Honor Pad 10 Review: Outstanding Value?

With the Honor Pad 10, a new mid-range tablet has been released that offers a large display, keyboard cover, and stylus at a very affordable rate. We watched a lot of Netflix and YouTube on it, played Fortnite, worked with the accessories, and compared it to the Xiaomi Redmi Pad Pro. That one was our best value pick from last year.

In many respects, the Pad 10 impressed us, but it also failed in some tests. So, is it enough to be our next value pick and can it replace the Redmi Pad Pro? That’s what you’ll find out now and we’ll start with the design.

Design & Build Quality

The Honor Pad 10 has an aluminum unibody and weighs 525 grams. It is available in cyan or gray. The body feels premium, with convincing haptics, solid buttons, no creaking, and a well-integrated camera island. For an affordable tablet, the build quality is really good.

Display

We get a 12.1-inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 2560 × 1600 pixels in a 16:10 format. The refresh rate is up to 120 Hz.

According to Honor, the brightness reaches 500 nits. In everyday use, the display impressed us with good viewing angles, really good brightness, and it’s very sharp. Compared to the Redmi Pad Pro, for example, the display is noticeably brighter, and the colors are also slightly more balanced.

Read: Top 7 Best Tablets with OLED Display

Speakers

It has six speakers, three on each side. The speakers lacks a bit of bass, but overall, they sound really solid and pleasant. The stereo effect is strong, even from a greater distance. This makes the tablet very suitable for movies, series, and YouTube.

Hardware & Performance

Inside the Pad 10 sits a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chip. Unfortunately, there are no different configuration options. The tablet always comes with fixed 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. In the Geekbench 6 benchmark test, the single-core performance is slightly above average compared to similar tablets.

For example, the GPU performance of the Honor Pad 10 is significantly better than that of the Redmi Pad Pro, while the single-core and multi-core tests show very similar results.

For everyday tasks like browsing the web, office work, or YouTube, as well as most games, this is absolutely sufficient. Multitasking with split-screen or multi-window mode ran smoothly at all times during the test, even when using several apps at the same time.

In the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme benchmark test, the Pad 10 actually performs very well and even beats the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE by a few points. It leaves its predecessor, the Honor Pad 9, far behind and also strongly outperforms the Redmi Pad Pro.

Gaming

In practice, Fortnite runs on epic settings at 40 to 55 FPS without drops. We recommend activating the gaming mode in the Honor Gaming Hub, which noticeably improves gaming performance.

PUBG also ran smoothly and was fun, and Wild Rift also ran without problems. We were even able to play Once Human very smoothly with medium graphics settings.

Yes, it may not be a high-end gaming tablet, but for most Android games, it really delivers solid performance.

Software

It comes with Android 15 and MagicOS 9. Honor promises two Android updates and four years of security updates. This is fine for a more affordable tablet, even though it can’t compete with Samsung or Apple’s update promises.

In addition to some AI features, such as automatic subtitle generation for all displayed content or writing assistance, the gallery offers AI video creation that automatically creates short videos from selected clips.

The gallery also offers a built-in video editor that can definitely keep up with Premiere Rush or Instagram Edits in terms of functionality and works very well with phone videos and photos.

Battery Life

It has a 10,100 mAh battery. That one can be charged with up to 35W. 35W is not much, but with this battery capacity, it is acceptable.

Nevertheless, we wonder why an even larger battery was not installed, because such a large, bright LCD really eats up battery life.

In our battery test, the Honor Pad 10 reached 6.5 hours when playing an HD YouTube video at maximum brightness.

A rather weak result, but still an improvement compared to its predecessor. The Honor Pad 9 only reached 5 hours.

In real life we feel like the battery lasts quite a bit longer than this test shows but that’s also because we usually didn’t use it at max brightness.

Unlocking

Unfortunately, there is no fingerprint sensor. Instead you can unlock it with facial recognition using the webcam. This works very well in daylight, with small weaknesses in the dark.

Connectivity

The Honor Pad 10 has a USB-C 2.0 port and it doesn’t have a microSD slot and no headphone jack either. Also you can get it as a WiFi version only, there’s not 5G support.

Stylus

We ordered the Pad 10 together with the Honor Choice Pencil. It is a rather light plastic stylus that charges via USB-C and pairs via Bluetooth with the press of a button. This also works reliably.

We cannot confirm the stated latency of under 2 ms in our review. There is a noticeable delay, especially in note-taking apps like Noteshelf 3.

Also, the button functions do not work in every app. Writing worked better in Nebo, and switching to the eraser by double-pressing was also possible here.

Overall, the stylus does not feel high-quality, the button is wobbly, and the tip is loose, but it is fine for occasional notes. For heavy writers, we rather recommend alternatives like the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite or Galaxy Tab S10 FE.

Keyboard

It’s a different story with the keyboard, the Smart Bluetooth Keyboard. It must also be charged separately and connects via Bluetooth. During setup, we had problems with pairing. After successful connection, however, it worked smoothly and without noticeable latency.

The keyboard is comfortable to type on and well-built. However, it is inconvenient that the tablet, keyboard, and stylus must all be charged separately.

Read: 6 Best 8-Inch Mini Tablets Review & Comparison | 2025 Edition

Cameras

On the front and back, there is an 8-megapixel camera (f/2.0) each. Image quality is fine in good light, but noticeably noisy in low light. The front camera is positioned on the long side, which is ideal for video calls. For snapshots or photographing documents, the camera quality is fine but not more.

Honor Pad 10 Review: Final Verdict

Considering its inexpensive price, Honor delivers a strong overall package with the Pad 10:  A large, bright 120 Hz display, good processor, solid speakers, and you can often get a good bundle with keyboard and stylus.. The build quality is also pretty good for its price.

Downsides are its cameras, battery life, and missing connectivity options — such as no microSD slot, only USB 2.0, no headphone jack, and no 5G option.

The Honor Pad 10 can be a pretty good work and entertainment tablet. We especially recommend it for watching Netflix and YouTube, browsing, and office apps.

If you want a really good stylus, however, you are better off with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite 2024 or the Galaxy Tab S10 FE. And if you want a gaming tablet, you should go for the Xiaomi Pad 7 or the iPad 11, which has significantly better performance.