Android tablets are often a bit of a tough sell. While Apple has largely succeeded with tablet software (leaving aside its ambitions to replace the laptop on the iPad), the experience of using Android on a tablet has been mediocre at best. Honor, however, thinks it might have the solution – and has released the Honor MagicPad 2, which, on paper at least, is clearly built to eat the iPad’s lunch.

But Honor itself struggles a bit in the software department. Does the Honor MagicPad 2 do enough to overcome the hurdles associated with Android on a tablet?

Honor MagicPad 2 Specifications

An elegant design and premium colors

The Honor MagicPad 2 is clearly built for a premium experience. It’s incredibly slim, very sleek and stylish, and offers excellent overall build quality.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

The tablet has a relatively large 12.3-inch display that sits in a 3:2 aspect ratio. The result is that it’s slightly shorter than most iPad models, but many prefer it anyway. It has thin bezels around the screen, which we still found enough room to easily hold the tablet without accidentally pressing the screen. In landscape orientation, there’s a USB-C port on the right, along with a power button on the left and a volume rocker on the top. The front-facing camera can also be found on the top edge, which is exactly where it should be.

Perhaps the back of the tablet is more interesting than the front. MagicPad 2 is available in flat black or light blue. But the best color option is the Moonlight White option, which has a textured look reminiscent of a white marble countertop. It’s a great look and I love that brands like Honor are experimenting more with color options.

A stunning OLED screen

Even better than the tablet’s design is its display. The screen on the MagicPad 2 is absolutely stunning. It’s an OLED panel with a resolution of 1920 x 3000 pixels, and it’s easily sharp and detailed enough for any task you can throw at it in 2024. Text is crisp and images look stunning.

The tablet also has a high refresh rate, ranging up to an impressive 144 Hz. Now, I don’t really think manufacturers need to focus on refresh rates beyond 120Hz. It gets harder to notice a difference in refresh rate as it goes up, and most people find a 120Hz refresh rate feels smooth and responsive.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

In addition to the high resolution and refresh rate, the display also becomes incredibly bright, especially for an OLED screen. I found that I could easily see content on the display even outdoors in direct sunlight, which is impressive for OLED screens in general. To be clear, the screen doesn’t get as bright as the iPad Pro, so don’t expect anything to match Apple’s Tandem OLED technology just yet. But the Honor MagicPad 2 is also slightly cheaper than the iPad Pro.

Honor also uses some AI features to help improve the display experience on the MagicPad 2. For example, it has an interesting AI focus display feature that is built to help those with nearsightedness better see what is on the screen.

All that to say, the display on the Honor MagicPad 2 is absolutely stunning and easily the best thing about the tablet.

Great performance for the price

Under the hood, the Honor MagicPad 2 offers a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor coupled with either 8GB, 12GB or 16GB of RAM. Our review unit has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, though storage is up to 1TB.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

Thanks to the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, the tablet feels fast and responsive and is capable of handling anything you can throw at it in 2024. This includes heavier multitasking, which is very important for a tablet of this size. While many users may buy a tablet like this just for media consumption, others are looking for a tablet with a large screen for productivity reasons.

I experienced no freezing or stuttering during my time testing the tablet. I also found that it loaded games relatively quickly and performed well while gaming.

Here are the benchmark results we got with the Honor MagicPad 2.

• GeekBench 6: 1,963 single-core, 4,662 multi-core
• 3DMark Wild Life Extreme:

These are solid results and show a tablet that is easily capable. The MagicPad 2 doesn’t perform as well as the more expensive Galaxy Tab S9 series, let alone the much more expensive iPad Pro. But at this price, the tablet works well, and again, in everyday life, it excels.

Good battery and fast charging

The Honor MagicPad 2 packs a 10,050mAh battery, which offers excellent battery life considering it’s coupled with a relatively efficient chipset and an OLED display. The battery won’t break any records, but most users should find it good for a full day’s work with light to medium workloads. You can push the battery with gaming and streaming, and when you do, you should expect to get less than 8 or 9 hours. But that’s not bad, and again, most users should expect to get a few days of moderate use before needing to charge.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

Speaking of charging, the MagicPad 2 supports fast charging up to 66 watts using the included power adapter. It’s pretty fast, and faster than most modern tablets can charge. It should take less than two hours to fully charge the tablet, which is quite useful.

