Honor Magicpad 2 – Performance inferior, but the screen and speaker can “match” with iPad Pro

Honor Magicpad 2 offers many impressive features with the price of only 11 million VND – namely extremely bright and beautiful OLED screen, high quality speakers and extremely long battery life. However, there are still a few minus points. Many people may think it is a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, not the leading chip. But in fact, the performance of the machine is quite good. The big weakness lies in another aspect.

1. Screen: Astonishing oled

Before going into weakness, let's praise the beautiful screen of the device. Magicpad 2 has a 12.3 -inch screen with a high resolution of 3000 x 1900 pixels. Therefore, everything is as sharp as a razor.

Equipped with an OLED screen at this price is quite unusual. When comparing directly to LCD tablets such as OnePlus Pad 2 or iPad Air, you will immediately notice stronger contrast and black is really “black”. How wonderful!

Colors also look quite vivid, at least in most cases. The color when viewed on Honor's own video app is a bit too saturated, however, this seems to be the problem of the application. When watching videos on YouTube and Netflix are different, the color display is very vivid and accurate.

And, one thing is even more abnormal than the Magicpad 2 owns an OLED screen in this price range, which is a really high screen brightness that can be up to 1600 nits with HDR content. This is an unbelievable parameter for a mid -range tablet, must know that even more advanced tablets such as iPad Air, Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+ and even Galaxy Tab S10 Ultra do not achieve such a peak brightness, only iPad Pro M4 can be compared.

In addition, the ability to support the refreshing speed of up to 144Hz is also a significant plus. It makes manipulating with a smoother, smoother screen.

2. Speaker speakers

If the screen of this Honor tablet is almost perfect to watch movies, its speakers also meet the same standard.

Practical test shows that Honor Magicpad 2 speakers have a larger volume than the 13 -inch iPad Pro, but the bass shows worse and slightly missing treble. Compared to Apple's leading tablet, its sound quality is generally lower than one step. However, compared to other competitors like iPad Air or Galaxy Tab S9+, it is much better. Therefore, it certainly belongs to the top of the speaker quality.

3. Design and finishing quality

Magicpad 2 tablet has two color versions, black and white. The black version looks pretty but the white version looks a bit cheap because it does not cover the shortcomings of the plastic shell. On this tablet, we only have a 5.8mm border frame. This is also the reason why the body is quite light, only 555 grams. However, the perfection of the machine still needs a lot of improvement, the transition between the glass and the back to the metal frame is not as subtle as the opponent's flagship.

A unfortunate point is that the device lacks a headphone jack and does not have a memory card slot to expand, it does not apply the fingerprint scanner but only unlocked by face recognition. Perhaps these are the elements that are 'sacrificed' to Magicpad 2 can own the most beautiful OLED screen segment.

On the right side, there is USB-C port, but the fact is only the old 2.0 standard, the data transmission speed is very slow and can cause heavy data copying a lot of time.

The 9MP front camera is generally good enough for video calls, photo quality and video not too excellent and quite a lot of noise. The 13MP main camera on the back is significantly better and can take pictures quite well, next to the camera is the LED flash to support lightening compensation.

4. Hardware configuration and performance

Inside the Honor Magicpad 2 is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 processor with RAM from 8GB to 16GB and the internal memory from 256GB to 1TB. There is no 5G version and also lacks GPS and NFC.

In the Geekbench 5 and 6 benchmark test, the Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 chip shows that the processing speed is not too positive, it is significantly weaker than the standard Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on OnePlus Pad 2 and even slower than Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is equipped on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 tablet line (except Tab S9 Fe+).

In the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme test, Magicpad 2 achieved better results than Apple iPad 10, and also significantly higher than the Honor Pad 9 brothers, of course, it is still weaker than the Galaxy Tab S9+ and OnePlus Pad 2.

Although the performance score has many things worth discussing, but in general, during the daily use, this Honor tablet is still very smooth and fast, its multitasking ability is not too excellent, but good enough for most use purposes.

5. Test gaming on Magicpad 2

Switching to a harder task than playing games, Honor Magicpad 2 also has an impressive performance. In the Fornite game, it runs quite well with 'Epic' graphics settings, 3D resolution is 100% and the frame speed 60. The graphics are not only beautiful but the frame speed is still in the range of 45 to 60 fps, very smooth, enough to play.

However, when installing the maximum frame speed to 90, the graphics can not be placed at 'epic' level anymore but can only be reduced to 'Low'. Want to play well in this settings with a high frame, at least it needs the same power as Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.

In addition to Fornite, other games like Asphalt Unite and Zenless Zero run well in the highest graphics settings, popular competitive games such as Mobile Union, PUBG also plays smoothly without any problems.

6. Magic-Pencil 3 irresponsibility

The Honor Magic-Pencil 3 smart pen looks like a copy of Apple Pencil, it is not only very accurate but also responds quickly and quickly even when tilting the pen. This is a great signal for those who want to use this machine combos to design and draw greatly.

However, this pen also has a small drawback. It works best in Honor's own Note application, good feedback and very fast here, however, when switching to third -party applications like Noteshelf 3, it is delayed.

7. Leaving keyboard

Switch to a separate keyboard. This is not the biggest weakness of Magicpad 2, but certainly not the highlight.

The design of the separate keyboard is similar to many other types, the case is completely plastic and can be folded to protect the tablet. The keyboard for good typing experience, can be used for daily work because the size is also relatively large, spacious layout. However, when used with tablets, its inclination angle is a bit steep, creating a feeling of not being very comfortable. In addition, in some locations, the keyboard shell also feels quite cheap, but it is true that it is really cheap, significantly cheaper than the keyboard of other competitors.

By the way, this Bluetooth keyboard is powered directly from the tablet, so it does not have a charger, or any physical connection port.

8. Software: Android 14 without an update

Now we come to the largest minus point of the Honor Magicpad 2 tablet, and it is its software. This tablet runs Android 14 with the Magicos interface version 8.0.1.

The software itself is quite good, typical of Honor and previously also of Huawei. All standard features of Android are working well and multitasking excellent. Although the typical Google task bar is lacking, there are two docks at the bottom and besides meeting its purpose.

The problem lies in the update. In fact, no official statement of Honor on supporting the operating system for Magicpad 2. According to some information, it will receive an operating system update and 3 years of security updates. And even if that information is true, it is too short. Must know that Samsung has now promised 7 years of updating the main software version for its high -end tablets.

Honestly, this is the most unfortunate 'squid' of Magicpad 2. This tablet itself is really good, can compete with iPad Pro in many aspects and the screen is even better than the expensive flagships of Samsung.

9. Battery duration

Battery time is also an extremely excellent aspect of Magicpad 2. In the battery test with the infinite HD video loop at maximum brightness, it reaches a record time of up to 13 hours, higher than Samsung Glaaxy Tab S9+ and OnePlus Pad 2.

10. Should I buy Honor Magicpad 2 tablet?

So, is Honor Magicpad 2 a tablet for you? If you are looking for an excellent multimedia tablet, certainly yes. It offers a really beautiful and very bright screen, good and large speakers, and the battery life is very long, perfect for an entertainment tablet. It is even great to play games, although it is not the best of the best tablets for this purpose. Stylus pen is also good and firm keyboard.

Although there are some concerns about future performance decline because it is not supported updated, but in fact, it is still 'safe' for us to use in the next 3 to 5 years. At some point, although the Android version cannot increase, most applications will still work.

In general, if the tablet is not a device for your main job, Honor Magicpad 2 is really worth buying.