Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Mostly magical

The Honor Magic Pad 2 is one of the best Android tablets that I’ve used in a very long time. Android tablets still have a reputation of not being on a par with Apple’s best iPads but manufacturers like Honor are making great strides at closing that gap. While the Magic Pad 2 still doesn’t quite reach the heights of the iPad Pro series, it’s easily my favourite Android alternative that you can buy right now.

MagicOS looks better than ever, the OLED screen is bright and vibrant, the processor delivers speedy performance and battery life is some of the best around. Unfortunately, software support somewhat lets the side down, meaning that the Honor Magic Pad 2 is an excellent all-round tablet but not one that will stay up to date for as long as we’d like.

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: What you need to know

The Honor Magic Pad 2 is a 12.3in Android tablet with a wonderful 144Hz OLED screen. Bordering this beautiful panel are impressively slim bezels, which help to maximise screen real estate and upped the immersion during my testing.

The Magic Pad 2 comes with a decently powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, which also powers Honor’s 200 Pro smartphone. This platform is a significant upgrade over the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset which powered the Honor Pad 9 earlier this year, and is here backed up by 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space.

At the time of writing, you also get the Honor Magic-Pencil 3 and the Magic Pad 2 Smart Bluetooth Keyboard when ordering directly from Honor. I’m not sure whether this will change in the future, as they’re listed as “gifts” on the page, but for now, they’re included.

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Price and competition

The Honor Magic Pad 2 retails for £500, which puts it in direct competition with the OnePlus Pad 2 (currently £449). The latter lacks the Magic Pad 2’s OLED display and isn’t as powerful a performer but makes up for it with a more premium build and longer software support.

Also around this price is the Google Pixel Tablet (£619 for the equivalent 256GB), which comes with a charger/speaker dock but has a rather middling 60Hz display, as well as the 10th generation iPad (£429). The latter has much stronger performance than any Android tablet in this price range but only has a 60Hz display and doesn’t bundle in a stylus or keyboard case.

READ NEXT: Best graphics tablet

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Design and key features

The Honor Pad 2 comes in either plain Black or the Moonlight White style reviewed here. I really like the white colour scheme but wish they’d gone for an all-metal finish on the frame. The composite edges feel quite cheap, despite the claims of all premium-materials throughout. I’m not about to drop-test the tablet but I’m not convinced this material will withstand much of an impact, either.

With that being said, the MagicPad 2 still looks good. Its 275 x 181mm (W x H) dimensions are very similar to the Honor Pad 9 and it weighs the same 555g. In that, the Magic Pad 2 feels well-built, with its supposed “aerospace grade” material delivering weight savings while protecting the tablet from scrapes. In addition, its 5.8mm thickness makes it comfortable to use for long periods.

You’ll find a pair of speaker grills at each end, hiding the Magic Pad 2’s eight-speaker system. The tablet supports spatial audio out of the box, which, while a nice touch, is limited in practical use. The Magic Pad 2 is also IMAX Enhanced certified, meaning that if you play IMAX Certified content, you’ll receive IMAX Sound. I tried this on Disney+ and, considering these are tablet speakers, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality. Cranking them up to maximum causes some distortion, but you’re unlikely to need to go full volume anyway.

At the rear of the Magic Pad 2 is a 13-megapixel f/2.0 auto-focusing camera, while on the front you’ll find a 9-megapixel f/2.2 snapper. With these specs, you roughly know what you’re getting – your smartphone will always take better pictures than this – but they’re not bad in a pinch, sufficing for video calls but not much else.

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Display

The 12.3in OLED screen is easily the Magic Pad 2’s best feature, with a sharp 3,000 x 1,920 resolution and smooth 144Hz refresh rate. Honor rates the peak brightness at 1,600nits and, while it didn’t get that high in testing, the results were still solid, hitting a peak of 618cd/m2 on adaptive brightness with a torch shining on the light sensor.