Pretty good rooms

The camera module on the back of the Honor MagicPad 2 may be relatively large like Honor smartphones, but it only houses one camera. That camera is a 13-megapixel f/2.0 camera and is coupled with an LED flash.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

Most people don’t use their tablets to take photos in their everyday lives, so the quality of the rear camera on a tablet isn’t necessarily that important. The MagicPad 2 can take decent photos, and while it won’t compare to a modern high-end smartphone, it doesn’t look terrible either.

On the front of the tablet, you’ll find a nine-megapixel camera, which is hidden in the top bezel in landscape orientation or the right bezel in portrait orientation. That’s exactly where it should be. The front-facing camera isn’t amazing either, and if you’re using it to take photos, you might find the lights a little blown out and subjects a little blurry at times. That said, it’s perfectly adequate for video calling, which frankly is what the front-facing camera in a tablet is built for.

Useful accessories

These days, a tablet needs to be accompanied by solid accessories, and Honor has clearly put some thought into the accessories that work with the MagicPad 2.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

For starters, there’s the MagicPad 2 Smart Bluetooth Keyboard, which is a relatively basic keyboard accessory that doubles as a protective case. The Bluetooth Smart Keyboard is fine, but it’s nothing to write home about. You’ll clip the tablet into the keyboard case as you would with most other keyboard accessories, but that means it’s not as easy to remove the tablet from the keyboard as the iPad Pro is from Apple’s Magic Keyboard. Additionally, the keyboard connects via Bluetooth, but the good news is that it charges wirelessly from the tablet itself when the tablet is placed inside it. The typing experience on the keyboard is good and the travel on the keys helps a reasonable tactile experience. I wish there was a touchpad though.

The tablet also works with the Honor Magic Pencil 3, which works similarly to the Apple Pencil. Magic Pencil 3 magnetically attaches to the top of your tablet and is built to deliver ultra-low latency of just 2 milliseconds. Magic Pencil 3 charges automatically when placed on top of the tablet.

The Magic Pencil 3 also offers some useful tools. In addition to using the stylus as a simple navigation tool, you can also use it to write by hand in any text field, and the tablet will use AI algorithms to convert it into plain text.

Software

So the big question is, Honor solved Android tablet software? Well, no, it wasn’t, but it’s not true to say that the Android tablet experience of three or four years ago is the experience you have today. Not only that, but Honor offers some useful features of its own that can largely emulate iPadOS, but do so relatively well.

You’ll get features like split-screen multitasking for using two apps side-by-side and the ability to add an app in floating mode on top. There’s also a toolbar at the bottom that can help you access apps and built-in tools to copy text and images between apps.

Image source: Christian de Looper for BGR

As you would expect in 2024, there are also plenty of AI features built into the software. Honor allows you to quickly polish text drafts or change the tone of the text. In addition, there is a voice-to-text transcription feature in Notes. Although, as someone who regularly uses AI-powered speech-to-text tools, I found that it wasn’t all that accurate.

ConCluSIonS

The Honor MagicPad 2 is an excellent tablet in its price range. It performs well, offers a stunning screen and boasts premium build quality, all for less than an equivalent Samsung or Apple tablet. Of course, you have to live in a region where it’s available to get it, but if you do and you’re looking for a flagship-level Android tablet for less than a flagship price, the Honor MagicPad 2 is the way to go.

Competition

The competition in the tablet world has heated up a bit. Most users will still find an iPad to be a bit more intuitive and support more useful features. But if you’re looking at the Honor MagicPad 2, you’re probably looking for an Android-powered device. In this case, the biggest competition comes in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S9+. However, the Honor MagicPad 2 is much cheaper. That said, Samsung is likely to launch its next-generation tablets in the near future.

Should I buy the Honor MagicPad 2?

Yes. It’s a great Android tablet at a great price.