Skip to main content

Honor Pad V9 hands-on: the new budget Android tablet to beat

Honor Pad V9 with keyboard case.
Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends
MWC 2025
Read our complete coverage of Mobile World Congress

Honor announced a bunch of products alongside its Alpha Plan at the Mobile World Congress 2025. One of them is the Pad V9, which packs a 10,000mAh+ battery in a slim form factor. It’s a thin and light tablet, promised to offer long battery life on a budget. It’s more affordable than the latest base iPad 11. I went hands-on with the device at MWC, and here’s what you should know about Honor’s latest tablet.

Slim, light, and comfortable to use

Honor Pad V9 at MWC 2025
Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

The Honor Pad V9 is remarkably thin at 6.1mm, especially considering the battery size. For context, the new iPad 11 measures 7mm thick, whereas Apple’s thinnest and most expensive iPad Pro is 5.1mm thick. The new Honor tablet feels very much like an iPad when you first pick it up—given the flat sides and button placements. It should be comfortable to hold and use for long durations.

Recommended Videos

The Honor Pad V9 is also lighter than the iPad 11. It weighs 475 grams, while the Apple tablet is 477 grams. It’s not a big difference, but every gram matters on big tablets, and the Honor device is no small thing. It features an 11.5-inch LCD on the front, which feels like a sweet spot for productivity-focused tablets.

You get a 2,800 x 1,840-pixel resolution with support for a 144Hz refresh rate and up to 500 nits of brightness. I couldn’t test the claims during my hands-on, but in the brief duration, the display was responsive, sharp, and plenty bright in indoor lighting. This display, paired with the eight speakers, should offer a fantastic media consumption experience.

From my previous experience with Honor tablets, MagicOS 9.0 is pretty good for productivity. I love its folder view on the home screen, which can be expanded in a horizontal or vertical grid, allowing you to tap on an icon to access it without opening the folder. It’s a minor feature, but it’s great for grouping similar apps and saves time.

MediaTek-powered mid-range goodness

Honor Pad V9 with case on.
Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

The Honor Pad V9 is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Elite chipset, which isn’t really different from the non-Elite version. It’s the same processor found in more expensive devices like the Oppo Reno 13 Pro and Oppo Pad 3.

I couldn’t find any spec-to-spec difference between the Elite and non-Elite variants. That being said, it is a powerful processor that can handle day-to-day tasks easily. It is paired with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. I expect the Pad V9 to be a good multi-tasking tablet that can be used for working on the go. I also checked out the keyboard case, and while the key travel was nice, it makes the otherwise lightweight tablet hefty.

Honor has fitted a large 10,100mAh battery inside its slim 6.1mm chassis. It has a bigger battery capacity than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 and is on par with the Galaxy Tab S10 Plus’ 10,090mAh cell. I expect the Pad V9 to deliver excellent battery life because the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 isn’t a very power-hungry processor. It also charges at 35 watts with the included cable and charger in the box.

What else should you know about the Honor Pad V9?

Honor Pad V9 screen.
Prakhar Khanna / Digital Trends

The Honor Pad V9 sports a 13MP camera on the back and an 8MP front camera for video calls. The quality wasn’t the best in indoor lighting, but it should be good enough for video calls. Other features include a Dynamic Island-like Magic Portal and Honor Connect, which allows wireless data transfer from your Honor phone.

The company is offering a few AI features like formula recognition, voice-to-text, and more within the Honor Notes app. I wasn’t able to check them out, but from my past experience with the Magic 7 Pro, I haven’t bothered with AI features because they’re finicky. I hope Honor has improved their reliability in the latest release.

The Honor Pad V9 is priced at 250 euros (roughly $265) for the base 8GB RAM and 256GB storage variant in Europe. It’s more feature-packed than other similarly priced tablets.

Prakhar Khanna
Prakhar writes news, reviews and features for Digital Trends. He is an independent tech journalist who has been a part of the…
Oppo smartwatch may lead to the small OnePlus Watch 3 we’re craving
A promotional image showing the Oppo Watch X2 Mini.

One of the few downsides of the excellent OnePlus Watch 3 is that it only comes in a single case size, but if an Oppo smartwatch release in China is anything to go by, the company may now be in a position to change that. The Oppo Watch X2 Mini has been given an official April 10 launch date and is available for pre-order in China, and it may be the template for a OnePlus Watch 3 Mini.

Before we talk about the smartwatch, here’s some context. Oppo and OnePlus entered into a strategic partnership in 2021, with the two brands effectively sharing research, development, software, and even camera partners. While the two release separate and suitably different products, there are many similarities. The OnePlus Watch 3 just happens to have an Oppo sibling called the Oppo Watch X2, and the pair are practically identical.

Read more
Frequent fliers love this gadget, but I used it to modernize my old CD player
The Twelve South AirFly Pro 2 plugged into a CD player.

The Twelve South AirFly Pro 2 is a tiny plug-in dongle that mostly solves the rather specific problem of getting Bluetooth headphones working with in-flight entertainment on a plane. But it does something else (arguably equally as specific) too, and that’s how I’ve fallen for this clever little gadget.
What is the AirFly Pro 2?

The original AirFly came out in 2018 and was initially designed to add Bluetooth connectivity to old in-flight entertainment systems, so you can use your own wireless headphones on an airplane instead of the poor quality wired ones supplied by the airline. It has since grown to also enable Bluetooth connectivity to other devices like car stereos and  games consoles, and even connect more than one pair of headphones.

Read more
Forget the base iPad, the iPad Mini is my go-to tablet recommendation right now
Prakhar holding the iPad Mini 7.

I bought the 11-inch iPad Air 4 soon after its launch in 2020. But the excitement wore off after a few days. I kept it in the drawer and only used it for testing new iPadOS developer builds for the next three years. I couldn’t find a use case for a tablet in general—that is until I shifted to the 7th-generation iPad Mini.

Six months after launch, the new iPad Mini remains my travel companion for browsing and on-the-go entertainment. It’s the best iPad for me.
A complete iPad experience without any accessories

Read more