More than smartphones, HONOR Philippines is also beefing up its tablet line-up to expand its ecosystem. But just like most of their phones, their tablets are targeted towards users on a budget, so they are more attainable by more Filipinos.
The HONOR Pad 9 tablet wants to provide a big-screen mobile experience, whether it’s for entertainment, work, or school. But is it actually worth it or should you look elsewhere? Let’s find out in our HONOR Pad 9 review.
HONOR Pad 9 Specs
- Android 13, MagicOS 7.2
- 12.1-inch 2.5K IPS display, 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution, ~249ppi
- 120Hz refresh rate, 500-nits peak brightness
- TUV Rheinland certified
- 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 octa-core processor
- Adreno 710 GPU
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB internal storage, non-expandable
- 8-megapixel front camera
- 13-megapixel rear camera, LED flash
- 8 speakers, No headphone jack
- WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band
- Bluetooth 5.1
- USB-C
- Dimensions: 278.2 x 180.1 x 7mm
- Weight: 555g
- Colors: White, Blue, Gray
- 8,300mAh non-removable battery, 35W charging
Design and Build Quality
As a tablet with a 12.1-inch, the HONOR Pad 9 is undeniably large. It’s 278.2mm tall and 180.1mm wide, but like most tablets, it’s also thinner than most phones at 7mm. The dimensions are passable, especially for the price. The front is quite large due to the bezels, but I’m not expecting them to be ridiculously thin here.

It may be huge, but its thinness and light weight make it very comfortable to carry around. The tablet only weighs 555g, which is about 2x lighter than most ultra-portable laptops.
Plus, the HONOR Pad 9 has a premium build with the rear panel made of aluminum. It gave the tablet a chic, albeit fingerprint-magnet and slightly boring look. The unit that I have is the dark grey variant, which I’ve already seen in a lot of tablets over the years. Nothing new here, but tablet colors are usually boring, aside from the recent iPads.

The only attraction on the back is the rounded camera island for the single 13-megapixel rear shooter, with a notch on the bottom that highlights the “AI Camera” hardware.
In addition, the aluminum frame made the device fairly sturdy. I did a couple of subtle test bends, and I didn’t hear any creaks.

On the front, it has the said 12.1-inch screen. Again, it doesn’t have the thinnest bezels I’ve seen, but the slight thickness allows you to better grip the device without your fingers accidentally touching the screen.

Holding the device horizontally, you get the lock/power button and volume controls on top. The physical buttons feel very well-made. It’s incredibly clicky and tactile.

On the left side, you can find two speaker grills, which is a similar setup on the right. The USB-C port is alone in the middle.

You also get two drivers at the bottom. I like how all eight speakers were placed well apart from each other for better stereo separation.

Oh, and the device also ships with the Smart Bluetooth Keyboard. It snaps easily to the tablet, protects all the sides securely, and is made of a leather-like material so it doesn’t easily slip off your hands or a table.
There are magnets above the keyboard, so the tablet stands in an angle that’s common for watching content or typing. The keys are soft but clicky. There’s also an LED indicator on the top right.

The Smart Keyboard also has its own battery, which you can charge via the USB-C port on the right side, sitting next to the power switch.
Display and Sound Quality
The HONOR Pad 9 has a 12.1-inch 2.5K IPS display with a 2560 x 1600 pixel resolution for 249 pixels-per-inch, 120Hz refresh rate, 500-nits peak brightness, and TUV Rheinland certified for eye safety.


Like on HONOR phones, you can adjust the color temperature and the Eye Comfort as well as the Sleep settings. The refresh rate is dynamic, but you can stick to 60Hz (standard) or 120Hz (High) if you want to. A video enhancer feature is also here, but it only works on a limited number of apps.


The display quality is fine, but nothing spectacular. The IPS panel provides nice colors and contrast, but nothing like an OLED panel. The smoothness of the 120Hz refresh rate is felt, but only in the native interface.
Sadly, there’s no HDR support, but you can stream HD videos on platforms like Netflix. Screen sharpness is enough, even if you’re a reader or a writer that’s always dealing with small texts.

