Honor Pad X8 review (2023) excellent value for money

The Honor Pad X8 looks a bit like a big phone. Some companies might even make a 10in phone, and we can’t wait to see how people try to hold it up to their ears. The Pad X8, on the other hand, is a tablet, and a pretty one at that. It’s very thin, but it’s not as light as you might think when you pick it up. The front-facing camera is on the wide edge, and there are speakers on each end. This makes it a good device for streaming and video calls.

Honor Pad X8: Description

The Honor Pad X8 came out in September 2023 and is a tablet that doesn’t break the bank. It’s a good choice for people who want a simple tablet for everyday tasks like surfing the web, watching videos, and playing simple games. The 10.1-inch IPS screen on the Pad X8 has a resolution of 1920×1200 pixels. The screen is sharp and easy to see from different angles. But the brightness isn’t very high, so it can be hard to see the screen when it’s bright outside. A MediaTek Helio P22T processor runs the Pad X8, which also has 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage.

For the price, the tablet works well and can handle most everyday tasks without any lag. It’s not strong enough, though, to do hard things like play high-end games or edit videos. The Pad X8 has a 5MP camera on the front and a 5MP camera on the back. The quality of the photos is average, but they are good enough for video calls and taking photos. The 5100mAh battery in the Pad X8 gives it a good amount of battery life. With light use, the tablet can easily last a full day on a single charge.

Honor Pad X8 Specifications Table

The Honor Pad X8 is a good tablet that works well and doesn’t cost too much. It is a good choice for people who want a simple tablet for everyday use. But it’s not the best choice for people who need a powerful tablet for tasks like playing games or editing videos.

Design & Build Quality

The materials and build quality of the Honor Pad X8 are interesting. Even though it looks like the whole tablet is made of metal from the outside, only the back panel is made of metal. The rest of the tablet is made of plastic. Even so, the build feels solid and well-made as a whole. The tablet is slim, with a thickness of only 7.55mm and a weight of 460g. It’s important to note that some expected features are glaringly missing. For example, even though headphone jacks are common on cheap tablets, the Honor Pad X8 doesn’t have one. The device also has a USB-C 2.0 port, which unfortunately can’t be used to hook up an external monitor.

But it makes up for that with a MicroSD card slot, which adds to its already large storage capacity. When it comes to the cameras, a 2-megapixel webcam that faces forward is in the middle of the top. It works for video chats, but it doesn’t take very clear pictures or videos. The 5-megapixel main camera on the back of the tablet does a little better, but it’s still not great. Even though it might not take great pictures, it’s good enough for casual photography.

Honor Pad X8: Features

The 1920×1200 screen resolution makes HD content sharp, and the IPS panel handles colors well. It displays video and photos well. Settings has ebook and eye care modes, the former of which turns the screen greyscale to make reading easier. The screen is reflective, so dark details can be lost. Entry-level models have few standout features. Due to its symmetrical front, with the camera on the long edge, the tablet is easy to pick up wrong. No fingerprint reader, face recognition, and raise/tap-to-wake are off by default, but the Settings app fixes that.

Although the device had an accelerometer, raise-to-wake did not work. Honor’s MagicUI 6.1, based on Android 12, has a macOS-like dock at the bottom for recent apps and is nice for browsing. Since there’s no home button, you must use touchscreen gestures to return to the home screen and open the app switcher, but you get used to it.

The Smart View multitasking mode lets three apps share the screen, but the screen is too small to take advantage of it. The 5MP rear camera lacks a flash. The tablet isn’t ideal for serious photography, but it’s fine for quick memories or silly moments. The device’s 2MP front camera is halfway down its long edge. Zoom’s approach makes sense, but you’ll likely cover it with your hand when you pick up the tablet, hindering face recognition.

Honor Pad X8: Display

The screen on the Honor Pad X8 is 10.1 inches and has a screen-to-body ratio of more than 80%. The resolution of the screen is 1920 x 1200 pixels, and it can show 16.7 million different colors. It has a TFT LCD screen, which isn’t as good as the AMOLED screens on some other tablets, but it’s still a good screen for the price. The screen is clear and bright, so you can use it to watch movies and TV shows, read books, and look at websites. It is also good for gaming, though some users may find that the refresh rate of 60Hz is not high enough for some games.

There are also a number of features on the screen that make it easier to use. For example, it has TÜV Rheinland Low Blue Light Eye Protection Certification, which means that it gives off less blue light, which can be bad for your eyes. The screen also has a feature called “Adaptive Brightness,” which changes the brightness of the screen automatically based on how bright the room is. Overall, the Honor Pad X8’s screen is a good value for what you pay for it. It is clear, bright, and easy to work with.

