The Eye-Friendly Tablet that Might Replace your iPad

The HONOR Pad V9 enters the market as a sort of mid-premium tablet offering from the company. Well, what does “mid-premium” mean? Essentially, it’s a step down from their flagship offering, which would be the Magic Pad 2 12.3. The HONOR Pad V9 sports the Dimensity 8350 Elite processor, with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage on-board. It also has a stunning 11.5-inch display. But is that enough to make the HONOR Pad V9 your next tablet? Let’s find out in our full review.

HONOR Pad V9 Ultimate Review: Design and Build Quality

Perhaps my favorite aspect of the HONOR Pad V9 is the weight. It’s just 475 grams, which still sounds pretty heavy when you compare it to smartphones, however, that is nearly 70 grams lighter than the Magic Pad 2, which I’ve been using for the past few months. And honestly, you can really tell the difference. Of course, the Pad V9 is also smaller at 11.5 inches, but it does make a difference. HONOR is using a metal unibody on the Pad V9, which looks great. My only complaint here is that the edges of the screen are actually fairly sharp. Not so sharp that they will cut you, but I would like to see HONOR make this a bit more rounded. If you put a screen protector on, it’s going to become even sharper.

HONOR has included quad speakers on the Pad V9, which look and sound great. So you’ve got two on the left and two on the right (when holding in landscape mode). There’s a USB-C port on the right-hand side, as well as the power on the left and volume at the top. Which emulates the iPad, but that’s not a bad thing. The bezels also look pretty thin on this tablet, which is something we can really appreciate. They aren’t so thin that it is hard to hold or play games with the Pad V9, but thin enough that it makes the entire tablet smaller.

When you compare the HONOR Pad V9 to the Pad 9 that launched last year, one of the biggest differences you’ll notice is the placement of the camera on the back. It’s no longer centered but in the top left-hand corner. There are actually two round modules on the Pad V9, with one being for the camera and the other for flash and other sensors. It does take a bit of getting used to since the camera module is thicker than the flash module, as you’d expect, instead of both of these circles being the same thickness. I still believe that tablets are large enough and that we don’t need camera bumps on them. It’s not like we’re putting 1-inch sensors on these tablets.

Overall, the hardware quality on the HONOR Pad V9 is exactly as you’d expect for an HONOR tablet. It’s built incredibly well and does feel very premium in the hand.

HONOR Pad V9 Ultimate Review: Display

HONOR has outfitted the Pad V9 with a stunning 11.5-inch display, with 88% screen-to-body ratio, and a 144Hz refresh rate. Honestly, I’m going to say that this is the best display on a tablet right now, even better than what Samsung has on its Galaxy Tab S lineup. And part of the reason for that is that HONOR has achieved TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light Certification and Flicker Free Eye Comfort Certification, allowing the tablet to protect your eyes very well. It’s something that gets hidden in the spec sheet, but this is a very big deal. I’ve been able to use this tablet at night, in dark rooms without it hurting my eyes like my iPad Pro, or Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra tend to do. 

The company claims that the brightness is up to 500 nits on this display, which doesn’t seem like it’s that high, but this is incredibly bright. Now you might not be able to use this outdoors as much as you’d like, but for working at a coffee shop or in your office, it’s going to be just fine.

HONOR Pad V9 Ultimate Review: Performance

Inside the HONOR Pad V9 is the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Elite chipset, which is a chipset that I have not had the privilege of using before. And I must say, I’m pretty impressed with how well it has worked out so far. It’s a step down from the Dimensity 9400 that is used in some phones like the vivo X200 Pro and OPPO Find X8 series, but in a tablet, it has performed really well with the 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The Dimensity 8350 Elite is an octa-core chipset that can hit speeds of 3.35GHz. So speed is no problem here.

Over the past few weeks of using this tablet, I have had no problem with the performance. In fact, even when playing games, it has stayed pretty cool. Of course, a big part of that is because of the much larger surface area inside a tablet versus a phone. But we’ll touch more on the temps in the benchmarks portion.

The speakers are magnificent on the HONOR Pad V9, of course, you expect that with quad speakers on a tablet. Watching content on this tablet with the stunning display and the quad speaker array makes it a very enjoyable experience. I’ve actually taken to watching content more on the Pad V9 versus my OPPO Find N5 or iPhone 16 Pro. The only downside to the speakers here is, that there is no Dolby Atmos. Instead, it does have DTS:X, and HONOR has created their own Sound Spatial system, which is enabled by default. This helps provide three-dimensional sound during audio and video playback, and it really does make a difference compared to the HONOR Sound Stereo.

Benchmarks

Just like with smartphones and other things that we review here at AndroidHeadlines, we do also put tablets through a number of benchmarks. Including Geekbench 6, 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, and a video export test with Capcut.

