As multimedia continues to become an integral part of our daily lives, we have seen handheld smartphones ship with bigger displays. However, as big as they have become, they are not fully equipped to capture the full essence and experience of a documentary, movie or TV show as seen on a bigger display. That is where Honor Pad 8 comes into the mix offering an expansive display, a rich suite of software and an incredibly handy design.
Thin and lightweight unibody design
Honor Pad 8 weighs 520g and is 6.9mm thin. Often, picking it up feels a bit surreal because of how lightweight the device is. Honor has done an excellent job of weight distribution, which combines well with the size of the device.
As for its material choices, you find a metal unibody design that features anodized sandblasting technology. This ensures the corners are rounded, which makes for a snug fit in your hands during extended sessions and provides a subtle grip.
12-inch FullView Display
On the front, Honor Pad 8 features a 12-inch 2K resolution IPS LCD FullView display meant to be used primarily in landscape orientation. Its narrow 7.2mm bezels hit the sweet spot for an immersive viewing experience while also giving you adequate space to hold the device. Whether you use the tablet for internet browsing, reading or watching content, you will not be disappointed. Black as well as contrast ratios are great and with more than 1 billion colours supported on the display, content looks vivid and eye-catching. The display features multiple software-level eye protection modes like an eBook Mode and Dark Mode but, most importantly, it comes with TUV Rheinland hardware-level low-blue light and no strobe dual-eye protection certification. This essentially blocks harmful blue light emissions thus allowing you to use the tablet for an extended time without having to worry.
Throughout our use, we kept the display at 50-60 per cent brightness when indoors and cranked it up all the way to 100 per cent when using it near a window or outdoors. While this will get you by, the 350 nits of brightness may pose an issue if you are trying to watch content during the day on a car ride, for example.
Where Honor Pad 8 absolutely blows the competition away though is with its speaker system. You find eight speakers that result in one of the best audio experiences on a tablet. With support for DTS: X Ultra and Honor’s Histen audio adjustment feature, you can further fine-tune the listening experience with sound modes. This also comes in handy during meetings when you are using supported applications, where everyone remains loud and clear.
Curated processing power and software
Running the show on Honor Pad 8 is a 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 octa-core processor with up to 6GB of RAM. This is plenty of power to be able to seamlessly watch content, multitask and game. However, if you intend to get some serious video editing work done on the tablet, it may not be the smoothest.
Thankfully, Honor’s optimisation when it comes to software is great. You find Android 12 on the device with complete Google Play services draped in a desktop version of Honor’s Magic UI 6.1. As opposed to being an obtrusive software like most third-party skins are, Honor has done a fantastic job in offering some useful features via the software.
For example, the home screen now lets you view desktop cards at a glance and folders are now larger for you to be able to quickly access an application inside them. The tablet is also one of the first to support multi-screen collaboration. This means you can have your Honor phone and your tablet on one screen for you to be able to seamlessly drag and drop photos and videos, making it easy to collaborate on the same files.
But for us, the smart multi-window has been a game changer. Using this, we can have four open application windows at once, giving us the freedom to work on everything simultaneously. For example, you could be watching a YouTube video, taking some notes, having a chat with a friend and calculating how much your next night out is going to cost using the calculator application all at once. Being able to also switch between split-screen, full-screen and floating windows using the split-screen navigation bar also makes things easy and efficient.
Long-lasting battery
When using a tablet, you want reliable performance. That is exactly what the Honor Pad 8 provides. There is a large 7,250mAh battery on the device, which lasts multiple days over moderate use. We noticed that if you are just watching content, the tablet lasts a lot longer than if you are on long video calls, where the battery drains at a faster rate. On average, expect to get around 12-14 hours of screen-on time.
Complementing the tablet’s battery, the 22.5W charger provided out of the box helps you always stay powered. Even short bursts on the charger will help you get a few hours of usage on the go, which has been plenty in our case.
Verdict
As a package, Honor Pad 8 delivers just the right experience for consumers wanting a tablet focused on multimedia. It has a great display, impressive visuals and long-lasting battery life. On top of that, you also get Honor’s software, which genuinely provides features to take better advantage of the large display on the device.
Preorder the Honor Pad 8 before September 24 to get a smart keyboard worth Dh399 as a gift. Honor Pad 8 is now available for Dh1,199 at leading retailers in the UAE. It comes with a free flipcover and Honor Choice Earbuds X worth a total of Dh248.