The screen also gets bright, which helps in eliminating reflections if you’re outdoors as it doesn’t have an anti-reflective coating.
One of the main features I liked about the HONOR Pad 9 is the eight speakers. Thanks to the large screen, they are separated well enough so you can hear the stereo separation, making games and movies more immersive.

The sound quality itself is pretty good. The highs are nice to the ears and the bass is present. The volume, as expected, can get pretty loud so you can enjoy it with friends.
Hardware and Performance
The HONOR Pad 9 is powered by a 2.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 octa-core processor, with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of non-expandable storage, and an Adreno 710 GPU. It’s not the best chipset you can find on a midrange tablet, but for this particular price point, it suffices.
HONOR Pad 9 Benchmark Scores




Basic apps for day-to-day usage ran smoothly: Facebook, Instagram, web browsing, and watching content on YouTube and Disney+.
You can easily run two apps side-by-side without a hitch. In fact, 8GB is more than enough and I wish the interface had more multitasking features to make use of the hardware.






While it was not made for heavy gaming, it still managed to handle some triple-A titles I threw at it. Genshin Impact ran fine under the default setting it was set to, which is in Medium. Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt 9 were playable at the highest available settings. Other esports titles like Mobile Legends, League of Legends: Wild Rift, and PUBG Mobile were also smooth under High settings.
I noticed it struggle a bit on Farlight84. From the default HD settings, I had to dial it down to the lowest graphics quality, but even then, there were still occasional frame drops.
Game | Graphics Settings |
Call of Duty: Mobile | • Graphics Quality: High • Frame Rate: Max |
Farlight84 | • Graphics Quality: Smooth • Frame Rate: Very High • Resolution: Medium |
PUBG Mobile | • Graphics Quality: HD • Frame Rate: High |
Genshin Impact | • Graphics Quality: Medium (Default) |
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang | • Graphics Quality: High • Frame Rate: High • HD Mode: On |
Asphalt 9: Legends | • Visual Quality: High Quality • Frame Rate: 60 |
Other HONOR reviews
Software and User Interface
The HONOR Pad 9, like many HONOR products announced a few months ago, still ships with Android 13-based MagicOS 7.2. Don’t worry, though, as it is already secured to get the next update from HONOR, the better-late-than-never Android 14-based MagicOS 8.0.

When it comes to multitasking, you can have two apps running side-by-side at a time. You can add two more as floating windows. If you plan to open more apps, there’s a multi-window menu that you can launch from the right side of the screen. Only two apps are allowed at a time, as the succeeding apps will be minimized into a small icon, which you can easily get back to just by tapping it. Resizing the side-by-side windows and moving around the floating windows was seamless.

Access to the most-used apps can be found on the bottom right of the home screen. The one on the bottom left is customizable.

Other than those minor additions, the MagicOS UI on this tablet is pretty similar to its smartphone counterpart, so I’m hoping the Android 14-based version does a better job of taking advantage of huge screens from tablets and foldables like the HONOR Magic V2.
A couple of things worth noting, though. I liked the built-in HONOR Docs app, which is a hub for all your files and lets you create word documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and convert a couple of formats to PDF. The WPS app is also built-in if you prefer using that.


The HONOR Pad 9 has a big 256GB of non-expandable storage. For those worried, only about 22GB are used for the System and “Others.” With 6 triple-A games installed and plenty of photos saved, I still had a healthy 144.8GB of space left.
As mentioned earlier, it also has 8GB HONOR RAM Turbo feature, which adds 8GB of virtual RAM to boost performance. But unlike others, the Pad 9 doesn’t let you adjust the VRAM allocation. It can’t be turned off as well. But in case you’re experiencing slowdowns, you can open the System Manager app and tap Optimize. This cleans up not only the RAM, but also the storage, checks the battery, does a quick virus scan, and a few more.


