Honor MagicPad 2 Review – Big Screen, Big Value Slate Tested

Tablets remain a popular form factor as they blend large displays with enough performance for general productivity tasks in a slim and light enough form factor for daily carry. The Honor MagicPad 2 is their premier tablet for 2024 that is oriented towards productivity related tasks with its landscape-style orientation and inclusion of a wireless keyboard case and stylus.

Honor Malaysia has kindly furnished us with a sample for field testing and ahead of the holiday season, we’re going to suss out if it’s worth your money. Here’s our Honor MagicPad 2 review where we share if their premier tablet is even better value than before.

Honor MagicPad 2 Review – Build and Design

 

In terms of build and design, our Honor MagicPad2 review sample looks well polished with rounded corners, an aluminium frame, a slim chassis that is just 5.8mm thin and a relatively light design that weighs 555g even with the inclusion of a large 10,050mAh battery in the design.

The backplate of our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample in Moonlight White features subtle striations across it that make it resemble a slab of marble though it is actually made of aerospace-grade glass fibre, lending it enhanced durability and the ability to withstand up to 85N/mm of force, enhancing the strength of the backplate by 24% compared to conventional polycarbonate backplates while shaving the weight down by 45%. It also comes in a shade of black as well.

The marbled Moonlight White finish works to the MagicPad 2’s benefit, lending it  a relatively inoffensive, premium look that will hold it in good stead in academic or corporate environments. Unfortunately, it lacks any official IP ratings so it is not dust nor is it water resistant. However, there’s more than meets the eye as the Honor Magic Pad2.

Beyond the unusual marbled finish, the backplate comes with a rounded camera housing that has a single 13MP F/2.0 camera with autofocus along with an LED flash.

Flanking the 12.3-inch OLED display are four speakers on each side to form an octa-speaker setup that is also IMAX certified along with their own Honor Spatial Audio and Hi-Res audio certification. The left side features an additional power button while the right has a USB-C port for charging duties.

The base of the tablet is otherwise unremarkable with the top hosting a volume rocker. Interestingly enough, the Honor MagicPad 2 only comes with a WiFi capable only configuration and lacks a nano SIM/microSD card slot though it does come in several RAM and storage configurations depending on region.

Up front, our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample has a large 12.3-inch 3K Eye Comfort OLED display with 1,920 x 3,000 pixels resolution, 1,600 nits peak brightness, 4,320Hz PWM dimming for minimising eye fatigue and a 144Hz refresh rate as well as a massive 92% screen-to-body ratio which surpasses other competing designs by a substantial margin including current gear from Suwon and Cupertino on account of its exceptionally thin bezels.

The display also has support for the DCI-P3 colour gamut though the official literature doesn’t quote what percentage it supports. The display also has a TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Certification and TÜV Rheinland Hardware-level Low Blue Light Certification that ensures more comfortable, safer use for extended periods of time for the eyes. Perched up top in a punch hole is a small 9MP camera for video calls.

When it comes to accessories, our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample comes with a rather comprehensive set though this will vary depending on which region you buy it from with our unit intended for the Malaysia market.

Out of the box, you get a USB-C cable and a 66W fast charger. For Malaysia, you also get a Bluetooth keyboard case and a Magic Pencil 3 stylus that docks onto the top of the tablet for charging.

The bundled Bluetooth keyboard case is fairly typical of their oher designs with a compact keyboard setup with one portion of the case snapping onto the backplate and the other featuring the keyboard itself.

When fully deployed, the keyboard case flips out and props itself up on a rather steep 60-degree or so groove for use. Unfortunately, this is the only angle available which predicates usage at eye level on a desk rather than on a lap or other scenarios.

In the case of the stylus, Honor has further refined the design and the Magic Pencil 3 as they dub it has a low 2ms latency with a touch sensitive area near the nib end that lets you tap it or slide a finger along it to swap between modes or change slides. 

Honor MagicPad 2 Review – Performance and Benchmarks

As tablets go, our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample is exceptionally well equipped. Powering the tablet is a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 which is akin to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset that powers flagship slates with the 8s featuring the same octacore setup utilising similar Kryo CPU cores though with slightly slower clock speeds and a different, more streamlined core configuration, which puts the 8s slightly behind in raw power as the original Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.

Paired with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is 12GB RAM and 256 of non-expandable storage along with WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 connectivity. Of note is that Honor’s MagicOS 8.0.1 can assign 8GB of RAM Turbo virtual RAM off the onboard storage to augment the physical 12GB RAM. Like prior examples, this virtual RAM cannot be disabled nor can it be increased.

