In today’s fast-moving digital world, having a device that smoothly handles both work and entertainment is a big plus. The HONOR Pad X9a is made for people who switch between writing emails, editing documents, joining video calls, and relaxing with some streaming or reading. With powerful features and a user-friendly design, this tablet is built to keep up with both your busy workday and your downtime.

The Pad X9a stands out with its large 11.5-inch 2.5K FullView display and a 120Hz refresh rate, making everything from reading files to watching videos look sharp and smooth. It also comes with four speakers and HONOR’s vocal enhancement tech for clear, rich sound—great for both virtual meetings and movie marathons. Wrapped in a sleek metal body, the tablet not only looks stylish but is also strong and lightweight enough to carry anywhere.

What really makes the Pad X9a flexible is its support for accessories like the Smart Bluetooth Keyboard. This turns the tablet into a portable workstation, ideal for typing documents, answering emails, or managing tasks on the go. With the Snapdragon 685 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage, plus the easy-to-use MagicOS 9.0 based on Android 15, this tablet is ready to handle both work and play, all in one sleek device. It’s also a great fit for students and digital nomads who don’t rely on heavy apps but need a reliable, lightweight tablet that’s easy to take anywhere.

We’re fortunate enough to have our hands on the new HONOR Pad X9a in Gray color, equipped with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of ROM. In this hands-on review, we’ll walk you through everything from the unboxing experience to real-world performance and everyday usability. Whether you’re considering an upgrade for productivity or a reliable tablet for entertainment, this guide will help you decide if the HONOR Pad X9a is the right choice for you.

Unboxing/Accessories

The HONOR Pad X9a arrives in a clean white box, but since we received the variant bundled with the Smart Bluetooth Keyboard Kit, the overall packaging includes a cardboard sleeve. On this sleeve, you’ll find the “HONOR Pad X9a with Smart Bluetooth Keyboard” label on the top left corner, along with a product image that showcases the tablet paired with the keyboard. At the bottom right corner, you’ll also spot icons highlighting Hi-Res Audio and Hi-Res Audio Wireless support, setting the tone for an enhanced multimedia experience.

Removing the sleeve reveals two separate boxes. The first is the HONOR Pad X9a box, which features a minimalist design with the product name on the top left and an image of the tablet in the center. The second box contains the Smart Bluetooth Keyboard, also labeled on the top left with a centered image of the keyboard on the front.

Inside the Smart Bluetooth Keyboard box, you’ll find the keyboard itself, along with some paper documents and a warranty card. Meanwhile, the main tablet box includes the HONOR Pad X9a unit, a USB Type-A to Type-C cable, an HONOR SuperCharge power brick, a quick-start guide, and a warranty card. The unboxing experience is neat and straightforward, giving users everything they need to get started, especially those looking for a lightweight, travel-friendly setup that covers both productivity and entertainment.

Build Quality/Design

Honor never disappoints in giving us a device that looks and feels premium with an affordable price tag and without sacrificing quality or user experience—and the HONOR Pad X9a is a testament to that commitment. With classes resuming just around the corner, this tablet is the perfect companion for students heading back to school, offering reliable performance and premium design without breaking the bank. It’s also an ideal choice for digital nomads who work remotely and travel frequently, especially those whose work doesn’t require spec-heavy programs but still demands a dependable and stylish device on the go.

The HONOR Pad X9a immediately impresses with a level of build quality and design sophistication that feels distinctly premium, especially considering its accessible market position. HONOR has meticulously crafted this tablet, ensuring that from the first touch, it conveys a sense of thoughtful engineering. The cornerstone of this premium experience is its robust aluminum unibody chassis. Unlike devices that use metallic finishes over plastic, the Pad X9a is fashioned from a single block of aluminum. This unibody construction provides exceptional structural rigidity, effectively eliminating flex and creaks, and results in a wonderfully seamless and solid feel in the hand. The cool, tactile sensation of the fine-textured aluminum, often finished with a sandblasted or matte effect, not only resists fingerprints but also offers a secure, comfortable grip, underscoring its durable nature.

This commitment to quality extends to the tablet’s overall form factor and ergonomic design. The Pad X9a boasts an impressively slim profile, measuring just 6.8mm in thickness, and maintains a lightweight of approximately 475 grams. This sleekness doesn’t compromise its solid feel; instead, it makes the tablet exceptionally comfortable to hold for extended periods, whether you’re engrossed in a book, navigating web pages, or enjoying media. The edges are designed with subtle curves, allowing the device to rest naturally within your grip, highlighting a careful balance between aesthetic sharpness and user comfort. It’s a device that feels neither too heavy nor too fragile, but perfectly weighted and balanced.

