Honor MagicPad 4 review: Anything but mid

Best Prices Today: Honor MagicPad 4

You can’t really blame Samsung for turning out incremental updates to its extended tablet family year on year. It’s nailed the formula, and continues to provide the best non-iPad hardware in the business.

That’s the standard line, at least, and it’s one that Honor would doubtless like to challenge. With the MagicPad 4, it’s offering an extremely powerful, well-equipped tablet that’s as good at productivity tasks as it is for media consumption.

Best of all, it manages to pull all this off at a hugely competitive mid-market price.

This year’s model reinstates an OLED display and amps up the performance while dramatically reducing bulk. It’s a pretty formidable package. If you’re looking for a Galaxy Tab or iPad Air alternative, this might be it.

one of the finest Android tablets in its class

Design & Build

• 4.8mm thickness, 450g weight
• 93% screen-to-body ratio
• Stylus and keyboard case available

The Honor MagicPad 4 comes in the same two colours as its predecessor, grey and white, with the same flat metal frame and a very similar rounded-square camera module in the corner.

This is no lazy rehash, though. Rather remarkably, Honor has managed to shave about 17% off the thickness (now just 4.8mm) and 24% off the weight (450g). These are significant differences.

It’s achieved some of this by making the display and battery a little smaller, but the overall effect makes for a net positive. The Honor MagicPad 4 is a pleasure to wield, though with a lack of IP certification I would be hesitant to set it up anywhere near a bath or pool.

It makes it thinner than the Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra and the iPad Pro (M5) (both 5.1mm), leaving only the niche and heavily caveated Toall Paper as a thinner option at 3.1mm.

the MagicPad 4 undoubtedly looks the part

This lighter body also means that an Honor MagicPad 4, together with its chunky Smart Keyboard case, proves to be lighter than a MacBook Air 13. Something to think about if your workload is primarily light word processing, emails and web browsing.

Or it would be if Honor’s Smart Keyboard accessory was better. Hooking up to the tablet via the pogo pins on the back of the tablet, it utilises a unusual stand system that folds the top half of the rear cover back and away from the tablet. I found it all to be a little fiddly and insecure.

While the keyboard itself offers a nice tactile typing experience with plenty of travel, I also noted that some of the symbols weren’t matching up with the UK-calibrated keyboard software on my test model – a genuine pain when trying to find those vital ‘@’ and ‘£’ symbols.

Honor boasts that its latest tablet design has the beating of the iPad Pro (M5) from the front, thanks to smaller 4mm bezels and a superior screen-to-body ratio. Apple would likely argue that its ubiquitous tablet’s chunky border is a feature, not a bug – all the better to grip it without interrupting the screen – but the MagicPad 4 undoubtedly looks the part.

You can also add the Honor Magic Pencil 3 to the accessory package, should you wish. Honor’s stylus isn’t quite as impressive as Huawei’s on the MatePad 11.5S, but it provides a reasonably natural handwriting experience nonetheless.

It affixes onto the top edge of the tablet through magnets, though it’s not the most secure or intuitive system I’ve used, and seems somewhat precarious when combined with the aforementioned keyboard case.

Screen & speakers

• 12.3-inch OLED display, 165Hz refresh rate
• 3000 x 1920 resolution
• 2400 nits peak brightness

Honor made a slightly odd decision with the MagicPad 3, expanding the size of its display while reverting to inferior LCD panel technology. Thankfully, the MagicPad 4 reverses that course.

This is a beautiful 12.3-inch OLED, rich in vibrant (yet natural) colour, and with a sharp 3000 x 1920 resolution.

It also benefits from a boosted peak brightness in HDR content of 2400 nits. That’s a big step beyond even what the Honor MagicPad 2 had to offer with its own OLED.

Despite this welcome reversion (or should that be advance?), the Honor MagicPad 4’s screen retains the speedy 165Hz peak refresh rate of its immediate predecessor. This isn’t a full LTPO panel with the fine-tuned flexibility that entails. Rather, it’s capable of switching between five levels of smoothness as the task dictates: 165Hz, 144Hz, 120Hz, 90Hz and 60Hz.

Complementing this fine display is a generous eight-speaker setup

To be blunt for a second, anything above 120Hz is excessive in general use, and even in general productivity tasks. It’s only really in certain games that support high frame rates that such extreme smoothness pays off. The good news is that the MagicPad 4 has the power to capitalise on this.

In non-gaming media, the MagicPad 4 benefits from a 3:2 aspect ratio and support for IMAX Enhanced content. There isn’t all that much around, but if you have a Disney+ account, you’ll be able to experience the likes of the latest Fantastic Four movie in a way that makes better use of the height of the screen, with smaller black borders.

