Honor Pad 9 Review: The King of Budget Tablets?

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Let’s be honest, for years, if you wanted a tablet, you bought an iPad. It was the default choice, the Hoover of the tablet world. Android tablets often felt like the cheap and cheerful option – a bit plasticky, a bit slow, and with screens that looked a bit washed out. You bought one for the kids to splatter with jam, not for yourself to enjoy a movie on. But things are changing, and fast. Brands like Honor are stepping up to the plate, and they’re not just swinging, they’re aiming for the fences.

Enter the Honor Pad 9. On paper, it sounds too good to be true. A massive 12.1-inch screen that’s sharper than an iPad’s and refreshes twice as fast. Not two, not four, but eight speakers. A sleek metal body that feels like it should cost twice as much. All for a price that usually gets you a basic, no-frills device.

But is it all just clever marketing, or has Honor genuinely built the budget tablet we’ve all been waiting for? Is this the device that finally gives the iPad a real run for its money in the UK? We’ve spent weeks with the Honor Pad 9, using it for everything from binge-watching The Traitors on a rainy Sunday to writing emails and even attempting some gaming. This is the definitive, no-nonsense review you need to read before you decide.

Unboxing and First Impressions: Feeling Premium Without the Price Tag

The first thing you notice about the Honor Pad 9 is its weight and feel. When you pull it out of the simple white box, it doesn’t feel like a budget gadget. At 555 grams, it has a reassuring heft without being heavy, and at just under 7mm thick, it’s impressively slim.

The body is made from a single piece of aluminium, giving it a cool, smooth finish that feels fantastic in your hands. There are no creaks or flexes here; it feels solid, like it’s been carved from a single block. We’ve got the Space Grey version, and it looks smart and understated, easily blending in whether it’s on a coffee table in a London flat or a desk in a student dorm in Manchester.

What’s in the Box (and What’s Missing)

Inside the box, things are pretty sparse. You get:

• The Honor Pad 9 tablet
• A USB-C to USB-C charging cable
• A SIM ejector tool (though this is the Wi-Fi only model)
• The usual paperwork

What you don’t get is a charging plug. Like many tech companies, Honor has decided to leave it out. The tablet supports 35W fast charging, so you’ll need to buy a compatible charger separately to get the best speeds. It’s a bit of a shame, especially for a budget device where every penny counts, but it’s becoming the industry standard.

Holding it for the first time, it’s clear Honor has put the money where it matters. The build quality is exceptional for the price, easily matching tablets that cost hundreds of pounds more. It immediately makes you feel like you’ve got a bargain.

A Display That Punches Well Above Its Weight

The screen is where you’ll spend all your time, and it’s where the Honor Pad 9 truly shines. It’s a huge 12.1-inch panel, which gives you tons of space for watching movies, browsing websites, or having two apps open side-by-side.

But it’s not just about size. The quality is staggering for this price.

Sharpness and Clarity: The 2.5K Difference

Honor calls this a 2.5K display, which means it has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. That’s more pixels than the standard iPad, and you can really see the difference. Text is incredibly sharp and easy to read, photos look detailed, and videos on Netflix or Disney+ are crisp and clear. It’s a proper high-definition experience that makes everything look brilliant.

Smoothness Matters: The Magic of 120Hz

This is the killer feature. Most tablets in this price range (including the entry-level iPad) have a 60Hz screen. The Honor Pad 9 has a 120Hz refresh rate.

What does that mean in simple terms? Think of it like a flick-book. A 60Hz screen shows you 60 pictures every second. A 120Hz screen shows you 120. This makes everything you do feel incredibly smooth and responsive. Swiping through your apps, scrolling down a web page, or playing a compatible game feels buttery smooth. It’s one of those things you don’t think you need until you’ve tried it, and then going back to a 60Hz screen feels sluggish and old-fashioned. It makes the whole tablet feel faster and more modern.

A Screen That Cares for Your Eyes

We all spend too much time staring at screens, and our eyes pay the price. Honor has packed the Pad 9 with technology designed to make it more comfortable to look at for long periods.

• TÜV Rheinland Certified: It has official certifications for being Flicker-Free and having Low Blue Light (at a hardware level, which is more effective). This means it reduces the invisible screen flicker that can cause eye strain and cuts down on the blue light that can mess with your sleep.
• Dynamic Dimming: This feature subtly adjusts the screen’s brightness to mimic the natural rhythm of light, which can help relax your eye muscles.
• Circadian Night Display: In the evening, the screen can gradually shift to warmer colours, which is much easier on your eyes before bed.