Unfortunately, there are no LTE enabled variants and there is no card slot so there is no way to expand storage. At the time of writing, there is no official word on how many years of OS and security updates the Honor MagicPad 2 gets for Malaysia. Here’s how our Honor MagicPad 2 review unit stacks up on paper:

 

Price	RM2,799 (Discount till 1 Jan 2025), Original Price RM3,697
Display	12.3-inch OLED Fullview, 1,920 x 3,000 pixels resolution, 144Hz refresh rate, 1,600 nits peak brightness 14.06:9 aspect ratio
Processor	Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
OS	Android 14 w/ MagicOS 8.0.1
Memory	12GB RAM / 256GB storage
Cameras	13MP F/2.0 [rear] / 9MP F/2.2 [front]
Battery	10,050mAh w/ 66W wired fast charging
Size/Weight	274.5 x 180.5 x 5.8mm / 555g

In synthetic benchmarks, our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample scored the following:

3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	1,085
3D Mark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited	923
3D Mark Solar Bay	5,234
3D Mark Solar Bay Unlimited	5,209
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme	3,078
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited	2,911
Geekbench 6 Single Core	1,583
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	4,597
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	8,863
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	10,005
PCMark Work 3.0 Performance Test	16,150
PCMark Work 3.0 Battery Life	8 hours 4 mins

When compared to a device running the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 such as the flagship Honor Magic V3 foldable , our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample and its Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 does trail behind somewhat though it’s still swifter than tablets and other hardware packing the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset like the prior Honor Magic V2. Even so, the MagicPad 2 acquits itself well under actual field conditions.

Web browsing on Chrome was handled smoothly with a dozen opened tabs swapped back and forth, video editing on TikTok and CapCut at 1080p settings ran as smooth as silk and it managed to run Call of Duty Mobile and even Genshin Impact at high settings in a smooth fashion. The Honor MagicPad 2 also integrates a host of AI refinements with their MagicOS 8.0.1 that make productivity related tasks more seamless and easier. 

For starters, their Magic Portal leverages AI to intelligently allow users who have selected images or text to drag-and-drop them to the appropriate and relevant app such as selecting an address and then moving it on to the Grab app or pasting a line of text into a document. 

Another useful AI feature is their Magic Ring that makes connecting and interacting with multiple Honor devices logged into the same Honor ID possible such that users can share device screens onto other Honor devices, use a mouse and keyboard to interact with a connected Honor tablet or phone across devices.

This particular feature came especially handy when i paired my Honor Magic V3 to the tablet with a wireless mouse and keyboard to drag and drop some images off the phone to the tablet for editing.

The provided keyboard cover case works as intended with good 1.6mm key travel and a responsive typing experience though the keys lack any backlighting which means you can’t use it in the dark.

The stylus also proved to be responsive on par with competing designs and works well for artists and those looking to annotate documents or other paperwork with its larger size working in its favour for a more natural grip like a normal pen.

These quibbles aside, the Honor MagicPad 2 proved to be an effective means to get work done on the go at work hotspots and coffee shops though the steep angle of the keyboard case meant that using it on a lap was a bit of a challenge.

In terms of screen quality and brightness, our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample is among the best on test with one of the largest screen-to-body ratios for a tablet paired with excellent brightness and colour rendition with good clarity under daylight.

Where it impresses is its impressive octa-speaker setup which manages to offer clear vocals, good mids and highs. With the appropriate content, its Spatial Audio support comes into play, offering a decent amount of sound staging with noticeable left and right outputs that make it great for watching movies and gaming. 

Where its display gets the edge though is its 4,320Hz PWM dimming as well as dynamic dimming tech to make it more comfortable for extended viewing while minimising eye fatigue.

For younger users, the Honor MagicPad 2’s display gets a distinctive edge as it is the first tablet to include AI Defocus eyecare tech in its display that helps to mitigate myopia and eye fatigue. During our field test there wasn’t any noticeable difference in colour rendition and quality though activating Eye Comfort mode does add the customary yellowish tinge to everything onscreen.

Even without Eye Comfort mode, the display proved to be comfortable enough for all day viewing and binge watching of a season of Yellowstone over the weekend. 

With a 10,050mAh battery, our Honor MagicPad 2 review sample yielded good endurance across the board even with its large OLED display. In PCMark’s battery life test, it managed to get 8 hours and 4 minutes though in more practical usage with WiFi on and a combination of web browsing, Google Docs, music and YouTube enabled it to easily last a full day of use with enough left in the tank for usage until the better part of noon the next day.

With casual use, it’s easily able to last a couple of days or more. With the bundled charger, the tablet was able to charge in about an hour and 45 minutes which is understandable seeing the sheer size of the battery.

Should you buy the Honor MagicPad 2?

The Honor MagicPad 2 represents excellent value for what you pay for as it hosts an exceptionally vibrant and responsive 144Hz OLED display, a robust chassis reinforced by glass fibre, solid overall performance for work and productivity tasks and a bundled keyboard case as well as a stylus too.

If you’re an existing Honor phone honor, this is a useful addition to your setup especially if you extensively work on the go.

Honor MagicPad 2 review sample courtesy of Honor Malaysia. For more details please visit https://www.honor.com/my/tablets/honor-magicpad-2/buy/