Honor’s a stickler for eye care in its displays, and the MagicPad 4 follows suit with 5280Hz PWM dimming.

Complementing this fine display is a generous eight-speaker setup which, combined with Honor’s AI Spatial Audio technology, makes for an impressively spacious, well-separated soundstage.

It’s a little lacking in low-end oomph for my liking, though – certainly if you compare it to an iPad Pro. It should be noted, of course, that Apple’s premium tablet costs around double the money.

Specs & Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Gen 5
• 12 or 16GB RAM
• 256 or 512GB storage

A steady pattern has emerged of Honor MagicPad tablets offering very good, if not-quite-top-level performance. The MagicPad 4 is another to fit that mould, but it’s harder than ever to spot the compromise.

Unlike the MagicPad 3, it’s not using a year-old flagship chip for the job. Rather, Honor has turned to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, which has a slightly lower CPU clock speed and a lesser GPU than the all-singing Elite variant.

It’s the same chip that powers the OnePlus 15R and the Motorola Signature – two classy, almost-flagship phones that manage to achieve a lot while undercutting much of the competition on price. Honor is performing a similar trick with the MagicPad 4, only in the tablet space.

every inch a top-level performer

Thanks to the use of this component, in addition to either 12- or 16GB of RAM, the Honor MagicPad 4 feels every inch a top-level performer. Flitting between multiple windowed apps in PC mode (see the Software section) is a pause-free experience, as is playing Destiny: Rising on higher graphical settings.

This is the point in the review where I’d usually hit you with some benchmark tests to either rubber-stamp or dramatically counter my anecdotal impressions, but I can’t do so. Honor has seemingly blocked this from being possible ahead of the official launch.

In our experience with those aforementioned phones, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is about as capable as the Snapdragon 8 Elite – the top Android processor for much of 2025. It’s got more than enough power on tap for any task, though you might not quite be able to hit the full 165fps in 3D games.

Storage is a straight choice between 256- and 512GB, which should prove sufficient for the vast majority of people with £500 to spend on a tablet.

Cameras

• 13Mp rear camera
• 9Mp front camera

Honor has given the MagicPad 4 a straightforward photographic set-up involving a 13Mp rear camera and a 9Mp front camera.

I resisted the temptation to use the term ‘bog standard’ there, because it implies that we should be getting something better in our mid-priced tablets. The truth, of course, is that no one should be taking pictures with such unwieldy devices except as an absolute last resort.

To that end, when I say that the Honor MagicPad 4 doesn’t take very good pictures, it’s not with any great sense of disapproval. But fine, while we’re here, shots taken with this tablet are lacking in detail and prone to overexposure, even in ideal outdoors lighting.

The front camera, too, is incapable of capturing even half-decent selfies. Its fixed-focus nature means that there’s no great pop to the subject against the background, skin tones are washed out, and everything rather smudges together.

That’s to be expected. What these cameras can do is scan documents (in the case of the main camera), given enough lighting, as well as conduct rudimentary video calls (from the front camera).

Video capture can extend to 4K, but never beyond 30fps. Why would you want to record video on a giant slab of metal and glass, you ask? Well, quite.

Battery Life & Charging

• 10,100mAh battery
• 66W charging

As Honor’s smartphone batteries seem to be getting bigger and bigger, it might raise eyebrows to learn that the Chinese brand has gone in the opposite direction for its 2026 tablet.

While the Honor MagicPad 4’s 10,100mAh cell is ostensibly a downgrade from the MagicPad 3’s 12,450mAh unit, several things need to be taken into consideration.

As discussed, this is a smaller tablet than its predecessor, with a correspondingly smaller display. It also runs on a more efficient processor. This is a smaller battery, yes, but it’s not small for the dimensions and capabilities of the tablet.

I was able to go through a week or so without needing to charge up

What matters is that the MagicPad 4 can get you through a full day of mixed usage. In more ‘normal’ use case scenarios – picking it up sporadically for the odd video, game, web session or doodle using the stylus – I was able to go through a week or so without needing to charge up.

As that suggests, it holds onto its charge very well during protracted unused spells, too.

Given Honor’s apparent block on using benchmark tools ahead of the embargo, I was unable to run the MagicPad through our usual PCMark battery test. However, I did observe that the tablet lost around 8% following an hour of high-quality 2160p/60fps HDR video streaming on YouTube, which is about what I’d expect from a modern tablet.

Honor has supplied its tablet with 66W SuperCharge support. It doesn’t bundle in any sort of charger, but using a suitably speedy Vivo charger that I had to hand (which produced the telltale ‘Super Fast Charging’ notification), I was able to get it from empty to 55% in 30 minutes, and on to 100% in 1 hour and 10 minutes.

That’s impressively fast.

