Honor 9X review

Triple camera on the back, a pop-up snapper for selfies

The Honor 9X has the same triple camera on its back as the Huawei P30 Lite. The primary is a 48MP PDAF f/1.8 snapper, joined by an 8MP fixed-focus, f/2.4 ultra-wide, and a 2MP, fixed-focus, f/2.4 depth sensor. There is also a single LED flash.

The main camera uses a Sony IMX582 48MP sensor that has a quad-Bayer array for pixel binning. The resulting image is 12MP in resolution but with less noise. You can shoot in 48MP though, and under the right circumstances (good light), you will get a seemingly native 48MP picture done by demosaicing (reconstructing by interpolation) the missing color information.

Huawei's AI is available, and it can be turned quickly on or off via a toggle on the viewfinder. It will recognize 22 categories of scenes and adjust image parameters accordingly, though the real-life effect, as a general rule, is the pumped-up contrast and boosted colors.

There is also Huawei's Night mode - it will produce good pictures, even if it has its limitations. It creates pseudo long exposures by stacking multiple frames gathering light along the way. We're talking four-second-long hand-held exposures, which would otherwise result in a blurry mess. Those are not always keepers, and you still need to have a reasonably steady hand, but you'll be getting good photos in situations you'd otherwise get none. The mode also does a remarkable job of retaining color where others would lose saturation.

The camera app

Other than that, the camera app would be familiar to anyone who's picked up a recent Huawei smartphone, which means it's messy and scattered as usual. Pro mode is available via the mode selector, and there you can adjust the parameters yourself - ISO (50 to 3200), shutter speed (1/4000s to 30s), exposure compensation (-4 to +4EV in 1/3 stop increments), and white balance (presets and light temperature).

Ever since artificially defocused backgrounds became all the rage, Huawei phones have been offering both a Portrait mode and an Aperture mode. In Aperture, you can choose the simulated aperture in the range from f/0.95 to f/16. Post shot, you can change the aperture and the focus point within the Gallery.

In Portrait mode you can enable and disable the background blur, you can change the simulated lighting, and you can also add some beautification on a scale from 0 to 10.

Image quality

The daylight pictures we shot with the main camera are good but far from the best we've seen even within Honor 9X's price bracket. The resolved detail is mediocre, as is the contrast and the dynamic range. Then there is noticeable over-sharpening across all photos. The noise levels are low, while the white balance and the colors are pretty accurate, though.

Honestly, we expected more detailed 12MP images, considering they are coming from a 48MP Sony sensor.

Honor 9X 12MP photos

As we mentioned earlier, you can opt for 48MP in Settings. It takes a second or two for a shot to be processed and saved, and you do get a 48MP image thanks via interpolation. If you scale such a 48MP photo down to 12MP, there is a chance you'd get a minor improvement in high-frequency detail, but the hassle is not worth it.

Sometimes if there is just not enough processing power for the 48MP to be finished (the phone is doing something in the background), you'd get an upscaled version of the 12MP image instead.

Honor 9X 48MP photos

The 8MP ultrawide photos are saved with automatically applied distortion correction. The resolved detail is rather low; the contrast and the dynamic range are average at best. The color presentation is a bit cooler than they were in reality.

These snaps should be appreciated for what they are - exaggerated perspective shots on the cheap - and not for their per-pixel quality.

Honor 9X 8MP ultrawide photos

Moving on to low-light image quality. The 12MP shots have good color saturation and exposure, even though most highlights will get clipped. The level of detail is far from impressive though, and there is some noticeable noise left even after some noise reduction was applied.

Honor 9X 12MP low-light photos

Huawei's Night Mode is available only on the regular camera, and its pictures are pretty good with even exposure, low noise levels, and accurate colors. It also brings back detail in those clipped highlights we mentioned, but the overall resolved detail is rather low, and we are talking oil-painting low here.

Honor 9X 8MP Night Mode photos

There is no Night Mode for the ultrawide-angle camera, and its low-light shots are rather horrible without any software enhancements.

Honor 9X 8MP ultrawide low-light photos

Once you're done with the real world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Honor 9X stacks up against other smartphones.

Honor 9X against the Huawei P30 Lite and the Xiaomi Mi 9T in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The Honor 9X has a 2MP snapper to help capture the scene depth information and should be producing some good portrait shots. Those are saved in 8MP, and indeed, they turned pretty good. The separation is done proficiently, there are no abrupt transitions, and the algorithm is smart enough not to get fooled by objects close to the face.

Sure, the photos aren't perfect, but we've seen flagships do way worse and we got more than we hoped for from a mid-ranger.

You can also use different lighting effects if that's your thing.

Honor 9X 8MP portraits

Selfies

The Honor 9X offers a 16MP f/2.2 camera on its pop-up module. The focus is fixed, as usual. If you get the distance right, and if there's plenty of light - you can get some detailed shots. Colors are very accurate here, and the contrast is nice.

Honor 9X 16MP selfies

Portrait mode is available on the selfie camera, too. You can turn the blur on and off; there's also beautification (a 0-10 setting). The subject separation is mostly hit and miss though, and we can't recommend using this feature.

Honor 9X 16MP selfie portraits

Video recording

The main camera of the Honor 9X captures videos at up to 1080p resolution with 30fps or 60fps. The ultrawide snapper shoots videos in 1080p@30fps only.

There is no electronic stabilization on either camera.

Video is encoded using the h.264 codec by default with a toggle to switch to h.265 if you prefer. That said, the bit rates with h.264 are more in line with what you'd get with the more efficient h.265 from other phones - 1080p/30fps videos get around 11Mbps, while 1080p/60fps is treated to about 17Mbps. Audio is always stereo, recorded at 192kbps.

1080p/30fps footage is quite nice with good contrast, lively colors, and above-average dynamic range, though the resolved detail is average at best. Opting for 60fps will give you even less detail, and the footage looks blurry.

The 1080p videos from the ultrawide camera lack detail big time, the colors are off, while the contrast is below average.

Here's a glimpse of how the Honor 9X compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

1080p: Honor 9X against the Huawei P30 Lite and the Honor 8X in our Video compare tool