Lightweight couch tablet with a large screen

With the Honor Pad 8, a large, thin and light Android tablet has come onto the market at an affordable price, which wants to score with special features. I have integrated the Honor Pad 8 into my everyday life and will tell you in the test report whether it made it easier or more difficult.

Contents

• 1 Honor Pad 8 in the test: conclusion
• 2 High quality, light and thin
• 3 Display is a bit too dark
• 4 Sophisticated multitasking
• 5 Performance should be higher
• 6 A real endurance runner
• 7 ratings in detail

Honor Pad 8 in the test: conclusion

GIGA rating: 6.4/10

The Honor Pad 8 left a mixed impression. On the one hand, it is a beautiful, light and durable Android tablet with a large display, which is perfect for consuming content. The speakers in particular surprised us positively. However, Honor does not exploit the full potential of the Pad 8. A pen would have really made sense here. The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE is only 50 euros more and there is one. Honor also has to improve when it comes to software updates. Overall, a nice Android tablet from Honor for Germany, but it’s not perfect.

Honor Pad 8, 12-inch tablet touchscreen, 7250 mAh battery, Qualcomm Snapdragon 680, 8 speakers, rau

The price may be higher now. Price from 10/15/2022 21:11

Advantages:

• material choice
• battery life
• Price
• sound of the speakers

Disadvantages:

• No update guarantee
• Hardly any accessories

High quality, light and thin

With 12 inches diagonally, the Honor Pad 8 has a fairly large display, but at the same time it only weighs 520 grams and is 6.9 mm thin. All of this ensures that I actually liked carrying the tablet around with me and using it in everyday life. I can’t say that about every device. In this context, I noticed the total of eight loudspeakers in a very positive way. I use tablets primarily to consume content, to watch YouTube videos or Twitch while cooking and/or on the couch. This Android tablet is well suited for this purpose.

With the metal housing, it also looks very high quality, However, it really attracts dirt and fingerprints on the front and back. A cleaning cloth should therefore be used regularly. In terms of connections, there is only one USB-C port on the side, which you can use to charge the tablet. A power supply is included in the scope of delivery.

Display is a bit too dark

Even if the days are getting shorter and the sun shines less often, there were still a few ways to use the Honor Pad 8 in the garden. And the 12-inch display didn’t cut the best figure there. I could still see something, but on the one hand the surface reflects very strongly – and I reflected on it when the sun shines – and on the other hand the display is not as bright as I would like. The brightness is good enough for use in the home. It gets a bit more difficult outside in certain light situations.

The LC display has good viewing angles and displays colors very naturally. It is a 60 Hz panel with a resolution of 2000×1200 pixels. That’s slightly less than the competition, which mostly have a resolution of 2560×1600 pixels. The pixel density is just about okay. But you can see from time to time that the resolution is not quite as high.

I think that’s a shame no stylus is supported. Both the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE and the Xiaomi Pad 5 have this option. The 12-inch display of the Honor Pad 8 would be ideal for handwritten inputs. There is also no keyboard. I would like some more accessories.

Sophisticated multitasking

You should be able to do more on a large tablet than on a smartphone. And Honor does that correctly with the Pad 8. From the very first glance at the home screen, it becomes clear that Multitasking plays a big role. You can use multiple apps at the same time. The ability to display applications in small windows above all content is particularly useful. I’ve always used this to watch a video or control music with YouTube Music while browsing Chrome on the full screen in the background.

You can also split the screen of the Honor Pad 8 if necessary and work with two apps. That would be even more convenient if a stylus was supported. You could surf the web or work through a document and make handwritten notes on part of the screen. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work so well with the on-screen keyboard. Samsung does it better.

Performance should be higher

The Honor Pad 8 is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 supported by 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage. If you use the Android tablet normally, then by and large it runs smoothly. Every now and then there are small jerks, especially if you use multiple apps at the same time. It’s not really bad, but you can already tell that you don’t have a high-end tablet here. At a price of 350 euros I might have expected a little more. It is quite possible that Honor will help with a software update.

In general, though, I have to say that I’m very satisfied with the Magic UI interface. Honor has adjusted many areas, but that makes sense for a large Android tablet. Android 12 is used as the basis. It is a pity that only one security level from July 2022 was available at the time of the test. This puts the device back three months. There is also no concrete update guarantee. According to Honor, the software update policy is currently being revised. We would wish for a little more security. Streaming services such as Netflix are also supported in HD.

A real endurance runner

Although the Honor Pad 8 “only” has a 7,250 mAh battery, the tablet lasts a long time. I have achieved a display-on time of about 10 hours with automatic brightness with simple tasks. This includes playing music, watching YouTube videos and surfing the web. So I got about 3 to 4 days of runtime with normal use, since the tablet loses almost no energy in idle mode.

ratings in detail