Colour accuracy impressed, as well; the bold, punchy colours made the Vivid profile better for streaming and gaming but Natural reproduced shades more accurately. On this setting, the Magic Pad 2 covered 98.2% of the sRGB gamut with a total volume of 103.4% and an average Delta E colour variance score of 1.22. That’s not perfect but it’s close enough to the target value of 1 or under to be considered a positive.

Screen quality is further boosted by 4,320Hz PWM dimming, designed to reduce fluctuations in screen brightness to help eye comfort, and Honor’s “AI Defocus Display” feature. This periodically defocuses screen elements and adds a blue or yellow edge to objects, with the aim of protecting against eye fatigue during long sessions. I didn’t notice this helping but, in fairness, nor did I experience any eye strain while testing the Magic Pad 2.

READ NEXT: Best Android phone

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Performance and battery life

Honor’s previous 2024 tablet, the Pad 9, didn’t impress much in performance testing, as it used the relatively modest Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset. Consequently, it’s great to see the Magic Pad 2 upgrade to the far superior Snapdragon 8s Gen 3.

This octa-core chipset is clocked up to 3GHz and delivered particularly impressive GPU benchmark results, eclipsing both the Pixel Tablet and the more expensive Huawei Matepad Pro 2024 in both the onscreen and offscreen portions. The iPad (2022) and OnePlus Pad 2 are both stronger overall but this is still a great result for the Magic Pad 2.

These figures translate to a decent gaming experience, even with higher-paced and graphically intensive games. I took Honkai: Star Rail for a spin, and it delivered a solid 30FPS with the quality set to high and managed 60FPS with the quality set to medium.

It’s a similar story in CPU benchmarking, with the Magic Pad 2 outpacing the OnePlus Pad 2’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor in the single-core benchmarks and even inching ahead of the iPad (2022) in the multi-core results.

The Magic Pad 2’s 10,050mAh battery performed very well in our testing, lasting for an impressive 16hrs 47mins in our standard looping video test – over an hour longer than the next-best result from Google’s Pixel Tablet.

While it impressed in the benchmarks, regular use was a slightly different story. After a day of general web browsing, writing, emailing, streaming and gaming, I found the Magic Pad 2 requiring a charge after around nine hours or so. Now, this is by no means bad, but it’s beaten by Apple’s M-Series chips hands down. Charging at least was solid – the provided 66W plug brought the battery from empty to full in around an hour and a half.

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Software

MagicOS 8.0 looks and feels great. Built on Android 14, Honor’s latest operating system has some handy AI flex. Tools like Magic Portal make it simple to drag and drop any content on your screen into any other app, influenced by how you use the tablet. It’s a little like having a personal context menu and, at times, it’s really handy.

It’s also really easy to multitask on the Magic Pad 2, with multiple screen splitting options, easy-to-use folders and files, and a general ease of use that saw me use the tablet much more than expected. As someone with an Honor smartphone, I’m also partial to the MagicRing feature, which makes it simple to share files between my devices (it’s up there with Apple for sheer convenience).

However, Honor has dropped the ball when it comes to MagicOS support, offering potential Magic Pad 2 buyers a single year of OS updates. Compared to Samsung and Apple, it’s just not acceptable in this day and age. Given the Honor 200 Pro and Honor Magic V3 were both launched in 2024, use MagicOS and will receive up to four years of support, this tablet-snub is one of the Magic Pad 2’s biggest downsides.

Honor Magic Pad 2 review: Verdict

Even still, I’m ultimately impressed with the Magic Pad 2. Honor’s latest take on the Android tablet pairs powerful hardware with a tidy software package and looks really quite sublime while doing it.

The AI features are handy but not overbearing, and I’m thankful Honor hasn’t found a reason to push a full generative AI chatbot into its products – not yet, at least.

The only real downside is the lack of software support, which might make some think twice. If you want more longevity, the OnePlus Pad 2 goes for the same £500 and is set for three years of OS updates and four years of security patches. Otherwise, there’s very little to dislike about the Magic Pad 2; between the price and the performance, it’s a cracking bit of hardware.