tablet with the largest screen in its class / Tablets

But just the amendment “now HONOR has everything like people” will not be full. The tablet market is not oversaturated — these devices never fulfilled the dream of Steve Jobs and did not become widely used, occupying only a fairly small niche. But there are still many proposals similar to each other. HONOR Pad 8 is trying to stand out against the general background primarily with a screen diagonal (12 inches), as well as a powerful speaker system (8 speakers!) And a high-quality case design.

⇡#Specifications

⇡#Design, ergonomics and software

Standing out with a design for a tablet is essentially an impossible task, so details such as case materials or the size of the frames around the display come to the fore.

HONOR Pad 8 is designed extremely conservatively — and in this case I can call it a big plus. Yes, the frame around the display is relatively large, but at the same time the front camera fits in it. For a smartphone, where every millimeter counts, such a decision would be too radical (but I still send my respects to Sony Xperia!), For a tablet, it seems almost the only true one. The camera does not invade the screen space and does not interfere with the consumption of content — the main function of the tablet, especially such as the HONOR Pad 8, which is not sharpened for professional use. I note that the screen eventually occupies 87% of the front surface area, which is quite up to par with competitors.

HONOR Pad 8, front panel: in the frame above the screen — front camera

And then the materials come to the fore. We can say that even for a HONOR Pad 8 tablet it looks boring, but it feels like a high-quality, expensive device: the case is made of aluminum.

HONOR Pad 8, rear panel: in the corner — a unit with a single camera and a single LED flash

In our case, it is dark blue. There are also gold and mint versions of the HONOR Pad 8, which are a bit more fun. But in the Russian Federation, it will appear only in blue (“twilight blue”) version.

HONOR Pad 8, left side: speaker grilles

HONOR Pad 8, right side: USB Type-C port and more speaker grilles

I note that the tablet is really thin — 6.9 mm. Also, for a device with such a large screen, it weighs relatively little — 520 grams. True, it was possible to achieve such an indicator only at the cost of battery capacity, but we will talk about this in more detail below.

HONOR Pad 8, top: microphone, power key, volume key

HONOR Pad 8, non-featured bottom

Functional elements are quite expected. A pair of hardware keys (power and volume control — and the fingerprint scanner is not built into the power key, it simply does not exist in the HONOR Pad 8), four speaker grilles, a USB Type-C port, microphones and a plastic insert for the antennas to work correctly.

As I have just noted, there is no fingerprint scanner in the tablet. The device can either be “password-protected” according to the classics, or an unlocking system can be installed using face recognition – the front camera is used for this.

HONOR Pad 8 runs Android 12 operating system with Magic UI 6.1 skin. We talked about the smartphone version of this shell, for example, in the HONOR X9a review. This is a conservative, but understandable, convenient and, most importantly, very fast software solution. On HONOR Pad 8, with its not the most powerful hardware platform, it also runs very smoothly and without failures. Here we will talk about the features of the shell in the tablet version.

The main screen has a dedicated panel with frequently used / pinned applications — almost the same as we are used to seeing on a PC. The icons themselves are enlarged in size, it is convenient to operate on a large screen with them. There is a Smart Multi-Window mode that allows you to display up to four applications at the same time — both side by side and on top of each other. The App Extender feature allows you to open several windows at once for one application — but the list of programs compatible with it is not too wide.

There is a well-known «Multiscreen» mode, in which the tablet can be used as an additional screen for a smartphone. If you have multiple HONOR devices, you can use the HONOR Share feature to quickly transfer files between your HONOR tablet, smartphone, and HONOR laptop with HONOR PC Manager support. HONOR Pad 8 also supports wireless projection mode, allowing you to broadcast presentations, games or videos from the tablet screen to the screen of another device. And finally, the interface is adapted to work with large screens, not only in terms of the size of the icons. The settings screen, for example, is divided in two, the contents of the «folder» are displayed immediately — and there are many similar examples of optimization in Magic UI 6.1 for tablets.

⇡#Display and sound

The HONOR Pad 8 has a 12-inch IPS LCD display with a resolution of 2000 × 1200 pixels. The pixel density is 194 pixels per inch. This is below average — the high diagonal is not supported by the increased resolution. Nevertheless, this is more or less expected 2K resolution for a tablet of this level.

According to the visual impression, the panel is of a decent level — the viewing angles are free, the image is perceived well. At the same time, it does not support an increased refresh rate — only the standard 60 Hz. I note the high-quality oleophobic coating, which is especially useful for a tablet — large screens are doubly smudged, especially since children often deal with them. Wiping off prints is easy.

In the screen settings, you can activate eye protection (the mode with the warmest colors), a dark interface theme, and also change the color temperature. As such, there are no presets or the ability to manually adjust the color rendition — the work with the image, in fact, ends with a change in color temperature.

Measured maximum brightness level is 375 cd/m². Measurements are normally made under the light of incandescent lamps, but even for such conditions the figure is below average. In the sun, the brightness rises a little, but I will not say that to a comfortable level — HONOR Pad 8 is still created for indoor use. At the same time, the contrast level for the LCD display is normal — 1364: 1.

HONOR Pad 8 Gamma. The yellow line is the HONOR Pad 8 performance, the dotted line is the reference gamma

HONOR Pad 8, color temperature. Blue line — HONOR Pad 8 readings, dotted line — reference temperature

HONOR Pad 8, color gamut. Gray triangle is sRGB coverage, white triangle is HONOR Pad 8 coverage

The color gamut of the HONOR Pad 8 display is close to the sRGB standard — it is even wider in absolute value, but with a noticeable shift. The average gamma is normal (2.26), but the curves «fly into space» in bright colors. The color temperature is increased, but stable — it stays at the level of 8,000 K. The color shades are a little colder than they should be. The average deviation for the extended Color Checker palette (shades of gray + a wide range of color shades) is 5.87 with an upper limit of 3.00.

For some reason, the HONOR Pad 8 does not have an analog audio jack. If a smartphone can be forgiven for this, especially in 2023, then for a tablet it is more critical. For example, during a long trip, where a tablet is more appropriate than ever, it is not always possible to recharge wireless headphones. Or it’s not always convenient for a child to give out the same TWS headphones (it can easily be lost), and it can be expensive to buy full-size Bluetooth headphones on purpose. There are many such scenarios, but they are ignored here. A mini-jack is not relevant, period.

With data transfer via Bluetooth, the order is the BT 5.1 standard, there is support for the main high-resolution data transfer profiles (aptX, LDAC). But the main thing is that there are very good speakers. And numerous — there are already … yes, eight of them in the HONOR Pad 8. The name of the tablet is rhymed with the number of speakers. It sounds good in the end — and there is a large volume margin, and the scene is decent, and the positioning is on par. Let’s add support for the DTS: X Ultra audio codec, which adds volume to the sound.