Software & Apps

• MagicOS 10 with Android 16
• Usual Honor bloatware
• At least three years of updates

The Honor MagicPad 4 ships with Android 16 – the latest (at the time of writing) version of Google’s OS. That’s not, of course, what you’ll be interacting with day to day, like it is a Pixel Tablet.

Honor’s MagicOS 10 UI comes slathered on top, for better or for worse, depending on what you wish to achieve.

While there’s ample customisation potential, and the UI performs admirably smoothly for the most part, it’s also full of needless bloatware. Facebook, Booking.com, TikTok, Instagram – all come preinstalled without your say-so.

So too do three cheap-looking games and WPS Office, all four of which, for some reason, share space in a folder titled ‘Top Apps’. Curious.

MagicOS 10 is far more impressive when it comes to getting things done beyond the usual casual media consumption

Honor also loads its latest tablet with a bunch of its own home-brewed applications, including Honor Kids (an educational app for younger users), a completely superfluous secondary app store called App Market, and a smart home accessory app that’s called Honor AI Space for who-knows-what reason.

Talking of AI, Gemini comes preinstalled (naturally), while the Honor AI section of the Settings menu rounds up all of the company’s own AI tools. There’s a mixture of the usual writing assistance and real-time transcription offerings mixed in with features that probably don’t warrant the AI descriptor, such as Air Gestures.

Magic Portal lets you circle screen content using a rather odd but effective knuckle input, and then send the content to the Notes app, the share tool, email and the like. Honor’s AI Memories tool features heavily here, which lets you extract text and image information and save it for later reference.

MagicOS 10 is far more impressive when it comes to getting things done beyond the usual casual media consumption.

Hook the tablet up to its keyboard case accessory, and you’ll be asked if you want to enter PC mode. This makes it so that apps boot up in windowed form, allowing you to stack and run multiple applications side by side, like you would on your desktop PC or laptop.

I also appreciated the way in which I could share files relatively easily between the tablet and my MacBook using the free Honor WorkStation app.

It’s not my favourite take on Android, then, but MagicOS 10 is well calibrated for power users and those seeking to get real work done on the go.

One final fly in the ointment is Honor’s subpar software support. The MagicPad 4 will receive at least three years of updates, which is an improvement on the MagicPad 3, but falls short of Samsung’s firm seven-year promise and even the divisive Pixel Tablet just got given a bonus two years.

Price & Availability

• £599.99 for 12GB/256GB
• £699.99 for 16GB/512GB
• Early bird accessory bundles available

Retail availability for the Honor MagicPad 4 commenced from 3 March 2026. You can pick it up directly from the official Honor store, as well as the usual online retailers.

Prices start from £599.99 for the version with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which is available in grey or white. The 16/512GB model costs £699.99, and is available in grey only.

There’s also a tempting early bird offer being run that cuts the price of the tablet while bundling in the Honor Magic Pencil 3 and Smart Keyboard accessories, which are worth a combined £170.98, for free. Check out the Honor website for more.

The Honor MagicPad 4 is not available in the US.

At this price, Honor’s tablet can count the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ as a direct rival. Samsung’s tablet starts from £50 more, but it bundles in a stylus as part of that price. In almost every other hardware category, the MagicPad 4 has it outgunned.

You might also consider the OnePlus Pad 3 or Xiaomi Pad 7.

It’s also the same price as the iPad Air M3, which pulls up short of the MagicPad 4 with its display, but of course gives you that impeccable iPad OS software and potent Apple M3 silicon.

Check out our list of the best tablets to see our current top recommendations, or you may want a budget tablet instead.

Should you buy the Honor MagicPad 4?

The Honor MagicPad 4 is a very well-equipped Android tablet for the money being asked.

For around the price of a Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE+ or an iPad Air, you’re getting a slick OLED display and near-flagship performance.

It’s all wrapped up in one of the slimmest tablet bodies around. There are weaknesses relating to software, including a cluttered UI and excessive bloatware, and the optional accessories aren’t the best of their kind.

Despite the downsides, the Honor MagicPad 4 is one of the finest Android tablets in its class.

Specs

• Android 16
• 12.3in, 3000 x 19207, OLED, 165Hz display
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5
• 12GB/16GB RAM
• 128GB/256GB storage
• 13Mp, f/2.0 rear camera
• 5Mp telephoto macro camera
• Up to 4K @ 30fps rear video
• 9Mp, f/2/2 front-facing camera
• Eight Speakers with Honor Spatial Audio
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be
• Bluetooth 6.0
• 10,100mAh battery
• 66W charging
• 273.4 x 178.8 x 4.8mm
• 450g
• Launch colours: Grey, White

Best Prices Today: Honor MagicPad 4