HONOR Pad V9 review: it's thin, lightweight with support for all popular media formats

HONOR reached out to me and asked if I was willing to take a look at its Magic Pad V9 tablet (not to be confused with the HONOR Pad 9), which became available for purchase in the UK and Europe back in December 2024.

Before we get underway, here is a disclaimer: HONOR provided a sample without any review pre-approval.

HONOR Pad V9

As can be seen from the specifications, there's no groundbreaking hardware involved here. The Dimensity 8350 came out in Q4 of last year and sits slightly above the just-over-three-year-old Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 in terms of performance. There's no SIM support and no fingerprint scanner onboard either.

Another thing important to note is that the price given above is for the 256GB, 8GB RAM version; currently, there are no prices for the other storage options.

What's in the box

The packaging is standard fare. The cardboard box includes:

• Tablet x1;
• Charger (Dependent on market) x1;
• Type-C Cable x1;
• Quick Start Guide x1;
• Warranty Card (Dependent on market) x1

Warranty

The HONOR Pad V9 also gets you 24 months of warranty, for the charger that's six, and the included cable has just three months of coverage.

The packaging is quite nice and minimal; there's not much to write about it. On sliding off the box cover, the tablet is there covered with a protective plastic sleeve; under it are two cardboard compartments with a charger (yay!) and a USB Type A to Type C cable, which is a bit ancient in 2025!

Design

The tablet itself has an all-glass front with a NIL Nano-topography process that results in a mostly fingerprint-free display. I reached out to my contact to ask what type of glass protection is used (for example, the Honor Magic7 Pro uses NanoCrystal Shield), and I will update the review with that information when I hear back.

The shell is made from aluminum and feels quite premium to hold, albeit a little slippery, and at only 475 grams, it is really light too. If this became my mainstay tablet, I would definitely be looking for a trifold-style case for an easier grip and to prop it up while viewing media content.

As far as durability goes, the product page claims it has "Industry 1-st SGS Gold Star Five-Star Whole Machine High-Strength Certification." Well, I did a bit of testing, trying to see if it made any creaking sounds on (light) bend/flexability attempts, and I am happy to report that no such noises were heard.

On the top, you will find the power button and two speaker grills; the right side is completely smooth, and on the bottom, there are another two speaker grills (although the HONOR Pad V9 has eight speakers in total) with a type-C USB port in the middle.

On the left side at the top is the volume rocker, flanked with two holes, and another a bit below it; These probably serve as microphones, further down there is what looks like a fingerprint sensor too, I am not sure what that does, as there is no diagram on all the different physical features available other than guidance on the power button, volume control, and USB port in the online Quick Start guide. There is a full user manual available online, but this mostly focuses on Magic OS 9 use.

One thing that surprised me is that this tablet did not come with a screen protector, and that's a good thing! Usually, when I receive a phone or tablet for review, it comes preinstalled despite the fact the device already has Gorilla Glass style protection, which protects it from scratches! I don't even have a screen protector on my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Why buy a $1500 device just to stick a cheap bit of plastic over a premium display that already comes with scratch resistance?

According to the specs, the screen is certified by TÜV SÜD for low blue light, which means that it protects your eyes in the dark and prevents eye fatigue during long sessions.

Setting up and usage

Upon powering up the tablet and going through the initial Android setup steps, you then eventually get to the Home screen, which is powered by Magic OS 9. This means the dual pull-down is active for notifications shade from the left of the screen, and you can get to settings by pulling down on the right top side.

The HONOR Pad V9 comes with Magic OS 9.0.0.115 based on Android 15 preinstalled. The product page does not provide information about the length of support for Magic OS and Android Security updates, so I have reached out to my contact for those details and will update when I hear back.

I decided to do an HONOR Clone, so I did not land on the stock Home screen after setup. It already included some of my apps that were copied over from the Honor Magic7 Pro phone that I reviewed earlier this year.

Gallery: Honor Clone

However, as far as bloat is concerned, it includes a few HONOR apps. As you can see from the last image above, it is about as much as you can expect, such as with other rival offerings like OneUI, which includes its own gallery and Store apps, among others. As has become the norm on tablets, there are no physical keys to control the tablet, but you still get offered two different styles of gestures, with swipe being the default offering and the "old fashioned" on-screen gesture keys.