First up is Geekbench 6. Here, we are comparing the HONOR Pad V9 to the HONOR Pad 9 (its predecessor) which has the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 inside, , the HONOR Magic Pad 2 12.3 (which is the company’s current flagship tablet) with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 inside, and the Apple iPad Pro M4. So far, the iPad beats just about everything in every benchmark, which is why we include it in our tablet comparisons here. Of course, it’s important to keep in mind that the Apple M4 chipset is also used in laptops and desktops, so it should outperform everything.

The HONOR Pad V9 performed quite well. We can tell that this is a very small step down from the Magic Pad 2, but a pretty major step up from the Pad 9 from last year. With a single-core score of 1,380, a multi-core score of 4,128, and a GPU score of 8,065. But then when we look at the iPad Pro, it’s really no match, in any of these scores.

Next up is 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This test is built to push your device to the absolute extreme. This is going to push it to its hottest temperature possible, and basically shows how well it thermal throttles, or how hot the tablet can get. Of course, with the Pad V9 being an aluminum unibody design, you don’t want it to get too hot.

In our testing with this benchmark, we again saw a pretty sizeable increase in the scores compared to the HONOR Pad 9. And just a smidge lower than the HONOR Magic Pad 2 12.3. In fact the difference between the Pad V9 and Magic Pad 2 12.3 was about 6%. However, it appears that the Pad V9 does do better with thermals here, as the stability score was quite a bit higher (still lower than Pad 9, however) at 85%, versus the Magic Pad 2 12.3 being 69%. And none of these came close to the iPad Pro with M4.

Finally, we do a video export test. As some do tend to do some video editing from their tablets, typically Shorts or TikTok videos, so this test involves importing a 4K 60-second video into Capcut. We then export it at 4K30 (because some tablets don’t allow for 4K60, so we use 4K30 to keep it fair), and then time how long it takes to export. The iPad Pro M4 does it in record time, and actually has me thinking we need to change this test. As it scored 2.03 seconds. The HONOR Pad V9 did quite well, again like with the other benchmarks, it’s just behind the Magic Pad 2 12.3, but well ahead of the Pad 9.

The Pad V9 was able to export the video in 14.32 seconds. That is just about 2 seconds slower than Magic Pad 2 12.3, but about 19 seconds faster than the Pad 9, or about twice as fast. So what we can see from these benchmarks is the Dimensity 8350 Elite is a very nice upgrade from the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 from its predecessor.

Thermals

As mentioned, one of the thermal tests that we perform on review units is also a benchmark. That’s 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. Since we’ve never encountered anything that can bring a device to as high of a temperature as this benchmark, this is the first thermal test we perform.

After the test finishes, we measure the temperature, going over the whole device (front and back) and recording the hottest temperature. Which was a mere 98.4 degrees. Now this was warmer than the HONOR Pad 9, but cooler than the Magic Pad 2 12.3 and the iPad Pro M4. This likely means that the Magic Pad 2 and iPad Pro are allowed to go to hotter temperatures, since it does have more space to dissipate heat.

The next test we perform is with Genshin Impact. Now we don’t perform these tests back to back, we let the device cool down to at least room temperature before doing the next test. With Genshin Impact, we play it at max settings and max brightness for an hour. At the end of the hour, we measure the temperature. And again, the temperatures are in-line with what we expected. The iPad Pro was the hottest, followed by the HONOR Magic Pad 2, Pad V9 and then the Pad 9. All of which were under 100 degrees, so nothing to worry about here.

Finally, we do have a camera test, which isn’t as important on a tablet, because I doubt many people are going to hold a tablet for a 10-minute video recording. But here we go. We record video at 4K60 for 10 minutes, taking temperatures at 5-minutes in and at the end of the 10 minutes. And yes, again, the iPad Pro was the hottest, with the Pad 9 being the coolest. The temperatures were very low, actually, since these tablets do have a lot of surface area to dissipate heat.

HONOR Pad V9 Ultimate Review: Battery life and charging

Battery life on the HONOR Pad V9 is pretty decent. Now, many of us tablets differently from our phones, I typically use a tablet for a few hours a day, or less. So with that said, the Pad V9 was able to last me almost an entire week before needing to recharge. This included playing some League of Legends: Wild Rift, watching content on Netflix and YouTube (among others), browsing the web and even replying to emails. Averaging around 2-3 hours each day. Now, unfortunately, HONOR’s software does not give you screen-on time for the entire battery cycle, only for the day. But I’d venture to guess that I was getting around 8-10 hours of screen-on time, all told.

