Honor 9 review: Light catcher

Performance

The Honor 9, surprise, surprise, employs the same Kirin 960 chip found inside the P10 and Mate 9. It is developed in-house by Huawei's chipmaker HiSilicon and has been around for some time now. Even with a few months of history behind it, the Kirin 960 is still one of the most powerful smartphone chips, and we are glad to welcome it in our testing lab once again. Most of the Honor 9 models come with 6GB of RAM, great for multi-tasking.

The main processor within the chipset consists of a quad-core Cortex-A73 cluster clocked at 2.4GHz, plus a quad-core array of the familiar Cortex-A53 cores, ticking at 1.8GHz. The Cortex-A73s boast a 30% power efficiency compared to the previous A72 design, while delivering improved performance at the same time.

We kick off the benchmark routine with some CPU-only loads in GeekBench. A single A73 core performance is on par with the new S8 series and very close to the new Kryo 280 cores by Qualcomm.

GeekBench 4.1 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8
  1991
• OnePlus 5
  1932
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  1929
• Honor 9
  1876
• LG G6
  1767
• Oppo R11
  1596
• Sony Xperia XA1
  887

GeekBench 4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5
  2031
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  2026
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  1945
• Honor 9
  1940
• Huawei P10
  1927
• Honor 8 Pro
  1853
• LG G6
  1733
• Huawei Honor 8
  1720
• Oppo R11
  1629
• Sony Xperia XA1
  800

But it's the multi-core tests where the four A73 units really shine and show as big potential as the latest Snapdragon and Exynos processors.

GeekBench 4.1 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  6719
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  6656
• OnePlus 5
  6604
• Honor 9
  6457
• Oppo R11
  5777
• LG G6
  4175
• Sony Xperia XA1
  3611

GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5
  6404
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  6175
• Honor 9
  6149
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  6132
• Huawei P10
  6069
• Honor 8 Pro
  6036
• Oppo R11
  5510
• Huawei Honor 8
  5447
• LG G6
  4209
• Sony Xperia XA1
  3554

The Kirin 960 choice of graphics, the Mali-G71MP8, is an enormous improvement over the previous generations of HiSilicon chips and is flagship worthy. It performs beautifully on the Honor 9's 1080p screen, and is beaten only by the latest Adreno GPU inside the Mi 6 and OnePlus 5.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  41
• OnePlus 5
  40
• Honor 9
  33
• Huawei P10
  30
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  23
• Honor 8 Pro
  15
• Sony Xperia XA1
  15
• Oppo R11
  15
• LG G6
  12
• Huawei P9
  11
• Huawei Honor 8
  11

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Xiaomi Mi 6
  25
• OnePlus 5
  24
• Huawei P10
  16
• Honor 9
  14
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  13
• Oppo R11
  8.6
• LG G6
  8.5
• Honor 8 Pro
  7.9
• Sony Xperia XA1
  7.9
• Huawei P9
  7.1
• Huawei Honor 8
  6.9

This offscreen test can give you a better understanding of the Mali G71MP8's real power. Unfortunately, the GPU came last among the current flagship crop, though still a worthy contender.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5
  41
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  41
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  36
• Honor 9
  33
• LG G6
  26
• Huawei P10
  22
• Honor 8 Pro
  21
• Oppo R11
  15
• Huawei P9
  10
• Huawei Honor 8
  10
• Sony Xperia XA1
  6.2

GFX 3.1 Car scene (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8
  25
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  25
• OnePlus 5
  24
• LG G6
  16
• Honor 9
  15
• Huawei P10
  14
• Honor 8 Pro
  11
• Oppo R11
  8.6
• Huawei P9
  6.5
• Huawei Honor 8
  6.3
• Sony Xperia XA1
  3.7

Still, while looking at the synthetics, real-life gaming is definitely a pleasant experience on the Honor 9.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8
  42370
• Huawei P10
  39433
• OnePlus 5
  38844
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  38541
• Honor 8 Pro
  30853
• LG G6
  30507
• Honor 9
  29398
• Oppo R11
  20350
• Huawei P9
  16942
• Huawei Honor 8
  16592
• Sony Xperia XA1
  9714

Moving on to some all-round performance benchmarks, we find that the Honor 9 shines bright in BaseMark OS II tests. It's just a notch behind the top dogs in the chart, mostly attributed to the inferior GPU.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5
  180331
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  177326
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  174435
• LG G6
  143639
• Honor 9
  143583
• Honor 8 Pro
  128755
• Huawei P10
  126629
• Oppo R11
  118677
• Huawei P9
  98069
• Huawei Honor 8
  94892
• Sony Xperia XA1
  60707

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• OnePlus 5
  3601
• Xiaomi Mi 6
  3547
• Samsung Galaxy S8
  3376
• Honor 9
  3072
• Huawei P10
  2910
• Honor 8 Pro
  2865
• Oppo R11
  2386
• LG G6
  2126
• Huawei Honor 8
  2099
• Huawei P9
  2068
• Sony Xperia XA1
  1351

The bad news first - there is GPU performance throttling triggered automatically to prevent overheating. Huawei wasn't that successful in cooling the Honor 9's chipset as it was with the P10. It sure was easier with the all-metal P10, but the large pieces of glass around the Honor 9 left the tiny frame as the only material capable conducting the heat outside the device. The panels won't go unpleasantly hot, but the phone may eventually throttle under pressure.

The good news is, you won't notice this throttling. While the benchmark scores revealed this process, the Honor 9 won't experience hiccups in games. Or even if the phone hits the breaks on the GPU, it's powerful enough for you not to notice what's happening under the hood. And we can live with that.