Honor Pad 8 review

Large display, but a bit low on the ppi

The Pad 8 has a 12-inch display in what's seemingly the hottest 5:3 aspect ratio (or 15:9 for easier comparisons). The resolution is 1,200x2,000px, and the pixel density works out to 194ppi - decent but hardly the sharpest around. It's an IPS LCD panel with no HDR support, but Honor says it can display 1 billion colors.

The refresh rate is 60Hz, like on most tablets, but there are already alternatives with 90Hz panels (Redmi Pad).

When it comes to brightness, we measured the modest 392nits of max output, with no boost in bright ambient conditions. Contrast is decent at a little under 1500:1, but there's a notable contrast shift if you view the screen off-axis.

Color reproduction is on the cool side in the default state, but we fiddled with the color wheel and got very good accuracy for our set of sRGB test swatches.

While there's no HDR support on the Pad 8, the Widevine L1 certification does allow for FullHD playback on Netflix. YouTube, meanwhile, tops out at 1080p60.

Display settings

Honor Pad 8 battery life

With a 7,250mAh capacity battery inside and a 12-inch display on the front, the Pad 8 is slightly disproportionately equipped if endurance is a top priority- it's a relatively large screen with a relatively small battery. Then again, a 12-inch tablet is perhaps less likely to leave the house than a 10-ish-inch one so a charger will always be close by.

We clocked under 10 hours of offline video watching and a little over 11 hours of Wi-Fi web browsing at our standard brightness level of 200nits.

We don't calculate tablet endurance ratings as our formula for phones takes standby battery draw into account. Applying the same formula for tablets with their larger batteries doesn't make sense because their standby power draw is minimal, so we focus on the active screen-on tests instead.

Charging speed

With such so-so longevity, charging speed is really important unless you're okay being tied to the wall often. It's not a record-breaking performance we're getting out of the Honor Pad 8, but we'd say the 35% at the half-hour mark and just under 2 hours for a full charge are quite respectable numbers in the tablet world.

The Honor Pad 8 does not support reverse charging - it's keeping its 8,000mAh to itself.

30min charging test (from 0%)

Higher is better

• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  35%
• Honor Pad 8
  35%
• Realme Pad X
  30%
• Xiaomi Redmi Pad
  25%
• Oppo Pad Air
  25%
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
  18%

Time to full charge (from 0%)

Lower is better

• Apple iPad mini (2021)
  1:57h
• Honor Pad 8
  1:57h
• Realme Pad X
  2:00h
• Xiaomi Redmi Pad
  2:21h
• Oppo Pad Air
  2:25h
• Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE
  3:05h

Speaker test

The Pad 8 has an 8-speaker system with 4 separate drivers for bass and 4 for treble. The speakers are distributed evenly on either side of the tablet (when in landscape) and produce stereo sound.

Bottom speakers • Top speakers

The Pad 8 posted an 'Excellent' score for loudness in our test and did so with nicely balanced output and a good presence in the low end.

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.