Any new smartphone owner has had nightmares of their shiny new screens cracking on day one from the slightest of drops. Well, Honor has gone to great lengths to allay those fears with their new midrange entry, the Honor X9A 5G. You probably have already seen ads for the toughest 120Hz display on the market and videos of people smashing the display into various surfaces or nuts. But is that all it has to offer? We spent 30 days putting the device through its paces and the results may surprise you.
Display
Let’s start off with the main selling point of the device; its nigh-indestructible display. The idea Honor had here was clear; bring a flagship grade display to a more accessible and affordable device. And I believe they have achieved that. The Honor X9a 5G sports a 6.67-inch OLED curved display with a 120Hz screen refresh rate. The refresh rate makes the visuals snappy, be it the MagicUI 6.1 interface, a video on YouTube and especially when gaming. It has good brightness too with a rating of 800 nits. Walking under the hot afternoon sun, I was still able to see what’s on the screen, though admittedly I had to turn up the brightness to near maximum. Videos were crisp and colours were vibrant whether from YouTube or Netflix. I found it both comfortable and enjoyable watching videos at long length on this device.
Protecting this display is Honor’s own answer to Corning’s Gorilla Glass and Huawei’s Kunlun glass. Though it remains nameless, Honor’s protecting glass does a fantastic job of securing the display. After more than a month of using the phone without any kind of protection, I have not seen a single scratch on this display, even from the keys in my pocket. There are probably hundreds of videos online of people dropping or hitting the phone with a variety of items and I could not resist doing so myself. From walnuts to groundnuts to M&M’s, nothing seems to damage this screen. I did accidentally drop the device face down on a tiled floor from waist height and no visible damage either. Without venturing into more dangerous stress tests, I did feel that the display glass is definitely sturdier than expected of a mid-range device.
Design
The signature design feature of the Honor X9a 5G is the raised circular rear camera housing, dubbed the star ring matrix design by Honor. Personally, I was not a fan of this particular design and the height is apparent enough to make it wobble very slightly on the table if used without a case. However, those are the only two complaints I have design wise and there is a lot to like.
The build quality of the phone is great. The tough display on the front is only punctuated by the small camera hole cutout, which does not distract you from what’s on the display. The back of the phone had a textured material that feels great to hold. The material feels premium and the Titanium Silver colour was pleasing to the eye, which is one of the main reasons why I did not use a case. It is also very lightweight, which coupled with the textured back, feels good to hold for a long time.
Despite being a curved display device that I used without a case, I did not experience any accidental touches along the edges. This is probably thanks to the AI Anti Mistouch feature. Lining the edges of the phone is metal trimming painted with a metallic sky blue colour that was also very appealing. On the right-hand side is the volume rocker and lock button. The buttons feels great to the touch, is tactile and does not wobble in place.
Overall, the device feels very premium with a robust build quality and apart from the star ring matrix design, has nice aesthetics.
Camera
The camera experience for the Honor X9A 5G did not receive as much emphasis as the display nor its build quality. It sports a triple sensor set up of a 64MP main shooter, 5MP ultrawide and 2MP macro camera. The main shooter does a decent job of snapping photos in daylight and good lighting conditions. Images were sharp and colours leaned towards a more subdued, natural palette. However, performance takes a dip in low light conditions, with images appearing a little grainy and colours appear a little washed out. To compensate for this, there is a Night mode that seemingly is able to address both these issues. The only catch is that there is a long 3 to 4 second timer before image capture and you need to have steady hands in this time for a clear image. That being said, the Night mode images do have good clarity, colors and no obvious noise.
While the main shooter performs well enough for daily use, the other shooting modes did miss the mark. The 2MP macro shooter suffered from a lack of sharpness due to the low resolution and had some fuzziness to it even in daylight. The 5MP ultrawide shooter also suffered from the low resolution and had rather obvious graininess that got worse with low lighting conditions. The saving grace is the Portrait mode, which showed good performance in both daylight and lighted indoor situations. There was good level of detail captured and bokeh was well done. Performance was similarly good when using the 16MP selfie camera, with Portrait shots appearing clear and well detailed. There is also a beauty filter to help iron out facial imperfections which helped make the photos social media ready.
