HONOR Pad X9 Review

HONOR has been on a roll when they released the HONOR 90 LITE, X5 Plus, and the X6a. For this article, we’ll be checking out their newest tablet, the HONOR Pad X9.

Let’s see what’s up with this smart tablet from HONOR in this review. 

Design and Construction

The HONOR Pad X9 has a metal frame with a matte back. In landscape, the HONOR logo is seen in the middle while the rear camera is on the upper right. The Pad X9 comes in Gravity Gray.

Below the camera lens is a space with the text “AI Camera” which, to me, feels like something else could have gone there. For instance, another camera or an LED flash could have taken that spot.

For I/O from the horizontal orientation, it features six speakers found on the right, left, and bottom sides, while the volume and power button can be found on top. The USB Type-C port is located on the right side.

Display and Multimedia

The HONOR Pad X9 sports an 11.5-inch TFT LCD display that features a 120Hz refresh rate and a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels that can achieve a peak brightness of 400 nits.

Viewing social media and watching videos on this display is a great experience as the colors are pretty good out of the box. The reproduction is vibrant and it showcases details in dim videos very well.

As for sound quality, you can listen to anything without having to worry about the audio being too soft. With its six speakers, the overall sound that comes out of the Pad X9 is loud and clear.

Camera

Going to the cameras, at the rear it features  a 5MP sensor with a f/2.2 aperture for the front and rear cameras. Noise can easily be seen when taking photos and videos with this tablet. 

It’s grainy and I wouldn’t recommend using this as your main camera, but the quality should be sufficient enough for video calls. 

Check out some sample shots that we took for you to see:

Performance and Benchmarks

The Pad X9 runs on a Snapdragon 685 chipset which features an Adreno 610 GPU. Don’t expect to play games at the highest graphical settings with this tablet as I’ve experienced a few stutters and lag when running Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact even at their lowest of settings.

The device has 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. With HONOR’s OS Turbo, RAM can be expanded by an additional 3GB.

We ran the device through our usual benchmarks and here’s what we got:

AnTuTu V10.0.7: 333,074
PCMark Work 3.0: 8,401
GeekBench 6 CPU Single: 475
GeekBench 6 CPU Multi: 1,545
GeekBench 6 GPU Vulkan: 570

OS, Apps, and UI

The HONOR Pad X9 is operated by MagicOS 7.1 based on Android 13.  HONOR and Huawei  users will feel very familiar with this layout and UI.  It’s very much in the vein of its Chinese competitors and it isn’t that bad!

Pre-installed apps like Netflix and Booking.com are in the device, but you can simply uninstall them if you have no use for them.

Both the Google Play Store and HONOR’s App Market are available to install any app you need.

It can run up to four apps through multiple windows so multitasking with this device will not be a problem for most users. 

Battery and Connectivity

The HONOR Pad X9 comes with WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1. For the battery, it’s powered by a 7,250mAh battery.

No charging speed has been specified by HONOR, but from my experience, it took about two hours and thirty minutes to charge the device fully.

Charging isn’t the fastest out there, but running video loop test where we replay a 1080p video at 50% brightness, 0% volume, and in airplane mode resulted the tablet lasting for 20 hours and 43 minutes.

Conclusion

The HONOR Pad X9 is priced at PHP 11,990USD 204INR 17,321EUR 195CNY 1,488 and is available in Shopee 100, Lazada 65, TikTok Shop 35 and Honor’s physical stores 135.

It may come with a magnetic keyboard case. You do have to charge the keyboard separately though.

Overall, it’s a decent tablet to be productive with, general social media use, and for media consumption. Take note, it is not the best for gaming and taking photos, though.

What do you think of HONOR’s new tablet? Let us know in the comments below.

What we like:

• Color reproduction is great
• Decent display
• Speakers are loud

What we didn’t like:

• Less than average camera
• Mediocre chipset
• Lag may occur over time

HONOR Pad X9 specs

11.5-inch 2K IPS LCD display @ 2000 x 1200 pixels, 120Hz refresh
Qualcomm Snapdragon 685 chipset
Qualcomm Adreno 610 GPU
4GB RAM (+3GB extended memory)
128GB internal storage
5MP f/2.2 rear camera
5MP f/2.2 selfie shooter
Wi-Fi 5,802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.1
USB Type-C
Six Hi-Fi speakers surround sound
MagicOS 7.1 based on Android 13
7,250mAh Li-Ion battery
267.3mm x 167.4mm x 6.9mm
~499 g
Space Gray