Honor Pad X8: Cameras

The Honor Pad X8 has one 5MP camera on the back with an aperture of f/2.2 and a 2MP camera on the front with the same aperture. Both cameras can record 30 frames per second of 1080p video. The back camera can take basic photos when there is enough light, but it has trouble with low light and complicated scenes. Even less is possible with the front-facing camera, which is best used for video calls. But they won’t be able to compete with the cameras on tablets that cost more.

In terms of image quality, the cameras on the Honor Pad X8 are about average. The back camera can take good pictures when there is enough light, but the colors are often wrong and the details aren’t very clear. When there isn’t enough light, the images are noisy and fuzzy. The front camera is also just okay. It can take good selfies when there is enough light, but the pictures are usually blurry and the colors aren’t very true. When there isn’t much light, the selfies are blurry and noisy.

Overall, the cameras on the Honor Pad X8 are not very good. They are simple and don’t do much better than average. But they should be good enough for the occasional video call and picture. If you want a tablet with a better camera, you will have to pay more money for it.

Honor Pad X8: Software

Let’s talk about the software next. The Honor Pad X8 comes with Android 12 and Magic UI version 6.1 already installed. This is Honor’s own interface, which still looks a lot like Huawei’s. They used to be the same company, but now they are not. I like the Magic UI, but it’s not as good as, say, Samsung’s OneUI. There are also some apps made by the company already on the phone, but they are not as good as apps like Samsung Notes.

On the other hand, it’s great that Google Play is already installed. Apps like Chrome, YouTube, and Gmail are among them. Yes, that is how an Android tablet should work, but it doesn’t always work that way. Because of the trade war between the US and China, the Play Store is not on any new Huawei or Honor Android devices. It is also not on any older Honor devices. But it’s back again now. It’s not clear how often Honor will release updates for the Pad X8, which is a shame.

Honor Pad X8: Performance

There is a MediaTek MT8786 chipset and 4GB of RAM inside the Honor Pad X8. This chip has eight cores, but only two of them are high-performance. The other six are ‘efficiency’ cores, which are made to use less power. On top of that, the performance cores are only clocked at 2GHz, while the efficiency cores are clocked at 1.8GHz. It’s not a very fast package, but it works fine. There is 64GB of storage on the phone itself, of which about 45GB is available to the user.

However, you can add a Micro SD card using the hybrid SIM tray. This doesn’t matter as much as it might because the Pad X8 is made for streaming and working in the cloud, and the 5MP main camera won’t make big files. However, it can shoot 1080p/30 video, which might take up some space on your storage. But if you start downloading a lot of apps and games, the internal storage will fill up fast. When it comes to games, that MediaTek chipset doesn’t have the power to handle fast-paced, graphically intensive games.

However, it can handle some shooters, especially those that let you change the graphics mode. Apps like Google Docs work fine on it, and you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to make typing easier, but the screen size is a little small for this kind of work. The sound quality from the two built-in speakers is surprisingly good, which may be because they were put on opposite sides. They sound about as good as you’d expect from a cheap tablet. Don’t expect room-filling bass, but they’re fine if you don’t have your Bluetooth headphones with you.

Honor Pad X8: Battery Life

The Honor Pad X8 has a 5100mAh battery, which is a little less than what the average 10-inch tablet can hold. Even so, the Pad X8 did well in our tests when it came to battery life. In our test of offline video playback, the Pad X8 lasted for 9 hours and 40 minutes with the brightness set to 200 nits. This is a good result, but the iPad (2021), which was also tested, lasted 11 hours and 28 minutes longer. In our Wi-Fi web browsing test, the Pad X8 lasted 11 hours and 30 minutes at 200 nits brightness.

This is a great result, and it suggests that the Pad X8 is a good choice for people who want to use their tablet to do a lot of web browsing. In general, the battery life of the Honor Pad X8 is good. It can be used all day without having to be charged again. But if you want a tablet with the longest battery life possible, the iPad (2021) is a better option.

Honor Pad X8: Pros and Cons

The Honor Pad X8 is a good tablet for people just starting out. It has a 10.1-inch Full HD screen, four speakers, and a long battery life. Performance is good enough for everyday tasks, but not great for games or applications that require a lot of power. Overall, it’s a good deal for the price.

Final Words

When something costs less than £200, you can’t expect too much from it. For its purpose, which is to do light computing tasks and watch streaming media, you get something that is powerful and easy to use. However, it can’t handle 3D games very well. The Honor Pad X8 is a great all-around tablet that can go anywhere and has a long battery life if you take it with you. Its main selling points are that it looks slim and sleek and is cheap. A 10in screen is fine for reading articles or books, and the IPS panel in the Pad X8 is good for watching movies if you have no other choice. Unless you add a large Micro SD card, there isn’t much storage on board, so you’ll need an internet connection to stream from.