Honor MagicPad 2 12.3” Flagship Tablet Review

Six months ago, we discussed the Honor Pad 9 tablet, highlighting it among the few models with a large display (more than 12 inches diagonally) and an affordable price. However, this was accompanied by insufficient performance. Now, Honor has introduced a new device that combines a 12-inch display (in this case, OLED, not IPS) and a powerful Qualcomm SoC. It is a truly flagship product, and we have fully tested its capabilities.

The tablet is offered in various configurations with different storage and RAM capacities, but at the initial stage there will be no models with an LTE module available in Russia. Prices for the device start at $731 for the version without a keyboard (at the start of sales, it can be purchased at a discount for $627), which is significantly higher than that of the Honor Pad 9, and comparable to the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 ", released at the end of 2023. If we talk about Apple tablets with a similar diagonal, then even a two-year-old iPad Pro 12.9 costs one and a half to two times more in Russian retail, depending on the configuration, and the new 13-inch version will cost even more — four to five times, so we did not include them in the comparison table.

Thus, the MagicPad 2 screen with a diagonal of 12.3″ has the highest resolution and pixel density. In addition, it offers the maximum amount of RAM and built-in memory, which is especially important in the absence of support for memory cards. In most characteristics, it surpasses the Honor Pad 9, but in comparison with the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2″, we see rather equality.

The tablet came to us together with a Smart Bluetooth Keyboard cover and a Magic-Pencil 3 stylus. Each accessory was in a separate package.

The stylus has a comfortable ergonomic shape and feels like a second-generation Apple Pencil. It has all the modern features expected from such accessories: 4096 gradations of pressure sensitivity, a feeling of writing on paper (as much as possible with a glossy screen), as well as a touch zone that allows you to control the presentation of presentations in the Honor Documents application and quickly switch between writing and eraser modes.

The Notes application is reported to use AI to automatically translate handwritten text into printed text (formula recognition is also provided). However, in the case of the Russian language, the system's work is not yet ideal. For example, the AI ​​may not recognize that the list «Buy: cheese, butter, sausage ...» refers to sausage, and not «kovbas» or something else. Therefore, it is necessary to write as carefully and legibly as possible for correct recognition. This problem is more related to the software than to the stylus itself.

The front panel is almost entirely screen. The bezel (dead zone) around the display is about 5 mm wide all the way around, which is one of the best we have ever seen. This creates an impressive appearance.

The tablet is equipped with a 12.3-inch OLED display with an impressive resolution of 3000×1920, which provides an excellent pixel density of 290 ppi. Let's take a look at other display characteristics.

The front surface of the screen is made of a glass plate with a smooth, mirror-like texture, resistant to scratches. The anti-glare properties of the screen are better than those of the Google Nexus 7 (2013), and the oleophobic coating significantly simplifies the removal of fingerprints and slows down their appearance compared to ordinary glass.

When displaying a white field on full screen, the maximum brightness reaches about 580 cd/m² in standard conditions and can increase to 630 cd/m² in bright light. At the same time, the brightness of white areas on the screen will almost always be higher than the specified values, which, together with excellent anti-glare properties, ensures good readability in the sun. The minimum brightness value is 1.9 cd/m², which allows comfortable use of the device in complete darkness.

Automatic brightness adjustment works with the help of a light sensor located to the left of the front camera. It depends on the position of the brightness adjustment slider, allowing the user to set the desired level. With standard settings, the auto-adjustment function reduces the brightness to 5 cd/m² in complete darkness, sets 120 cd/m² in office conditions (550 lux) and increases it to 630 cd/m² in bright light. In our tests, we increased the brightness in the dark to 26, 140 and 630 cd/m², obtaining excellent results. Thus, the automatic brightness adjustment works adequately and allows the user to adjust the screen to individual requirements.

At high and medium brightness levels, noticeable modulation is observed with a frequency of 60, 90 or 120 Hz. The graphs below show the dependence of brightness on time for various settings. Let's first look at the 60Hz refresh rate mode.

At high and medium brightness levels, the modulation frequency is 60 Hz, but the modulation duty cycle remains low, which eliminates noticeable flickering. With a significant decrease in brightness, modulation with a high frequency of 4.32 kHz is observed, due to which visible flickering is also absent.

