A few weeks ago on the 26th of August What Gadget was invited to 30 St Marys Axe otherwise known as the Gerkin for the Honor launch in which they launched the Honor 70 which we have reviewed but also launched the Honor X80 5G and what we have been covering is the Honor Pad 8.
First Impressions
The Honor Pad 8 was originally launched at IFA this year and became available to buy earlier this month and is available for £269 and can be found on the likes of Amazon. 
The key features of the tablet are a 12-inch (2000x1200p) 2K Honor Full View display that supports over 1 billion colours and comes with DTS:X Ultra Hi-Res loudspeakers. The Honor Pad 8 also comes with a 7250mAh battery and also provides a 5-megapixel camera on both the front and rear of the device.
Design
The Honor Pad 8 is a very nice-looking tablet the finish is navy blue and is not a fingerprint catcher on the rear at least. The tablet comes with a fairly robust design to it and handled even applied pressure at both ends. The Honor Pad 8 comes with rounded corners that fit snugly in your hand and comes with a thickness of 6.9mm and a weight of 520g meaning it’s very lightweight in your hands. 
The screen measures 12 inches and supports over a billion colours providing unbelievable depth. The manufacturer calls it an eye care screen meaning it has a low blue light and is flicker-free these benefits will help if you use the tablet as a kindle and read books on it. 
The resolution is 2000x1200p but when looking at this closely you might notice you will see some pixelation in the display which detracts from the overall enjoyment. You will also notice Honor has gone for an LCD display over an OLED so the overall quality is not as good. The display might be missing that OLED quality but overall it works really well and watching films on Amazon Video or watching a cooking video via Youtube was a pleasant experience that offered widescreen viewing. 
The Honor Pad 8 apart from the lack of OLED display also lacks a few additional features you might have expected a tablet to have for example I could not find an IP rating which is a concern if you were to use this by the poolside on holiday. The other issue when it comes to this tablet is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack. This is normally a common feature on tablets so it’s odd why it has been left out. Yes, you can connect your wireless headphones to the tablet just make sure they have a dual Bluetooth connection so you can have them connected to both your phone and tablet to avoid. 
What you do have in the place of the 3.5mm jack is additional speakers so now you have 8 speakers which will allow you to play a louder sound when listening to music or watching a film without headphones. 
Battery life
Honor has taken the time to consider the battery life when it comes to the Honor Pad 8 and they provide you with a Lithium polymer battery with a capacity of 7250mAh. The battery life should offer 14 hours of use in most cases but if you were doing an online class the battery is used more so expect that to drop to 10 hours of use. When its time to recharge the battery you are provided with a 22.5W charger which sounds better than it actually is what I found is after a 30min charge we only gained 15% on the battery so to get a full charge it’s best to leave the Pad 8 charging overnight. This is not something you could give a quick 15 min charge and expect to get much battery life.
Performance
We have been testing this tablet for a variety of apps and uses such as making notes to watching the latest episode of Married at first sight to playing call of duty and it performed very well. This is mainly down to the fact it uses a Qualcomm octa-core Snapdragon 680 chipset with 128 GB of storage with either a 4GB or 6GB of RAM option available for purchase. 
The Pad 8 does not have a Micro SD card slot so just be careful with the storage you use and forget about transferring photos or videos this way. The Pad 8 also provides the user with dual-band Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5.1. When we ran it through some benchmark testing here are the results compared to its closest rivals:
| Honor Pad 8 | Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 | Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 | |
| Geekbench 5 single-core | 378 | 364 | 245 |
| Geekbench 5 multi-core | 1546 | 1244 | 1221 |
| 3D Mark – Wild Life | 477 | 694 | 383 |
| 3D Mark – Sling Shot | 2095 | 2083 | N/A |
| 3D Mark – Sling Shot Extreme | 1326 | 1417 | 1172 |
What this shows is the Honor Pad 8 can stand its ground compared to the tablets of a similar spec and in fact, the Honor Pad 8 is better on certain tests compared to the Tab A8 but still has some room for improvement.
Software Offering
The operating system is Andriod 12 with Honor Magic UI 6.1 software overlaid. As Honor is not part of Huawei anymore they have all the Google Mobile services that Huawei is missing. You are provided with a number of pre-installed apps like the social media site Facebook and the likes of Booking.com for travel. You will be pleased to know there are not many pre-installed apps allowing you to download what you want. Honor has created something very special and that is multi-Window viewing including a split screen mode ideal for multi-taking between two apps at the same time. The tablet interacts with your Honor mobile phone allowing you to seamlessly drag and drop photos and videos making it easy to collaborate on the same files. You can support up to 4 Simultaneous open app windows allowing you to have everything you need open all at once. You can have the option of a split screen navigation bar between the split screen and floating windows with ease.
Honor Split Screen mode with an Honor 70
Camera
The Camera on tablets is not normally expected to be the main attraction on a tablet however, it does provide you with a decent job and will provide you with the functionality required. Below are images taken using both the rear and selfie camera and they do the job they will not be as strong as if you were to take them on the Honor 70. The images are not as bright as you might want them to be but hardly disappointing.
Taken using the 5mp rear-facing camera
5mp selfie camera as modelled by my son.
Night Shot taken on Honor Pad 8
The front-facing camera can also be used when making video calls via Zoom or Skype and it performs well and allows you to take business calls without having to take your laptop around with you. The Honor Pad 8 also uses a proprietary vocal enhancement algorithm that improves the vocal details to make it sound like you’re having a face-to-face conversation.
Verdict
The Honor Pad 8 is a good buy considering the cost of £269. This tablet performs well in most of the key areas. It’s not perfect with the lack of OLED display prevents that sharp display but the LED display is still large and colourful with an aspect ratio ideal for widescreen videos. The Honor Pad 8 is missing the headphone jack which is annoying but if you do have the ability to connect your headphones via Bluetooth or have a good set of speakers for playing music or when watching a film. In regards to the performance stats when we ran the benchmark tests the Honor Pad 8 did not experience any lag or stuttering compared to its closest rivals. We also found the battery life to be excellent offering 10 hours of use but charging the tablet takes a lot longer. Overall if you are looking for a tablet the Honor Pad 8 is affordable but also comes with a premium build and that 2K screen will be fantastic for a wide range of entertainment such as watching films on Amazon Video, Playing games such as COD this tablet will perform without any issues. An excellent option for those looking for a new tablet this is well worth considering.
Product Rating:
Design: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0 Battery Life: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0 Performance: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0 Software Offering: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0 Camera: 4.0 out of 5.0 stars Value for Money: 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0 Overall Rating: 4.8 out of 5.0 stars – 4.8 Star review Thanks for reading this review, please continue to support us and check out our other reviews and follow us on Social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Linkedin don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter below.
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