Every design element on the HONOR Pad X9a speaks to an understated, minimalist elegance. The classic Gray colorway enhances its sophisticated, professional appeal, making it suitable for any environment. Details are refined and unobtrusive; the single rear camera is integrated into a neat module that doesn’t disrupt the tablet’s clean lines. The power and volume keys are precisely machined and fit snugly into the aluminum frame, offering a satisfying tactile response with each press. Even the symmetrical four-speaker system is thoughtfully incorporated, with speaker grilles consisting of precisely drilled holes that maintain the sleek aesthetic while promising rich audio.

Dominating the front, the expansive 11.5-inch HONOR FullView Display is itself a crucial aspect of the design. It is framed by remarkably slim and symmetrical bezels, contributing to an impressive 84.1% screen-to-body ratio. This maximizes the visual real estate for an immersive viewing experience and lends the tablet a distinctly modern and high-end look. The smooth glass of the display integrates seamlessly with the aluminum chassis, creating a cohesive and elegant facade that feels polished and complete. Supporting up to 35W fast charging, the device quickly powers back up to keep you going without long waits.

Although there’s an available smart Bluetooth keyboard bundle you can purchase to attach a physical keyboard to the tablet, the keyboard does not include a trackpad. This means that if you plan to use the HONOR Pad X9a as your workstation, a Bluetooth mouse will be necessary for a complete productivity setup.

Collectively, these design choices—from the premium materials and unibody construction to the meticulous attention to minimalist aesthetics and ergonomic shaping—culminate in a tablet that looks and feels far more luxurious than its price might suggest, offering users a tangible sense of holding a well-crafted, premium device. While the HONOR Pad X9a does not support stylus pens, these factors don’t detract from its appeal as a highly capable, stylish, and affordable tablet designed to meet the needs of students and remote workers alike.

Multimedia Experience

The HONOR Pad X9a delivers a rich multimedia experience that perfectly balances work and play. It features a large 11.5-inch display with an impressive 86% screen-to-body ratio, thanks to its narrower bezels that provide a wider, more immersive viewing area. The screen boasts a 2.5K high-definition resolution of 2508 x 1504 pixels with a sharp 255 PPI (pixels per inch), offering stunning clarity that has earned rave reviews. Paired with a smooth 120Hz high refresh rate, the display perfectly combines crisp visuals with fluid motion for seamless scrolling, gaming, and video playback.

Multiple eye-protection features make this screen easy on your eyes during extended use, with brightness ranging from 400 nits peak brightness down to 2 nits minimum brightness. We truly enjoyed binge-watching our favorite series on popular streaming apps like Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, where the vivid colors and smooth motion brought every scene to life. We also loved reading our favorite ebooks on the Pad X9a—the screen’s eye-friendly technologies mean it doesn’t strain the eyes, even during long reading sessions.

One of the features that really stands out to us is the audio. Unlike before, when we had to connect an external Bluetooth speaker to enjoy watching on a tablet, the HONOR Pad X9a’s built-in speakers are loud and clear enough that we no longer need any external audio device. Its four speakers, paired with four smart amplifiers, deliver powerful bass and an immersive surround sound experience with 200% increased volume. HONOR’s proprietary vocal enhancement algorithm extracts vocal channels for clearer voices with no noise interference, making meetings and study sessions more focused and enjoyable. This is perfect for digital nomads who don’t need to connect earbuds or headphones to get better audio during quick online meetings.

Together, the HONOR Pad X9a’s stunning visuals and powerful audio create an immersive multimedia experience that adapts effortlessly to both productivity and entertainment.

Cameras

The HONOR Pad X9a comes with a modest yet practical camera setup, designed more for utility than for artistic photography. On the back, it features an 8MP rear camera with an f/2.0 aperture, which is well-suited for documentation purposes. It’s perfect for students who need to capture lecture notes or digital nomads who occasionally need to scan receipts, documents, or whiteboards while on the go. It’s a camera that’s more fit for taking photos for documentation purposes than being used like an actual smartphone camera, and that’s perfectly fine for the tablet’s intended use.

On the front, there’s a 5MP selfie camera with an f/2.2 aperture, which handles video calls and online classes with ease. It’s capable enough for daily Zoom meetings, online learning, and casual selfies, offering clear visuals in good lighting conditions. While you won’t be using the HONOR Pad X9a for high-end photography, its camera system offers reliable, no-fuss performance for the everyday user who values function over flash.

Overall, the cameras on the HONOR Pad X9a complement its role as a well-rounded productivity and entertainment device, providing just what you need for typical day-to-day tasks.