These aren’t just gimmicks. After a two-hour reading session on the Kindle app, my eyes felt noticeably less tired than they would on an older tablet. For students who need to read textbooks for hours or anyone who loves to unwind with an e-book, these features are a massive plus.

Sound That Surrounds You: Eight Speakers of Awesome

Usually, the speakers on budget tablets are an afterthought. You get two tinny little things that are just about good enough for a podcast. Honor has gone in the complete opposite direction. The Pad 9 has eight speakers. Yes, eight.

Four on each of the long sides work together to create a genuinely impressive soundscape. When you’re watching a movie in landscape mode, the sound feels like it’s coming from all around you. Explosions in action films have a real thump, and dialogue is always clear and easy to understand.

Honor has also included its bidirectional vocal enhancement technology. This is designed to cancel out background noise and boost voices, which is brilliant for video calls on Zoom or Google Meet. It makes you sound clearer to the person on the other end, and it helps you hear them better too.

For a device that’s perfect for media consumption, this speaker setup is a game-changer. You don’t need to immediately reach for your headphones to enjoy a film, which is a rare treat on a tablet this affordable. They’re loud, clear, and offer a surprising amount of bass.

Under the Hood: Performance for the Price

So, it looks and sounds great, but can it keep up? The Honor Pad 9 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 processor. This is a modern, mid-range chip built using an efficient 4nm process, which is tech-speak for “it’s good on battery life.”

It’s paired with a healthy 8GB of RAM. On top of that, Honor’s RAM Turbo technology can cleverly use up to 8GB of the storage space as extra memory, giving you a potential total of 16GB. This is great for keeping lots of apps open in the background without things slowing down.

Real-World Performance: What Can It Handle?

For everyday tasks, the Honor Pad 9 is perfectly smooth.

• Browsing and Social Media: Juggling a dozen tabs in Chrome, scrolling through Instagram, and checking emails is a breeze. The 120Hz screen makes it all feel snappy.
• Streaming Video: Watching 4K videos on YouTube or high-quality streams on Netflix is flawless. The processor handles it without breaking a sweat.
• Multitasking: With MagicOS, you can easily run two apps side-by-side. Watching a lecture on one side while taking notes on the other works brilliantly, with no noticeable lag.

What About Gaming?

This is where you see the compromise for the price. The Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 is a capable chip, but it’s not a powerhouse.

• Casual Games: Titles like Candy Crush, Royal Match, or Subway Surfers run perfectly. They’re smooth and responsive.
• More Demanding Games: For graphically intense games like Genshin Impact or Call of Duty: Mobile, you’ll need to lower the settings. You can get a playable experience, but you won’t be running them on the highest graphics. You might notice the occasional stutter when things get really busy on-screen.

For the average user who does a bit of light gaming, it’s absolutely fine. But if you’re a serious gamer looking for the best performance, you’ll need to spend more money.

The MagicOS Experience: Android, With a Twist

The Honor Pad 9 runs MagicOS 7.2, which is Honor’s version of Android 13. The most important thing to know is that since splitting from Huawei, Honor devices have full access to Google Mobile Services. This means you get the Google Play Store, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, and all the other apps you know and love, right out of the box. There are no hoops to jump through.

The user interface itself is clean and easy to navigate. If you’ve used an iPad before, you’ll feel right at home. The control centre, notification shade, and even the folder designs feel inspired by Apple’s iOS. This isn’t a bad thing; it makes for a very user-friendly experience.

Useful Features

• Honor Connect: If you have an Honor phone, you can seamlessly share your phone’s network, drag and drop files between devices, and sync notifications.
• App Extender: This lets you run two instances of the same app side-by-side, which can be really useful.
• Multi-Window: You can easily open apps in split-screen or floating windows, making multitasking a doddle.

Out of the box, our review unit was on Android 13, but it prompted us to install two updates straight away, bringing it up to MagicOS 8.0 based on Android 14 with the latest security patches. It’s great to see that Honor is keeping the device up to date.

All-Day Battery Life (If You’re Patient)

Inside the slim frame is a massive 8300mAh battery. Honor claims this is enough for 11 hours of local video playback, and in our testing, that claim holds up.

With mixed usage – a couple of hours of Netflix, some web browsing, checking emails, and a bit of reading – the tablet easily lasted a full day. For lighter use, you could probably stretch it to two or even three days. It’s a proper “all-day” battery, meaning you can take it out with you without worrying about finding a plug socket.