On the audio front, the HONOR Pad V9 is certified for DTS X and High-res Audio, supporting lossless formats over Bluetooth 5.2 such as LDAC, which is actually pretty great for media consumption. The octa-speaker setup sounded quite full and, in my opinion, was not "tinny," which is a common trait on the tablets I have ever tested. However, I would probably prefer to wear headphones when watching a movie on them, anyway.

Media

The MediaTek Dimensity 8350 also supports 4K AV1 decoding, which can be seen as future-proofing streaming capabilities, but one thing that surprised me is that the HONOR website does not mention that the tablet also fully supports HDR.

The HDR support can be seen above, or actually maybe not since it is likely due to a bug where HDR gets disabled whenever there is overlaid content such as the "Stats for nerds" info panel, whenever using the volume control, which briefly places a volume slider overlay, and even when taking a screenshot.

In addition, the screen supports DCI-P3 color gamut and 10-bit color, and it also boasts IMAX Enhanced certification. It basically means that it adheres to the standards in the visual and audio requirements to accurately play IMAX content, which is (at least) available through Disney Plus. In any case, the MediaTek chip can direct play all of the popular formats.

Benchmarks

Because people like benchmarks, I started off with GFXBench, which mainly tests the GPU.

As you can see from the above images, the High Level test came out at 1,876 frames, Low Level at 1,801 frames, and the average number of search points per MB came in at 3,271 mB PSNR.

Next up, I ran Geekbench 6, which returned a Single-Core score of 1,417, and a Multi-Core score of 4,348. That's comparable to the 10th gen 12.1-inch iPad (with a chart I found) that came out in 2022 with Apple's A14 Bionic; in fact Tom's Guide goes one step further with a direct comparison to it.

Last but not least, the AnTuTu benchmark tests came in at 1,234,770, which "defeats" 37% of users and places it 15th in the overall ranking if we adjust it for our unvalidated score.

Cameras

As I have said in previous reviews I've done, I am no camera buff; I'm a point-and-shoot kind of guy, but it is clear to me that smartphone makers seem to want to concentrate a hell of a lot on camera quality, sometimes at the expense of other features, and here is also no exception. On the rear of the HONOR Pad V9, we have an impressive-sounding 31 MP rear shooter with a f/2.0 aperture and auto focus.

Gallery: HONOR Pad V9 Camera

Battery

The tablet came with 96% charge when I turned it on two days ago, and after doing a few benchmarks and taking some pictures using the rear camera and watching some YouTube videos, I still have 81% left with an estimated two and a half days left. This battery will get you some serious uptime before you need to juice it. A nice feature is that it also supports reverse charging, so you can ensure it is full before going to work and use it to top up your main smartphone if needed.

On HONOR's product page, they do not make many claims about the battery life aside from the claim that it will get you "80 Days in Standby," this is also all also backed with 35W Fast charging (in Europe), which is definitely a good feature to juice the 10,100 mAh battery.

I watched a two-hour 4K HDR10 HEVC movie with TRUEHD 7.1 audio on it, and it consumed 24% of the battery. So you could easily watch three two-hour films back to back and still have enough juice to check your emails and social media.

Conclusion

I found the display to be quite vibrant, despite "only" being an IPS LCD, 500 nits of brightness is also passable to be able to watch a movie in HDR, and I did not have too much trouble viewing the screen under direct sunlight. It also ticks the boxes on media consumption support and for being well under half a kilo.

What's not to like? Well it does not support cellular, for things like a data SIM so perhaps €499.90/£329.99 is a bit of a big ask, but with the automatic €50/£70 savings €449/£329.99 sounds quite a bit better for this light and thin premium looking tablet if you consider the older, but comparable 12-inch 10th gen iPad can be bought for around the same price these days.

Where to buy, and coupon!

As well as in the U.K. and parts of Europe, the HONOR Pad V9 is also available in parts of the Middle East and Africa, as well as China, but sadly not in the U.S. as of writing.

In Europe, €50 savings are automatically applied to the shopping cart, and in the U.K, you can save £70 by applying a voucher on checkout, bringing the price down to £329.99.