Honor X9d Review – Value-packed, rugged workhorse that can take a beating

Honor has developed a reputation for creating tough phones with each successive generation of their signature X9 series tough phone becoming even more resistant to misadventures. The new Honor X9d is the sum effort of their work to create what is arguably the toughest, most durable phone in Malaysia. 

We previously unboxed the phone and shared our first impressions. After putting it through the wringer, here’s our Honor X9d review where we suss out if their latest tough phone is worth your money.

Honor X9d Review – Performance and Benchmarks

Beyond its significantly improved durability compared to last year’s Honor X9c, the Honor X9d also sports a modest upgrade to the hardware running under the hood with a midrange Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 processor running Android 15 with their own Magic OS 9.

Built on a 4nm process and announced earlier this year in February, the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 processor uses the new ARMv9 CPU cores, has better AI capabilities and slightly improved CPU and GPU performance as well as improved power efficiency especially compared to the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset used in the prior Honor X9c.

This is paired with 12GB RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage. Our Honor X9d review sample sports the former. Like its predecessors, the Magic OS 9 has the ability to assign up to 12GB RAM of virtual storage off the onboard storage though there’s still no way to reassign or disable the feature entirely. 

On the bright side, the phone sports a host of the most recent Honor AI features including Magic Text to extract text from an image, Magic Portal to drag and drop content to compatible apps with your knuckle, AI Subtitles, AI Translate and AI Writing.

Naturally, you also get access to Google Gemini so you can ask it the most obscure questions imaginable to your heart’s desire. This timr around, Honor has stated that the X9d gets 2 OS and security updates.

Unfortunately, Magic OS 9 is still chock full of bloatware including the Booking app, Temu, Lazada, ReelShort, LinkedIn and more that take up space. Fortunately, they can be deleted in short order without issue.

Here’s how our Honor X9d review sample stacks up on paper:

Price	RM1,499 (256GB), RM1,699 (512GB)
Display	6.79-inch 1.5K OLED, 1,200 x 2,640 pixels, 100% DCI-P3, Eye Comfort Technology, 3,840Hz PWM Dimming, Circadian Night Display, 6,000 peak brightness
Processor	Snapdragon 6 Gen 4
OS	Android 15 with MagicOS 9.0
Memory	12GB RAM/ 256GB (review unit) or 512GB storage
Camera	108MP f/1.75 w/ OIS + 5MP f/2.2 wide angle camera [rear] / 16MP f/2.45 [front]
Battery	8.300mAh Li-Ion polymer battery, 66W charging
Size/Weight	161.9 x 76.1 x 7.76mm / 193g

When subjected to synthetic benchmarks, our Honor X9d review sample with the stock 12GB of virtual RAM scored the following:

3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	352
3D Mark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited	351
3D Mark Wildlife Extreme	991
3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Unlimited	954
Geekbench 6 Single Core	1,103
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	3,097
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	2,881
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	3,977
PCMark Work 3.0	13,658
PC Mark Battery Life	18 hours 28 mins

When compared to the Honor X9c and its Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset, the Honor X9d with its Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 processor shows marked improvement in single, multicore and graphics performance across the board.

Synthetic benchmarks aside, there are also modest improvements in practical day to day performance in loading times and general performance that are also helped in part by the 12GB of RAM and the 12GB of virtual RAM. Our Honor X9d review sample was also able to comfortably handle Call of Duty Mobile, Mecharashi and Genshin Impact on default settings.

The flat 6.79-inch 120Hz AMOLED display here offers 6,000 nits peak brightness which ensured good clarity even under direct sunlight with brightness dialled to maximum. Under normal indoors lighting conditions, the display with its 100% DCI-P3 was able to offer excellent colour rendition.

While it’s typically a rarity in midrange phones to this day, the Honor X9d has a pair of stereo speakers which now have an improved 400% volume mode; its predecessor only maxed out at 300%. This impressive increase in volume means that music or whatever content you’re playing is easily audible within several paces.

The substantially increased battery capacity at 8,300mAh on our Honor X9d review sample translates to three days of normal use on paper though the brighter display means that your mileage will vary depending on your screen brightness settings and overall usage. 

In PCMark’s battery life tests, it managed a very respectable 18 hours and 28 minutes of battery life which outpaces the majority of midrange phones and even flagships too.

Purely from a performance standpoint, the Honor X9d is a solid midrange phone with enough pixel crunching power to handle day to day tasks and casual gaming while offering a brighter display, a smattering of AI capabilities including Google Gemini and exceptional battery life.

It achieves all this  while also packing an IP69K dust and water resistance rating, one of the highest toughness and durability ratings available in the industry.

Honor X9d Review – Cameras

Where its durability, endurance and performance get significant improvements, the Honor X9d sports a similar setup as its predecessor the Honor X9c. The rear features a 108MP f/1.75 camera with optical image stabilisation  and a 5MP f/2.2 ultra wide angle camera.

With this setup, the main rear camera is capable of 3x lossless zoom and up to 10x digital zoom as well as 4K@30fps video with up to 8x digital zoom. The front-facing 16MP f/2.4 camera lets you do selfies and up to 1080p@30fps video. 

In daylight conditions, the rear main camera of our Honor X9d review unit offers good detail and colour rendition out to 3X zoom with shots beyond that increasing getting softer when you pixel peep. Low light shots are otherwise decent but aren’t particularly stellar. 

The ultra wide camera is serviceable but unremarkable and works best to take large swaths of scenery; you’ll get the best results if you stick to the main 108MP camera. The front 16MP camera is more than sufficient for selfies and video calls.

 

Much like its predecessor the X9c, the Honor X9d retains the use of Highlights Capture that intelligently captures action shots as long as you leave the camera aimed at the subject without having to manually press the shutter release. 

You also get an array of AI features to edit photos including the ever popular AI Eraser to erase unwanted parts of an image as well as a new AI Outpainting feature that requires a data connection to expand the borders of an image as well as AI Upscale that increases image sharpness and resolution though results are mixed.

One test image of a woman had the AI prioritise sharpening the resolution of her worn tiara and hair rather than other critical features. Still, these are nice features to have in a midrange phone in this price range.

If you keep your expectations modest, the Honor X9d with its rear camera is sufficient for most casual usage scenarios with its array of AI-powered photo editing tools offering quite a bit of creative versatility though more serious content creators will likely need a more specialised phone or an actual camera.

Should you buy the Honor X9d?

The Honor X9d is easily one of, if not the toughest phone that money can buy in Malaysia with the sort of ruggedness that sees it shrugging off direct hits from a nailgun, being used in a steamer and more. 

Add in its massive battery that’s big enough for tablets, generous array of accessories and modest upgrades to its hardware and you get a robust, reasonably priced phone that’s well worth your money.

If you add in its six years of OS and security updates which are far longer than its predecessor, you get a very worthy midrange phone indeed.

Honor X9d review sample courtesy of Honor Malaysia. For more details please visit https://www.honor.com/my/phones/honor-x9d/