Honor Pad V9 Review: Don’t Buy Until You Read THIS

We loved the Honor MagicPad 2 and that’s why we were super excited to review the brand new Honor Pad V9. But during our time with the tablet we started to wonder… Where did the OLED go? Why is the MagicPad 2 sometimes cheaper than the V9? And will it ever get updates? The pen turned out to be great. Well, we’ll look at all features of the V9 in this review.

Design and build

The Honor Pad V9 looks similar to the Honor MagicPad 2. At 11.5 inches it’s a bit bigger than most 11-inch tablets, but weighs only 475 grams. The sides measure just 6.1mm in thickness, giving the tablet an iPad air-like elegance. At least from the exterior. 

Just like the MagicPad 2, the display has very thin bezels that end with a 90° dropoff to the sides. The back is also quite standard, featuring an all-metal finish with an Honor logo and two camera rings. You can configure the V9 in either “white” or “grey” colours, which are really just different shades of silver, and overall you probably can’t go wrong with either option since the tablet looks great. 

The top of the left side features the power button, and above it a volume rocker. To us, these buttons feel a bit too rigid and cheap. There’s also no built-in fingerprint reader here. The included stylus connects and charges magnetically on the top right side of the tablet.  

The USB-C charging port sits on the right side. For some reason, only the Chinese version of the Pad V9 supports 65 Watts charging, while we in the west get the 35 Watt variant. The USB port supports USB 2.0 speeds, which means no HDMI output to an external monitor, unfortunately. 

Display and speakers

We have been recommending the Honor MagicPad 2 for quite a while now, mainly for being the cheapest tablet that comes with an OLED display. One, that is as bright as the iPad Pro. Unfortunately, Honor has used an IPS display for the Pad V9 instead. 

That’s not to say that this is a bad display. With 11.5 inches, a 2.8K resolution, 144Hz and 500 nits of brightness, this IPS panel is above average in its class. It’s still not an OLED, though. And nothing close to the Tandem OLED of the MagicPad 2.

That means you’re missing the vivid contrast, brightness, and long battery life that makes the MagicPad 2 such a great tablet. 500 nits of brightness is also not the craziest, with competitors like Lenovo’s Yoga Tab Plus getting up to 900 nits at its peak.

Still, watching a movie or show is pretty nice on this display. Just nothing outstanding.

The speakers are good. The 360 audio effect during video playback from Honor’s Imax Enhanced, which is basically a Dolby Atmos alternative, is actually really good at creating space and immersion. Obviously, having 8 speakers also helps.

It’s not the best for playing music, though. The volume gets pretty loud, but vocals sound a bit shouty and there’s just something distinctly off about how instruments feel.

Hardware and performance

Let’s start with good news regarding performance: The Honor Pad V9 is a powerful tablet. The Dimensity 8350 Elite paired with 8GB of RAM is actually a decent setup for gaming, multitasking or other demanding tasks. The problem is that cheaper tablets like the Xiaomi Pad 7 perform almost the same. 

Currently, you can only configure the tablet with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. We find this to be enough for any task you would want to do on a tablet, and the bigger bottleneck will probably be the processor anyways.

In Geekbench 6, the Honor Pad V9 gets almost identical scores as the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro – which is no wonder since they have almost identical processors. The Honor boasts a 7% faster GPU. The cheaper iPad 11th gen is double as fast in CPU single core and 250% faster in GPU tests, though. The similarly priced OnePlus Pad 2 also scores around 50% higher in CPU single core and has double the GPU score. It’s also worth mentioning that the Honor MagicPad 2, which is quite a bit faster as well, sometimes costs less than the Pad V9. 

3D Mark testing should give us an idea of the V9’s gaming prowess. In 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme, the Pad V9 performs surprisingly well, outclassing the iPad 11 by 6%. The Honor MagicPad 2 does beat the V9 by 20%. The OnePlus Pad 2 again beats the Pad V9 by 50%. Realistically, all of these tablets should have more than enough performance to play most games at max settings. 

And that seems to be the case in our gaming tests. In Genshin Impact, we hit the limit of 60FPS on maxed out settings. Wuthering Waves performs the same with 60FPS at ultra settings.

We also tried playing Fortnite with the epic preset and 100% 3D resolution and we were hitting the 60FPS limit with no issue. Playing with 90FPS is also possible with the low preset.

We’re actually pleasantly surprised by how well the tablet performs in these titles, since the Lenovo Idea Tab Pro, which performs about the same in benchmarks, was locked to 30FPS in Fortnite regardless of what we tried. Tablet gamers should be pretty happy with this device. 

Battery life

In our continuous YouTube HD video playback test, using the max brightness, the Honor runs out of charge after 7 hours and 10 minutes. This isn’t a particularly great score. Honor’s MagicPad 2 gets 13 hours, and the Samsung Galaxy S9 lasted 11 hours in the same test. Both tablets have OLED displays.

