Honor MagicPad 2 Review: Shooting for the stars

The best feature of the Honor MagicPad 2 is hands down its display. This 12.3-inch OLED panel. It has a resolution of 1920×3000 pixels, resulting in a pixel density of 290 PPI, and can go up to 144 Hz. These metrics put the Honor MagicPad 2 on top of both the Galaxy Tab S9+ and the iPad Pro 13 (2024).

There are also some Honor-specific display features onboard, namely the AI Defocus Display, Pusle Width Modulation (PWM) technology, Circadian Night Display, and Dynamic Dimming. The first one helps with nearsightedness through some clever defocus tech.

The PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) dimming normally produces flicker; instead of controlling the current to dim the organic diodes, PWM just switches them on and off really fast. The higher the frequency, the less perceptible the flicker is, and we have 4320 Hz, one of the highest in the industry. Honor (and the TÜV Rheinland certification body) says it's basically flicker-free.

The Circadian Night Display filters blue light according to the time of the day, potentially helping you release the proper levels of melatonin and fall asleep easily.

Let's see how this panel handles our display tests.

So, let's talk about the camera. Most people don't buy a tablet to take pictures with. But a good camera can still be handy for things like video calls, scanning documents, or snapping a quick recipe.

The Honor Pad 9 has a decent 13MP back camera and a 9MP front camera. They're not going to win any awards, but they should get the job done. Just check out the sample photos to see if they're good enough for you.

The Honor MagicPad 2 comes with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset onboard, and that little "s" in the name is pretty important. Don't be tricked into thinking that this is some overclocked version of the Gen 3. It's actually a completely different architecture, featuring 8 cores: one fast Cortex-X4, slightly underclocked at 3 GHz, compared to the regular 8 Gen 3, four Cortex-720 at 2.8 GHz, and three Cortex-520 cores clocked at 2 GHz.

The chipset is made on a 4nm node, so it's quite efficient, but the performance is quite different from a regular Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It's more akin to the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, even slower in some benchmarks.

The new and revised MagicPad 2 Smart keyboard (89,90 €) has some upgrades onboard compared to the previous model. It connects via Bluetooth (which is expected), and it charges wirelessly from the tablet once you pop it in.

It's a nice accessory with big keys and a full number row, although it lacks a trackpad (something the OnePlus Pad has), and it's somewhat hard to get to the menu and add languages or tinker with the settings.

The keyboard doubles as a cover/stand, and one minor gripe we have with this setup is that you can't use it detached from the tablet. Well, you can, but then you lose the stand. OnePlus made theirs from separate parts, so you can still place the tablet on the stand a couple of feet away from the keyboard and use it this way. Or place it in your lap. With the Honor setup, these two are inseparable, and this limits the ergonomics a bit.

The Magic Pencil 3 (99,90 €) is another accessory you can get for your Honor MagicPad 2. It has 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and an ultra-low latency of just 2 ms. There's a magnetic spot on the frame of the tablet to latch the pencil on and charge it, as well.

There's some pretty cool integration inside MagicOS regarding using this stylus. You have the option to write everywhere you see a text field (Global Handwriting), and AI algorithms will recognize and transform it to text. You can use the stylus as a laser pointer, and, of course, paint and draw with it if you have the talent.

The Honor MagicPad 2 is a very serious contender in the flagship tablet market. It manages to do a lot of things right: it has a gorgeous OLED screen that can go up to 144Hz, the design is sleek and stylish, and the build quality is top-notch.

The chipset inside is quite powerful, and even though it's not the regular 8 Gen 3, the "s" variant gets the job done. The software has some nice AI additions that won't leave you breathless, but what they'll do is help you get things actually done.

The battery life is solid, and the price is competitive as well. If you buy the smart keyboard accessory or the stylus (or both), you can end up with a nice backup device for the times when your laptop is not around or just too heavy to carry around.