity is very good, though a lack of bass makes them best suited to voice-based content or more stripped-back music. 

Even so, these are up there with the best speakers you’ll find on an affordable tablet. There’s no 3.5mm audio jack, but unless you’re in a public place, you won’t need to connect Bluetooth headphones most of the time. 

Specs & Performance

• Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 and 8GB RAM 
• 256GB of storage 
• No 5G option 

On paper, the Honor Pad 9’s performance doesn’t sound like anything special. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, a mid-range Qualcomm chipset from 2022.

It combines with 8GB of RAM on the only model available in Europe, though there is the option to add 8GB of virtual RAM. 

I was surprised by just how good performance is on the Pad 9

Given those average specs, I was surprised by just how good performance is on the Pad 9. It speeds through all everyday tasks with ease, whether it’s web browsing and emails or social media and YouTube. Quickly switching between them or using split-screen multitasking isn’t an issue, either. 

Navigating around (using either gestures or on-screen buttons) is fluid and responsive, with the 120Hz screen coming into its own. 

However, I really didn’t expect the Pad 9 to perform this well while gaming. I tested five of the most demanding titles available on the Google Play Store – Asphalt 9, Call of Duty: Mobile, EA Sports FC Mobile, PUBG Mobile and Rocket League Sideswipe.  

There were some dropped frames here and there, but gameplay remained relatively smooth and controls were very responsive. I’d have no problem using the Pad 9 as my primary mobile gaming device, something which can’t be said for many cheap tablets. 

Gaming is the one time where you’ll notice the back of the device got quite warm to the touch. However, this didn’t appear to have any effect on performance, and never became uncomfortably hot.

Honor Pad 9 benchmarks

The only version of the Pad 9 available in the UK and Europe offers 256GB of internal storage. With no support for microSD expansion and around 25GB taken up with system files, you’ll probably need to rely on cloud storage before too long depending on your usage. This is something most people are already doing, though. 

Honor hasn’t specified which version of Wi-Fi the Pad 9 uses, though we do know it features Bluetooth 5.1. That’s pretty much where the connectivity ends, so you miss out on both 5G (or any cellular data) and NFC. 

Cameras

• 13Mp rear camera 
• 8Mp selfie camera 
• Video up to 4K at 30fps 

Unlike on smartphones, the rear cameras on tablets aren’t particularly important. That’s reflected on the Pad 9, with Honor including just one 13Mp shooter on the back. 

And let me just get this out of the way… it’s not very good.

Shots are just about passable in well-lit environments, but tend to deliver washed-out colours and there’s a consistent struggle with exposure. Dynamic range and detail are usually pretty good, though.  

However, that all goes out of the window when there’s less lighting available. Images often become a blurry mess, with lots of extra noise and underexposed subjects. There’s no long-exposure night mode at all, so you can forget about taking usable shots as dusk approaches. 

You do get a portrait mode within the camera app, but it doesn’t seem to do much. I couldn’t notice any difference in the amount of background blur between it and a regular photo. 

Shots are just about passable in well-lit environments, but tend to deliver washed-out colours and consistently struggle with exposure

Interestingly, I found the rear camera to be most effective for close-up shots. While there’s no macro mode, it tends to do a good job with distinctive flowers or leaf patterns. 

Fortunately, the 8Mp front-facing camera is much more impressive – ignore the lower megapixel count. Selfies are generally well-exposed and offer a good amount of detail, yet avoid the common tendency for overexposed backgrounds. 

See a range of my camera samples in the gallery below:

Video can be captured in up to 4K at 30fps, though the default 1080p at 30fps will be fine for most people. Both cameras have decent detail but tend to wash out colours and have difficulty with exposure.  

A lack of OIS (optical image stabilization) means they’re best for scenarios where you keep the device in one place, such as a video call. 

Battery Life & Charging

• 8300mAh battery 
• 35W charging 
• Relevant charger in the box 

Honor has equipped the Pad 9 with an 8300mAh battery. That’s not exactly small, but battery life is disappointing.  

During testing, it lasted 2-3 days between charges, though this was only with an hour or two of usage in the evenings. If I were to use it as my main productivity device, it wouldn’t make it through a full day. And as good as the Pad 9 is for gaming, this will deplete the battery very quickly. 

The combination of mediocre battery life and relatively slow charging makes the Pad 9 much less appealing

Our regular PCMark battery benchmark test, which simulates real-world usage at 200 nits of brightness, reflects that. A score of 8 hours and 30 minutes is below average, though it’s worth noting that this was with the refresh rate set to a fixed 120Hz. 

By dropping down to 60Hz, turning off location services and enabling power saving mode, you can get the Pad 9 to last much longer on a single charge. However, this will be at a big cost to the user experience.  

Unfortunately, charging via USB-C is frustratingly slow. The Pad 9 supports speeds up to 35W, and the necessary charger is included in the box (albeit with an EU plug in my case).  

However, it still only went from 0-17% in 15 minutes and 32% by the half-hour mark. A full charge took just under two hours – I was expecting better. 

Ultimately, the combination of mediocre battery life and relatively slow charging makes the Pad 9 much less appealing. 

Software & Apps

• MagicOS 7.2 over Android 13 
• No word on Android 14 update 
• Not clear how many years of updates 

For some reason, the Honor Pad 9 isn’t running the latest version of Android at launch. Instead of Android 14, you’ll have to put up with MagicOS 7.2, which is based on Android 13. 

It’s not clear when the device will be updated, or how long it’ll be supported by Honor. I really hope it’s an improvement on 2023’s Pad X9, which is only getting two years of OS updates and three years of security patches. That really isn’t good enough for a tablet, even a cheap one. 

Despite these caveats, the actual software experience is better than you might expect. Sure, there are too many annoying extra apps (known as bloatware) and lots of third-party apps aren’t optimised for the big screen, but these are issues that affect many Android tablets. 

Overall, the software feels well-suited to the larger screen, with app icons, widgets and quick settings all sized appropriately. Just like on an iPad, the latter is revealed via a swipe down from the top-right of the screen, with notifications accessed from the top-left.

MagicOS is something I genuinely enjoyed using on the Honor Pad 9

There are also some very good multitasking features, with the option to open two apps in split-screen mode and have a third over the top as a floating window.  

If you own an Honor phone or laptop, there are a range of extra ecosystem features, such as the ability to share calls, notifications and app data between devices. However, even without them, MagicOS is something I genuinely enjoyed using…