As a budget tablet, it didn’t get to have a fingerprint scanner. So, you’d only rely on the face unlock, which worked reliably during our tests. You can register up to 5 faces in case you share the tablet with your family.
HONOR still uses the Microsoft SwiftKey for this tablet. The keyboard is usable under portrait mode, but it is uncomfortably small and crammed in landscape.


So, if you plan on typing a lot, it’s best to use the keyboard case, which you have to manually pair via Bluetooth like any other keyboard accessory. The integration with the tablet is not as smooth as, say, an iPad with an Apple-branded keyboard.
Whenever you try to type something, the on-screen keyboard will pop up and will not retract unless you start typing the keyboard. You also have to turn off the keyboard’s Bluetooth to avoid accidental presses if you want to fold it back and type on the screen itself. To be honest, it’s kind of annoying but considering its relatively low price tag, it’s understandable that there some compromises. A software update could probably fix it, though.
Cameras
The HONOR Pad 9 tablet has a single 13-megapixel camera on the back and an 8-megapixel sensor on the front for selfies.

Image quality from the main camera is decent for the price. You won’t be taking your next best Instagram photo here, but it captures enough details when you need to use it. Colors are passable but look a bit washed out, especially compared to a similarly priced smartphone. Contrast could be better at times and the dynamic range is quite bad.






The 8-megapixel shooter is usable. Selfies are sharp, which means it’s also great for video calls. It does struggle in tricky lighting scenarios, but that can be said for most affordable Android tablets out there. Dynamic range is bad, and the overall exposure can be easily ruined.
If you’re the type to use filters, you’ll be glad to know that portrait mode with face beauty modes also work here.




Battery and Charging
The HONOR Pad 9 has an 8,300mAh battery, which is relatively small for a 12.1-inch tablet. What’s worse, it only ships with a 35W charger, which already feels slow even on a 5,000mAh battery.


That said, battery life is nothing to write home about. In our 1080p YouTube video loop test, it lasted about 9 hours and 42 minutes. That’s probably enough for most iPad Kids today, just make sure their screen time is regulated.
It also lasted 7 hours and 8 minutes in PCMark’s battery test, which is a loop of different workloads until the 100% charge drops to 20%. The test was run with the WiFi and Bluetooth off and the screen brightness and volume at 50%.

The bottom line is, if this is your primary mobile device, you’d be charging it every day. And make sure you have the patience to charge it as the 35W adapter, as expected, takes a long time to fill it up.
In our charging test, a 15-minute charge only provided 15% of juice. That’s a 1% charge per minute. A full 100% charge took about 1 hour and 53 minutes. See the full charging test results below:
- 15mins: 0-15%
- 1hr: 58%
- 1hr 30mins: 85%
- 1hr 40mins: 94%
- 1hr 53mins: FULL
Verdict
The HONOR Pad 9 is a solid option if you want a tablet for school, work, or video streaming. The huge display, responsive CPU, and built-in document apps let you write thesis papers, create presentations, and do spreadsheets in one compact device. Get it with the keyboard case and you’re up for a faster and more comfortable typing experience.

That same display, paired with the incredible eight-speaker setup, also makes the Pad 9 a great companion for binge-watchers or those who just love to enjoy a good movie on a big screen with a great sound.
However, I find it odd that a 12.1-inch tablet like this only comes with an 8,300mAh battery. There’s also the slow 35W adapter. If you hate charging often, this is not it.

Still, there’s no denying that the pros outweigh the cons. So, if your budget is limited to the sub-Php15,000 range, you really can’t go wrong with the HONOR Pad 9.
HONOR Pad 9 pricing and availability in the Philippines
The HONOR Pad 9 has an SRP of Php15,999 in the Philippines. For those who want the keyboard case, the bundle retails for Php17,999. Get it at HONOR physical stores and partner retailers nationwide, and online via Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop.
Pros
- Thin and sleek design
- Immersive eight-speaker setup
- Snappy performance for day-to-day tasks, occasional gaming
- Built-in apps for productivity
Cons
- Small battery for a large tablet
- Slow charging for today’s standards