As we mentioned, it supports 35W fast charging, but you’ll need to supply your own compatible charger. With a powerful enough plug, it takes around two and a half hours to charge from 0 to 100%. This isn’t super fast by modern standards, and some users have noted it can feel slow, but if you plug it in overnight, it’s not a problem.

Cameras: Good Enough for a Video Call?

Let’s be realistic: nobody buys a 12-inch tablet to be their primary camera. The cameras here are functional, not fantastic.

• Rear Camera (13MP): In good light, it can take a decent photo of a document or a quick snap of something you want to remember. But it struggles in low light, and the photos lack the detail and colour of a modern smartphone.
• Front Camera (8MP): This is the more important one. It’s perfectly positioned for video calls in landscape mode. The quality is clear and more than good enough for work meetings on Teams or catching up with family on WhatsApp.

Think of the cameras as tools for utility – scanning, video calls – rather than for creating memories. For that, they do the job just fine.

Who Is the Honor Pad 9 For? A British Perspective

So, who should be buying this tablet in the UK? We see a few key groups.

• The Student: Heading off to university or college? The Honor Pad 9 is a fantastic choice. The large screen is great for research and writing essays (with an optional Bluetooth keyboard), and the eye-care features are perfect for late-night study sessions. The excellent speakers and screen make it a brilliant entertainment device for chilling out in halls. Its price makes it accessible on a student budget.
• The Family: It’s a perfect living room tablet. The kids can play games and watch their shows, while parents can use it for online shopping, recipes, or catching up on the news. The build quality is solid enough to withstand family life, and it’s affordable enough that you won’t have a meltdown if it gets a few knocks.
• The Media Lover: If you primarily want a tablet for watching Netflix, BBC iPlayer, and YouTube, the Honor Pad 9 is unbeatable for the price. The combination of that huge, sharp, smooth screen and the eight-speaker sound system delivers an entertainment experience that rivals tablets costing three times as much.
• The iPad Sceptic: Do you look at Apple’s prices and think, “There must be a better way”? This is the tablet for you. It offers a premium experience, a fantastic screen, and great sound for a fraction of the cost of a new iPad. It proves that you don’t have to compromise on quality to get a good price.

The Competition: How Does It Stack Up in the UK?

The budget tablet market is getting crowded, but the Honor Pad 9 has some clear advantages over its main rivals.

Feature	Honor Pad 9	Apple iPad (10th Gen)	Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+
Price (approx.)	£199	£349	£239
Display Size	12.1 inches	10.9 inches	11 inches
Resolution	2560 x 1600 (2.5K)	2360 x 1640	1920 x 1200
Refresh Rate	120Hz	60Hz	90Hz
Processor	Snapdragon 6 Gen 1	A14 Bionic	Snapdragon 695
RAM/Storage	8GB / 256GB	4GB / 64GB	4GB / 64GB
Speakers	8 Speakers	2 Speakers	4 Speakers
Battery	8300mAh	~8600mAh	7040mAh
Build	Aluminium	Aluminium	Aluminium

As you can see, the Honor Pad 9 offers a bigger, sharper, and smoother screen, more RAM, more storage, and double the number of speakers compared to its closest rivals, often for a lower price. While the iPad’s A14 Bionic chip is more powerful for heavy-duty tasks and gaming, for media consumption and everyday use, the Honor Pad 9’s spec sheet is incredible for the money.

The Final Verdict: Is the Honor Pad 9 the Best Budget Tablet You Can Buy?

After extensive testing, the answer is a resounding yes. The Honor Pad 9 isn’t just a great tablet for the price; it’s a great tablet, period.

Honor has focused on the things that matter most to the majority of users: the screen and the speakers. The result is a device that provides a truly premium media experience. The build quality feels like it belongs in a much higher price bracket, the battery life is solid, and the performance is more than enough for everyday tasks.

Of course, it’s not perfect. The lack of an included charger is annoying, and serious gamers might find the processor a little underpowered. The cameras are merely adequate. But these are minor complaints when you consider the sheer value on offer here.

For under £200, you are getting a package that embarrasses the competition. It’s a stylish, powerful, and immersive device that is perfect for entertainment, study, and casual use. It’s the new king of the budget tablets and the easiest recommendation we’ve made all year. If you’re in the UK and looking for a new tablet without breaking the bank, stop looking. You’ve found it.

Further Reading

For those who wish to delve deeper into the world of tech reviews and tablet comparisons, we recommend these highly respected resources:

• TechRadar: A leading UK-based publication for technology news and reviews.
• Expert Reviews: Known for its rigorous, independent lab testing and in-depth analysis.
• GSMArena: An authoritative source for detailed device specifications and comparisons.