A mode with an increased refresh rate of up to 90 or 144 Hz is available in the screen settings.

In practice, the maximum refresh rate is 120 Hz. Perhaps the mode with the declared frequency of 144 Hz will become available after a firmware update.

When setting the 120 Hz mode, the smoothness of scrolling the menu and other elements is noticeably improved. Now let's see if the modulation pattern changes when switching to a frequency of 90 Hz.

At high and medium brightness, the modulation frequency increased by 1.5 times, while at low brightness the modulation pattern remained the same. At the same time, no visible flickering was observed.

Now let's look at the 120 Hz refresh rate mode:

At high and medium brightness levels, the modulation frequency has doubled compared to the 60 Hz mode, while at low brightness the modulation pattern remains the same. Visually, there is no flickering.

The screen uses an OLED matrix — an active matrix on organic light-emitting diodes. The full-color image is formed using subpixels of three colors: red ®, green (G) and blue (B) in equal quantities, while the blue subpixel consists of two parts. This is confirmed by a fragment of a microphotograph:

The screen has excellent viewing angles. The brightness when viewed from an angle is noticeably lower for both screens compared to the Nexus 7, but this drop is much less pronounced for the tested tablet. As a result, even with formally the same brightness, the OLED screen looks significantly brighter compared to LCD screens, since mobile devices are often viewed from an angle. However, it is worth noting that the white color on the OLED screen can acquire a slight rainbow tint at large viewing angles, while the black color remains truly black at any angle. It is so black that the contrast parameter is irrelevant in this case. For comparison, we provide photographs in which the same images are displayed on the screens of the tested tablet and the second participant — Nexus 7, while the brightness of the screens is initially set at about 200 cd / m², and the color balance on the camera is fixed at 6500 K.

Note the good uniformity of brightness and color tone of the white field.

And the test picture (Normal [colors] profile):

The color rendering on the screen is good, the colors have moderate saturation, although the color balance differs slightly between different screens. It should be noted that the photo is not a reliable source of information on the quality of color rendering and serves only as a conditional visual illustration. For example, the pronounced reddish tint of white and gray in the OLED screen photos is visually absent when viewed perpendicularly, which is confirmed by hardware tests using a spectrophotometer. This is due to the fact that the spectral sensitivity of the camera matrix does not quite match the characteristics of human vision.

The photo above was taken with the «Normal [colors]» profile active in the screen settings; there are two profiles available.

The Vivid [Colors] profile features color balance and increased color saturation:

Switching of the matrix elements state occurs almost instantly, however, when switching on, a step can be observed, the width of which is approximately 17 ms (which corresponds to a screen refresh rate of about 60 Hz), approximately 11 ms (at 90 Hz) or about 8 ms (at 120 Hz). For example, the dependence of brightness on time when switching from black to white looks like this:

In some conditions, the presence of such a step can cause short trails that follow moving objects.

The gamma curve, constructed on the basis of 32 points with equal intervals by the numerical value of shades of gray, showed that there is no significant roll-off in the highlights and shadows. The exponent of the approximating power function was 2.22, which is close to the standard value of 2.2, while the real gamma curve deviates slightly from the power dependence.

Let us recall that the brightness of image fragments in OLED screens changes dynamically depending on the image content — it decreases slightly for generally bright images. Therefore, the dependence of brightness on hue (gamma curve) may not exactly correspond to the gamma curve of a static image, since the measurements were taken with sequential output of gray shades on almost the entire screen.

The color gamut depends on the selected profile (Vivid or Normal) specified in the image, as well as on the program that displays the image on the screen. In the Vivid profile, the gamut is slightly wider than specified in the image, while in the Normal profile it corresponds as much as possible to that specified in the image. If the image does not have a specified profile, it is considered to correspond to sRGB. The software that displays the image on the screen must take into account the capabilities of the display. For example, Google Chrome supports color profiles, but considers the screen to correspond to sRGB, while the built-in Gallery program knows about the capabilities of the screen.

Let's consider two extreme cases.

With a DCI-P3 image and the Vivid profile selected in the Gallery app, the color gamut is very wide and exceeds DCI-P3. With an sRGB image and the Normal profile selected in the Gallery or Google Chrome apps, the color gamut is close to sRGB.

