Honor MagicPad 2 review

Display

The Honor MagicPad 2 features a 12.3-inch OLED screen with 3,000 x 1,900 pixels or 290ppi density. The panel supports up to 144Hz refresh rate, up to 4320Hz PWM dimming, and it is HDR10 compliant.

Furthermore, the screen offers 10-bit color depth and up to 1,600nit of peak brightness.

Honor also offers a handful of eye-protecting features under the Eye Comfort Display umbrella. In addition to the standard high-frequency PWM dimming and limiting blue light emissions, Honor is pioneering Defocus Eyecare - a feature that tackles the issue of near-work-induced myopia (nearsightedness).

Near-work-induced myopia is a naturally occurring phenomenon where people temporarily struggle to focus on objects further away after they've been staring for long enough at an object close by (like a book or a screen). It's said that doing so can contribute to developing permanent myopia or it can worsen a pre-existing myopic condition.

Honor is pioneering the Defocus Eyecare feature (aka AI Defocus Display), which gradually defocuses everything by adding either blue or yellow along the object edges. The feature is handy if you are at risk of developing the condition and you spend a lot of time focusing on the screen, like when reading or watching videos, and it's available in some commonly used apps like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Kindle, Wattpad, etc.

In our tests, the display could reach a maximum manual brightness is 643 nits, while the maximum automatic one is 684 nits. Reducing the size of the white patch allows the brightness to go north of 1,000 nits.

The minimum brightness we measured on white color was 2 nits.

The screen supports up to 144Hz refresh rate. There are four options - Dynamic, Standard (up to 60Hz), Medium (up to 90Hz), High (up to 144Hz).

Honor's software does not use Android's integrated refresh rate notification, but a reworked version. It shows the maximum refresh rate, but not the minimum. Meaning we can confirm that both Dynamic and High draw the Android OS and non-gaming apps with 120fps, while games and benchmarks are allowed to go as high as 144fps.

What we cannot confirm the minimum refresh rate when the screen is idling, but some apps report that 60Hz is the minimum possible.

Finally, the screen supports HDR10. YouTube, Netflix and other streaming apps recognize the table and offer HDR10 streaming right out of the box.

Battery life

The Honor MagicPad 12.3 is powered by a 10,050mAh battery, which should be enough for some pleasing battery times. The slate scored a very good Active Use Rating of 9:42h with solid times across the call, video and game test, but an average web result.

Charging speed

The Honor MagicPad 2 supports 66W SuperCharge. Smart Charge and Smart Battery Capacity options are available to help you extend the lifespan of your battery.

We used the provided original charger for our test and we captured 22% of charge in 15 minutes, 35% - in 30 minutes, while a full charge took 106 minutes - not that fast, but no slouch either.

Speakers

The Honor MagicPad 2 has a system of eight speakers, placed under a total of our grilles (2x2 on each short side). The speakers support Spatial Audio provided you have proper content.

If you sign up for a service that delivers IMAX Enhanced content (Disney+ is one), you would also get to enjoy what they call IMAX Sound because the tablet is certified to support it.

These eight speakers scored an Excellent mark on our loudness test. And the audio quality is indeed amazing in person, with deep and rich sound across the board.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.