Software and Android UI

Now we get to the software. Here’s where it gets ugly, literally. Honor’s Android 15 based MagicOS 9 looks and feels, well, not great. Compared to something like iPad OS, OneUI or just stock Android, Honor makes some strange choices when it comes to user interface design.

Apps are cluttered, icons look too glossy and some interfaces just don’t look great. For some reason, Facebook, Booking.com and Tiktok also come preinstalled on the tablet, not to mention Honor’s suite of mostly useless software.

The far bigger problem is the uncertain support period for Honor tablets. So far, the Honor MagicPad 2 has received an OS update to Android 15 and will likely get 3 years of security patches. But probably no other big OS updates. And that’s for Honor’s flagship tablet. Who knows how long the Pad V9 will receive support? Sadly, Honor doesn’t share much about it and in our experience that usually means that it will get very few updates.

Xiaomi has been pretty good with this recently. And new Samsung S series tablets get 7 years of big OS updates now. The iPad 11, which is cheaper than the Honor Pad V9, will likely also get between 5 and 7 years of updates.

“Desktop” Mode

Like Xiaomi, Honor has implemented a “floating windows” mode that’s supposed to be a kind of desktop mode. And of course it works just like Apple’s stage manager, but worse. Split screen doesn’t work properly, corner snapping doesn’t exist and resizing windows is a massive pain. There’s genuinely no point in even using this function, which feels like it exists just for the sake of being there. You can’t even connect to an external monitor with HDMI with this tablet for a desktop experience anyways.

Keyboard Cover

We were able to get some hands-on experience with the Honor V9’s keyboard cover at the Mobile World Congress back when it got announced. It’s not a particularly good keyboard cover, with cheap plastic clamps that hold the tablet in place and an overall plasticky typing experience. But it works fine and is a bit better than that of the MagicPad 2. Apple and Samsung have much better tablet keyboards. But to be fair, those cost much more.

Pen and writing experience

Honor’s Magic-Pencil-3 is included as part of the package deal with the tablet and a protective cover. This sets up the V9 as a direct competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S9, so let’s see how it holds up..

There’s a couple points that make the Honor Pad V9 a solid tablet for note taking, actually. 

First, the display feels excellent to write on. Honor’s Magic Pencil comes with a pretty soft tip, which feels nice to write with but more importantly is quieter than an Apple Pencil or Xiaomi Focus Pen. Also, the inbuilt notes app is actually a good note taking app, offering a sensible sorting system that we prefer over OneNote and feels about on par with Samsung Notes in feature richness and quality.

There is also a feature in Honor notes where if you double tap any side of the stylus it automatically switches to the eraser tool, which is pretty neat. There’s no noticeable input lag either.

We do have a complaint though. Unlike the Apple Pencil Pro, which also has the double tap to erase feature, the Honor Magic Pencil’s double tap feature only works within Honor Notes but not in other third-party apps.

So, while that is a downside, the overall writing experience is great and we can imagine it to be a great buy if you’re a student who wants a tablet for handwritten notes.

Read: Ultimate iPad Buying Guide: ALL iPads Tested

Camera

Let’s get to the cameras. In good lighting, the 13 megapixel rear camera is capable of taking some decent looking pictures, but the excessive photo sharpening and processing means that this camera is best left for scanning documents. Recording 4k video at 60FPS is doable and videos look surprisingly ok. 

The 8 megapixel selfie camera can handle itself in a video call or snap a couple selfies. Recording video with 30 FPS in 1080p is supported.

Facial recognition

The facial recognition on this tablet works quickly and without problems. It’s not great at recognising your face from too far below or with a side profile, which makes it frustrating to unlock when placed on a table. A fingerprint reader would be nicer. 

Final verdict

So, overall, the Honor Pad V9 has a nice design, a pretty good performance and is actually a good tablet for handwritten notes. But the Honor MagicPad 2 has better performance and a much, much better display. If prices are similar, the MagicPad 2 is the much better choice.

With the Pad V9, all comes down to pricing. We do regret buying it at its original price of $499 because we think that’s too expensive. The better MagicPad 2 costs just as much and we also prefer the Xiaomi Pad 7 over the Honor, which is quite a bit cheaper. For a bit more you could get a Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 with better software and an AMOLED display.

Now, if you don’t care about long software support, we do think the Pad V9 can be a fantastic buy if you’re looking for a mid-range gaming tablet with a great pen. And if prices drop by at least $100. Honor does this quite often, actually. Yes, that’s a lot of “ifs”, but there’s also tons of competition in this price range.

But before you buy, make sure you read our Xiaomi Pad 7 and Lenovo Idea Tab Pro review and compare prices. The latter has a similar performance as the Honor, a much better keyboard option and it’s bigger. But the screen is a bit dimmer.