In the first case, the component spectra (that is, the spectra of pure red, green and blue colors) are very well separated:

Thus, the color gamut of an image with the sRGB profile when using the Vivid profile and output in the Gallery or Google Chrome applications slightly exceeds sRGB. In the case of an image with the DCI-P3 profile, when selecting the Normal profile and output in the Gallery program, the color gamut is close to DCI-P3.

It is worth noting that on screens with an extended color gamut, if not adjusted accordingly, the colors of regular images optimized for sRGB may look oversaturated. Therefore, it is recommended to select the Normal profile for viewing movies, photos and other natural images. If the image contains a profile other than sRGB, it is better to use the standard Gallery application to view it.

This device allows you to adjust the color balance by selecting a color temperature profile or adjusting the hue on the color wheel. However, when using the Normal profile, even without adjustment, the balance of shades on the gray scale remains excellent, since the color temperature is close to the standard 6500 K, and the deviation from the spectrum of an absolute black body (ΔE) is less than 3 units, which is a good indicator even for professional devices. At the same time, the color temperature and ΔE change slightly from shade to shade, which has a positive effect on the visual assessment of the color balance. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since the color balance in them is not very important, and the error in measuring color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

Of course, there is a function to reduce the intensity of the blue component.

The description of the device contains false information about UV radiation and eye fatigue. Bright light can indeed disrupt the circadian rhythm, but this can be corrected by reducing the brightness to a comfortable level, and reducing the blue color to distort the color balance does not make sense.

Most likely, this device does not support DisplayPort Alt Mode for USB Type-C, which allows you to output images and sound to external devices via USB.

To summarize, it can be noted that the screen has a high maximum brightness (up to 630 cd / m²) and excellent anti-glare properties, which allows you to use the device outdoors even in sunny weather. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable level (up to 1.9 cd / m²). The automatic brightness adjustment mode functions adequately. The advantages of the screen include an effective oleophobic coating, no visible flickering, support for a high refresh rate (90 or 120 Hz), as well as a color gamut close to sRGB and excellent color balance (with the right profile selection). In addition, it is worth recalling the advantages of OLED screens: true black color (if the screen does not reflect light) and a much smaller drop in image brightness when viewed at an angle compared to LCD screens. The quality of the screen is very high.

The Honor MagicPad 2 with a 12.3-inch screen is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen3 processor, which is manufactured using a 4-nm process technology. This is the junior version of the company's current flagship SoC and includes four energy-efficient cores, three powerful ones and one high-performance one with a frequency of up to 3 GHz. In the tested model, the amount of RAM is 12 GB, with the possibility of «virtual» expansion to 8 GB due to flash memory.

Now let's compare the performance of this device with the Honor Pad 9 (which, we remind you, is much cheaper) and the Huawei MatePad Pro 13.2 inches, which runs on the Kirin 9000W processor. We conducted testing in the «Performance» mode, but the benchmark results in this and standard modes were the same, which indicates that the devices work at maximum in any case.

Let's start with browser tests: Octane Benchmark, Kraken Benchmark and JetStream 2.

Let's explain: three values ​​for the Huawei tablet are given because in the Chrome browser, which we use by default, the device showed inexplicably low results. Therefore, we also ran benchmarks in the native browser and Yandex.Browser. In this case, it is worth relying on the highest indicator, but even it is lower than that of the Honor MagicPad 2 12.3 inches. Not to mention the Honor Pad 9, which demonstrated about twice as bad performance.

Now let's move on to the comprehensive benchmarks Geekbench 6 and AnTuTu 10. Unfortunately, the other two tablets showed incorrect work in AnTuTu 10, so we cannot make a comparison here, but this figure will be useful in the future.

The situation is similar here, and the gap from the Huawei device is even slightly larger than in browser benchmarks.

Now let's move on to gaming tests. 3DMark in our traditional WildLife and SlingShot Extreme subtests was unable to load the tablet sufficiently: in both cases, the Max inscription appeared on the screen. Therefore, we are forced to limit ourselves to a single tool — GFXBenchmark. We remind you that we only take into account Offscreen tests, since the image is rendered in a fixed resolution in them.

The situation is similar here, and the gap from the Huawei device is even slightly larger than in browser benchmarks.