On the charging front, I was a little disappointed. Perhaps this was because I got used to all of the fast charging phones I’ve reviewed lately, but when I plugged in the HONOR Pad V9, and it told me a full charge would take 2 hours and 36 minutes, I thought for sure something was wrong. Even though I was using the included charger. Then I looked at the spec sheet, it only does 35W. Which is fine, for a tablet like this, that’s perfectly fine. That’s going to allow the battery to last longer – which is a 10,100mAh cell. And again, you’re likely not using the tablet as much as you would, your phone.

Benchmarks

For benchmarking the battery, we perform the same test on phones and tablets. Where we charge the tablet to 100% and then let it charge a bit longer, to make sure it is fully at 100% (since some devices will indicate 100% before it is actually fully charged). Then load up a YouTube video that is 24 hours long, play it full-screen at about 200 nits brightness, to make it as apples-to-apples comparison as possible. Then unplug the tablet and let it play, until it drops to about 1% so we can record the time.

The HONOR Pad V9 had a time of 15 hours and 20 minutes. That is actually lower than the HONOR Pad 9 which was 16 hours and 54 minutes. This could come down to the display, or the efficiency of the processor. But it is interesting to note. The Magic Pad 2 12.3 and iPad Pro were also above 16 hours. The time for the Pad V9 is not bad at all, as that means an average of 2-3 hours per day of usage, will get you through a work week or longer.

Now on the charging front, we plug the tablet into the included charger (or one that can output its max charging speed) after the battery benchmark is finished and record the time to get to 100%. The HONOR Pad V9 had a time of 2 hours and 38 minutes. That’s about 40 minutes longer than the Pad 9 did, however, it is also about a 20% larger battery capacity at the same charging speed. I’d like to see it charging faster than 35W, but HONOR is apparently saving that for it’s high-end tablet, as the Magic Pad 2 12.3 does have 66W charging. And was able to charge in a little over an hour and a half.

HONOR Pad V9 Ultimate Review: Software

When it comes to HONOR’s software, MagicOS, I have not been a huge fan of their software on their smartphones. However, I actually quite like MagicOS on the Pad V9. This tablet comes with MagicOS 9.0, which is based on Android 15. It offers the Magic Lock Screen, which is quite nice and does allow you have almost endless customization of your tablet. With different wallpapers, for both the lock screen and the home screen. HONOR has also included its 3D Avatar, which is a cutting-edge feature that will allow users to craft personalized, AI-generated avatars, that really feel unique.

One of the more used apps on a tablet for myself is Notes, and the HONOR Notes app allows users to seamlessly sync their notes across devices, from their Magic V3 to the Pad V9 and even to the Magicbook Art 14. And it does all of the things you’d come to expect from a notes app, like the ability to do handwritten notes, voice-to-text, and much more. HONOR does a great job of making it feel like an actual note-pad, where you can choose from traditional paper as the background for a handwritten note.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a tablet without the ability to do multi-window or have apps side-by-side to really take advantage of that 11.5-inch display. HONOR makes this really easy to do, as well. Just tap on the short bar at the top of the screen when an app is open, and you can choose to open that app in a small window as a pop-up or have it take up half the screen, and choose another app for the other half. This works very well on a tablet like this since it is much wider. This is coming from someone that has been using foldable for the past few months.

If you’re invested in the HONOR ecosystem, the Pad V9 is a really good option. As there is HONOR Connect included, which makes tethering easy, transferring files smooth and seamless, and you can even get your notifications on your other devices. However, as someone who does not have an HONOR laptop, I wasn’t able to test most of those features.

The software on the HONOR Pad V9 is really good, I’m actually quite impressed with it. It’s helped make the Pad V9 one of my favorite Android tablets, to be quite honest.

HONOR Pad V9 Ultimate Review: Camera

The rear camera on the HONOR Pad V9 is a 13-megapixel shooter, with a 8-megapixel front-facing camera. And honestly, on a tablet, I tend to use the front-facing camera far more often. Since I do use tablets for Zoom calls, Google Meet calls, and such. But the rear camera can do a good job of taking photos in a pinch. It’s not going to replace your phone, which most likely has a better camera on the back. But it can get you a few pics if you need it.

The front-facing camera is quite good for taking selfie pics or for video calls, it was actually a bit surprising at how good it was, for an 8-megapixel shooter. However, you’re likely not choosing a tablet based on its camera.

Should you buy the HONOR Pad V9?

Going into the review of the HONOR Pad V9, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Having used the Magic Pad 2 12.3, which I quite liked, I knew the Pad V9 was going to be a step down. However, I wasn’t sure how much of a step down it would be. I was pleasantly surprised with how good this tablet has been, and it might just become my new favorite tablet.

You should buy the HONOR Pad V9 if:

• You want a good tablet at a lower price.
• You want a smaller tablet then the 12-inch or larger behemoths.
• You want a tablet with a brilliant display that can also protect your eyes.

You should not buy the HONOR Pad V9 if:

• You want a larger tablet with more features.
• You want a tablet with an OLED display.