Performance

The HONOR Pad X9a is powered by the Qualcomm 6nm Snapdragon® 685 processor, designed to deliver reliable and efficient performance for everyday use. Built on a 6nm process, this chipset offers improved energy efficiency and better thermal control, which translates to smoother app launches, better multitasking, and more stable performance during extended use. Whether you’re attending online classes, writing documents, or switching between multiple apps, the Pad X9a handles it all with ease.

To complement the processor, the tablet comes equipped with 8GB of RAM, which can be further expanded with an additional 8GB using HONOR’s RAM Turbo technology, giving you a total of up to 16GBof RAM. This dynamic memory expansion boosts multitasking capabilities, allowing you to switch between apps more smoothly and keep background tasks running without noticeable lag. For storage, it includes 128GB of internal memory, which is plenty of space for your favorite apps, documents, videos, and learning materials.

Running on HONOR’s MagicOS 9.0, the Pad X9a offers a clean, user-friendly interface that enhances productivity and everyday usability. While it’s not intended for heavy gaming or intensive creative applications, it performs exceptionally well in typical work and study scenarios. Overall, the HONOR Pad X9a delivers dependable performance, especially for students and digital nomads who need a stable and efficient tablet they can rely on every day.

Battery

The HONOR Pad X9a is equipped with an 8300mAh battery, providing extended usage for various activities such as streaming, online classes, and reading. This large-capacity lithium-ion battery ensures that users can enjoy their favorite content without frequent recharging.

To complement its substantial battery capacity, the HONOR Pad X9a supports 35W fast charging. With this feature, the tablet can be fully charged from 0% to 100% in approximately 1 hour and 35 minutes, making it ideal for users who need to quickly power up and stay on the go.

With its combination of a high-capacity battery and fast-charging capability, the HONOR Pad X9a is designed to meet the demands of students, professionals, and casual users who require reliable performance for their daily tasks.

HONOR Pad X9a Specs

Display: 11.5-inch LCD (IPS) screen with 120Hz refresh rate, 2.5K 2560 x 1504 resolution at 255 ppi
CPU: 2.8GHz 6nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 685 octa-core processor
GPU: Adreno 610
RAM: 6GB
ROM: 128GB
Back Camera: 8MP f/2.0 with autofocus
Selfie Camera: 5MP f/2.2
Battery: 8,300mAh with 35W fast charging
Operating System: Android 15 with MagicOS 9.0
Connectivity: WiFi (2.4GHz/5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1
Sensors: Accelerometer, ambient light sensor
Others: 4 speakers, 1 microphone, USB-C
Color: Gray
Dimensions: 267.3 x 167.4 x 6.77 mm
Weight: 475 g
Price: PHP 10,999 (tablet only), PHP 11,999 (with Bluetooth keyboard case)

Verdict

Personally, we really enjoyed watching our favorite series on the HONOR Pad X9a. In fact, we actually finished watching the new Netflix series called Bet on this tablet, and the experience was smooth and immersive. We even wrote this review using the tablet, and typing on the smart Bluetooth keyboard was really comfortable. While the keyboard does not have a trackpad like some other smart keyboards on the market, I paired it with the Logitech Lift Ergonomic Wireless Mouse, which made navigation smooth and effortless. This is definitely a setup I would recommend for anyone using the tablet for productivity. Another highlight is the tablet’s loud and clear speakers, perfect for streaming on popular apps without needing to carry extra Bluetooth speakers. This is a huge convenience when traveling light.

Having said all this, I truly wish devices like the HONOR Pad X9a were available when I was still studying. It would have made study sessions so much easier and more productive. For work, especially for digital nomads and remote workers, the tablet’s lightweight design, long battery life, and smooth performance make it a great companion for staying productive on the go. Its eye-friendly display and powerful audio system also enhance both reading and binge-watching experiences, making it easy to switch between work and play seamlessly.

All these reasons, combined with its affordable price tag, make the HONOR Pad X9a a smart choice for those looking for a stylish, versatile, and budget-friendly tablet. We highly recommend it for anyone wanting a device that can handle daily tasks with ease while providing great entertainment value.

Price and Availability

The HONOR Pad X9a is priced at PHP 10,999 for the tablet alone. For those who want to enhance their productivity, there’s also a bundle option that includes the HONOR Pad X9a with a Bluetooth keyboard case, available for PHP 11,999.

You can purchase the HONOR Pad X9a at authorized HONOR retail stores nationwide or conveniently order online via popular platforms like Lazada and Shopee. Whether you’re a student, remote worker, or digital nomad, this tablet offers great value and versatility.

As a special promotion, anyone who purchases the HONOR Pad X9a between May 15 and May 30, 2025, will receive a FREE Camping Light Speaker. This complimentary speaker can be claimed starting May 31, making it a great time to get the tablet with some added value.

Leave a comment down below and share your thoughts with us!

Want more features like this? Please follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get the latest trends.