Now let's move on to gaming tests. 3DMark in our traditional WildLife and SlingShot Extreme subtests was unable to load the tablet sufficiently: in both cases, the Max inscription appeared on the screen. Therefore, we are forced to limit ourselves to a single tool — GFXBenchmark. We remind you that we only take into account Offscreen tests, since the image is rendered in a fixed resolution in them.

But overall, the tablet can be safely recommended for all operations with the most serious load, including, of course, 3D games.

Honor MagicPad 2 12.3″ runs on Android 14 with the Honor MagicOS shell version 8.0 installed. As before, users have access to all Google services, including the ability to install applications from the Play Store.

Secondly, there is a new option called Magic Portal. The idea is that you can select or grab content with the stylus, such as an image on a website, drag it to the left side of the screen and immediately send it to another application, such as Notes. Previously, this required saving the image, switching to another application and pasting the saved file. Now, all of this can be done in just one movement.

Honor MagicPad 2 12.3″ is not equipped with a cellular module and a satellite navigation module, which makes it impossible to use the tablet to determine location without Wi-Fi.

As for wireless networks, the device supports the Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard, although it would be logical to expect support for Wi-Fi 7 for a flagship device. However, this is not so critical yet, since routers with Wi-Fi 7 remain quite expensive.

The Honor Pad X9 has a non-removable battery with a capacity of 10,500 mAh, which is a good indicator for a large device. Now let's see how the tablet performed in battery life tests. Let's remember that we traditionally set the brightness at 100 cd/m² (which is considered comfortable for working in a moderately lit room), and in the FBReader reader we select a completely white background in the settings.

Before discussing the results, it is necessary to make a few clarifications. Firstly, due to problems with YouTube in Russia, we tested online video via the VK Video service in the Chrome browser. However, only 720p resolution is available for very long videos there, so we could not find an alternative. On YouTube, we used 1080p video. However, for high-performance devices like our hero today, this should not significantly affect performance, since video decoding does not load the SoC too much.

It is also worth noting that in the Manhattan battery test in GFXBenchmark, the tablet constantly crashed at the end, although everything worked without problems during the process. Therefore, we limited ourselves to the T-Rex test, which showed a result that was too high, almost implausible. This may be due to the fact that the test was too easy for this SoC, and the presence of dark scenes contributed to energy savings, since the OLED screen consumes significantly less energy when displaying dark images compared to white ones. Otherwise, the results are quite predictable. Like other large tablets, the Honor MagicPad 2 12.3″ has average power efficiency, but it can be improved by using the dark theme, especially in the e-reader.

In addition, the tablet supports fast charging: in half an hour it charges up to 32%, and in an hour — up to 59%. A full charge takes about one hour and 45 minutes, which is a very decent result for a large device.

The only rear camera of the Honor MagicPad 2 12.3″ has a resolution of 13 MP, which is standard for such devices. The quality of the photos, as expected, is not very high, but, nevertheless, quite acceptable.

The images are noisy and blurry in places, but in the photo from the parking lot you can still make out the license plates of cars at a considerable distance, and in the photo with iXBT.com diplomas — the names of the companies. This level of quality is not often found in tablet cameras. It is also worth noting the good work with macro, as evidenced by the beautiful blur in the photo with the Christmas tree.

Video in 4K resolution at 30 fps also looks pretty decent, although, of course, there is not enough stabilization (video example: 139 MB).

The front camera has a resolution of 9 MP, which is more than enough for video chats and selfies, especially since it also supports video recording up to 4K 30 fps.

The Honor MagicPad 2 12.3″ has proven itself to be a flagship tablet with many advantages. Among its key features are a great large OLED screen with a high resolution, high performance, especially in games, and a thin and compact body with minimal frames.

The list of advantages of this device is long: good quality of shooting on the rear camera, decent battery life and useful software innovations, such as Magic Portal technology, which makes it easier to transfer content between applications. However, it is worth noting the disadvantages, including the lack of satellite navigation, support for memory cards and SIM cards. In addition, some software features, such as voice recognition in Notes, do not yet have Russian localization.

Overall, subject to the adoption of these features, this tablet can be a reasonable choice, especially considering its more affordable price compared to direct competitors.