our opinion on the entry-level tablet

It almost feels like reliving the treasure hunt of a few years ago, when Apple launched its iPad. Manufacturers have had a great time in recent months by releasing new tablets Android available in many price segments, but with special attention paid to the entry level. But why such a return, even thoughAndroid 13 is not yet there to truly optimize use? We must prepare the ground well, which seems to be quite ready to do this Honor Pad 8, the last to enter the arena.

Honor Pad 8Technical sheet

Model Honor Pad 8
OS version

Android 12

Manufacturer interface

Magic UI

screen size

12 inch

Definition

2000 x 1200 pixels

Pixel density

194 ppp

Technology

LCD

SoC

Snapdragon 680

Memory (RAM)

4 Go

Internal memory (flash)

128 Go

Camera (back)

Sensor 1: 5 MP
Camera (front)

5 Mpx

Video recording

1080p

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi 5 (ac)

Bluetooth

5.1

Networks

Wi-Fi 5 (ac)

NFC

Non

Battery

7250 mAh

Dimensions

174,1 x 278,5 x 6,9 mm

Weight

520 grammes

Colors

Gold, Blue, Green

Prix 299 €
Product sheet
See the test

This test was carried out with a model lent by Honor.

Honor Pad 8Design

Tablets always tend to want to be forgotten in a corner of our living room, or not far from a bedside table, so it’s usually not the high tech product that gets noticed the most. This is once again the case here, where the Honor Pad 8 is simply the rectangular block with a rounded aluminum frame that you imagine in your head when we talk about a tablet.

Honor Pad 8 // Source: Chloé Pertuis – Frandroid

Without saying however that this design is not successful. Knowing that we are talking here about a diagonal of 12 inches, rather large accordingly for a tablet, the Honor Pad 8 still knows how to be forgotten with a weight of 520 grams and a thickness of only 7 millimeters. We will also note very thin borders around the screen, at least as thin as it is possible to do while leaving a small resting space for the fingers. The Honor Pad 8 is intended to be a tablet used mainly in portrait mode, as the orientation of its photo sensor seems to indicate, but places all of its buttons on the same edge, in the purest tradition of smartphones.

Honor Pad 8 // Source: Chloé Pertuis – Frandroid

The two orientations, portrait and landscape, therefore both remain very comfortable. On the edges, we will especially note large grids to accommodate its stereo speakers which we hope are naturally powerful. Thus, if the Honor Pad 8 is not the product with the most innovative design, it integrates visually everything that we really want to find in this product category.

Honor Pad 8Screen

The Honor Pad 8 incorporates an 11.97-inch LCD panel supporting a maximum definition of 2000 x 1200 pixels and a refresh rate of 60 Hz. The manufacturer does not offer sRGB or DCI P3 type settings in its interface, but simply enough to retouch the color temperature. However, you have an interesting mode called “eBook” which will switch the screen to black and white, to avoid eye strain.

Under our probe and with the DisplayCal software, we see that the tablet covers 98.3% of the sRGB space for 69.6% of the DCI P3 space. It offers a very good contrast ratio of 1640:1 for a very cool average color temperature of 7323K and a maximum brightness of 410 cd/m² which makes it perfect for indoors, but not particularly well readable in a sunny garden.

The average Delta E00 is measured here at 3.33, which is far from making it the champion of colorimetry, but it is quite good for the use for which it is intended. And this is somewhere the real lesson that we draw from our tests: these are not the best results in the world, but for a panel of this diagonal on this type of product placed at this price, it is very good .

Honor Pad 8Software

Here we find the usual Android 12 with the MagicOS 6.1 interface exclusive to the manufacturer. The biggest disappointment comes mainly from the integrated security patch, far too late since it dates from June 2022, which gives no confidence in the software monitoring of this product. At least we are reassured to see that the Widevine L1 is well integrated, in order to guarantee the playback of HD content on this Honor Pad 8.

It seems that all Android tablets of this generation have taken the exact same direction, namely integrating a taskbar into the macOS in which you can find your usual shortcuts, but also the latest applications launched. But alas, unlike other manufacturers, Honor has not particularly optimized it for multitasking use, as Oppo was able to do on the Pad Air. For example, it is not possible to find this bar outside the home page, to slide an app next to another and start multitasking.

What will really manage this use is a small pill at the top of the interface, which on click will offer you to move an application to the right or to the left. You also have the option of launching two other applications in flyout mode, and that’s about it. The rest of the experience is more or less the usual Android Honor experience, which we won’t go into. So it’s efficient, yes, but not particularly well optimized.

Honor Pad 8Audio

The Honor Pad 8 seems to place particular emphasis on the audio experience it offers, since it incorporates no less than eight speakers and displays a DTS: X Ultra certification. And there is not: these loudspeakers make themselves heard.

So certainly, we are still on an entry-level product. The sound does not have the best definition in the world. But it is undeniable that compared to its other competitors at Redmi or Oppo, it has the best sound. The highs are clean, the mids a bit behind, but very present, and the bass is kept to a minimum despite the physical limits of these devices in this context. Above all, it is able to develop an astonishing volume without distortion. You can easily enjoy a movie without feeling aggrieved on this tablet, which is a real good point for it.

Honor Pad 8 // Source: Chloé Pertuis – Frandroid

On the other hand, the manufacturer has ignored the slightest integration of a jack. You will only have the choice of a USB-C or Bluetooth headset, knowing that the device supports the Bluetooth 5.1 standard. It’s a bit of a disappointment when you consider that many entry-level buyers are very often also waiting for jack support.

Honor Pad 8Photo

What about the photo of an entry-level Android tablet? They are more or less comparable to the experience offered by a webcam laptop computer, quite simply.

Honor Pad 8 // Source: Chloé Pertuis – Frandroid

Front and back, the 5 megapixel sensor of the Honor Pad 8 is above all there to ensure a decent video call experience.

If you use it as a camera, you will quickly notice deplorable quality, absent digital processing and bland colors, front and back. But hey, for video? It goes.

Honor Pad 8Performances

The Honor Pad 8 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 paired with 6GB of RAM. It also includes a default storage space of 128 GB.

Model Honor Pad 8 Oppo Pad Air (2022) Apple iPad 10 (2022)
AnTuTu 9 276727 N/C 734058
AnTuTu CPU 80185 N/C 196402
AnTuTu GPU 51366 N/C 279992
AnTuTu MEM 72007 N/C 124846
AnTuTu UX 73169 N/C 132818
PC Mark 3.0 6780 N/C N/C
3DMark Wild Life 447 N/C N/C
3DMark Wild Life framerate moyen 3 FPS N/C N/C
3DMark Wild Life Extreme N/C N/C 2272
3DMark Wild Life Extreme framerate moyen N/C N/C 14 FPS
GFXBench Aztec Vulkan/Metal high (onscreen / offscreen) 5 / 3 FPS N/C 34 / 32 FPS
GFXBench Car Chase (onscreen / offscreen) 7 / 8 FPS N/C 39 / 72 FPS
GFXBench Manhattan 3.0 (onscreen / offscreen) 19 / 22 FPS N/C 60 / 173 FPS
Geekbench 5 Single-core N/C N/C 1576
Geekbench 5 Multi-core N/C N/C 3987
Geekbench 5 Compute N/C N/C 12588
Sequential Read/Write 839 / 711 Mo/s N/C N/C
Random read/write 50 / 47 IOPS N/C N/C

See more benchmarks