The camera experience for the Honor X9A 5G is rather average; a serviceable main shooter with no true standout features and lackluster alternative shooting modes.
Performance
Key Specifications
The Honor X9A 5G is powered by a Snapdragon 695 SoC, which is not the latest in chipsets but it does pack a punch. For its price point, it comes with a rather healthy memory capacity of 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The battery is also a plus point with 5100mAh capacity and 40W wired charging with the included charger. The hardware on board is good value for money and I found the performance takes full advantage of them.
User Interface
Out of the box, it runs MagicUI 6.1 that is based on Android 12. Long-time Honor users will be very familiar with the design and aesthetics of MagicUI but for first time users, the user interface appears rather dated.
With large blocky icons with designs reminiscent of iOS and Android from the mid 2010’s, the dated design feels out of place in such a premium display in 2023. There is a dedicated Themes app preinstalled on the device that can help alleviate this to some degree. But functionally, the user interface works fine, with no obvious flaws. There is also both the Google Play Store and Honor App market preinstalled for all your app needs.
Productivity and multitasking
Multitasking was a breeze on this device as I was able to run Google Chrome, the Gallery app in Multi Window mode and Netflix in mini player mode without a hitch. I did not experience any significant lag or stutters and no overheating after about an hour with this set up. Granted that is not a realistic scenario but it shows that there is a lot of headroom for productivity in this device. For the 30-day review period, I very frequently used messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger while simultaneously using Chrome or YouTube and did not experience any significant lag or stuttering. Productivity is helped by the large RAM capacity of 8GB and additional 5GB virtual RAM for handling multiple running apps. The 256GB of storage is also handy to help store large amounts of photos and files on the go.
Call Quality and Connectivity
I used the device primarily over 4G LTE networks and did not experience any major disruptions to the connection, be it in Kuala Lumpur city or the smaller towns of Johor. Call quality was clear, had sufficient volume and no issues hearing the person on the other end. Similarly, the call recipients had no complaints on call quality when receiving calls from this device. While capable of 5G connectivity, testing was restricted by the limited connectivity of 5G in Malaysia. Support for WiFi is up to WiFi 5 mainly due to the older chipset but I did not experience any connection dropouts for the review period. Streaming on YouTube and Netflix was seamless and online gaming connections were good too. I tested out the Bluetooth by pairing with my Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and Sony WF-1000XM4 earbuds. In both cases, I did not experience any unexpected disconnects while the pairing was quick and trouble-free. I found that the transferring of files to the Galaxy Watch 4 was smooth and there were no audio cutouts for the Sony earbuds during long sessions of music. Even pairing with my Honda car’s Bluetooth Audio went smoothly with no issues. All-in-all connectivity was stable on all fronts.
Gaming
I found the device very pleasant to use for long periods of watching videos on YouTube and Netflix. But I also found it very pleasant to use for gaming as well. I primarily tested on Mobile Legends oh High settings and PUBG Mobile with HD graphics and High frame rate. I found both games ran smoothly and surprisingly, even after about 2 consecutive hours of gaming, I did not feel overheating. Granted, I used the device predominantly without a case which helps ventilation slightly, and I was not pushing the games to their maximum settings. For a mid-range device the performance was really good.
When pushing the graphics to the maximum settings (Ultra for Mobile Legends and Ultra HD for PUBG Mobile), the performance was still surprisingly good, with only slight choppiness observed for PUBG Mobile with some overheating past the 1-hour mark. The fantastic display adds to the gaming immersion; everything was snappy due to the 120Hz refresh rate and colours were vibrant. One minor complaint for the gaming immersion would be the mono speakers on board instead of stereo speakers. This of course was not a dealbreaker as the use of earbuds quickly solved this problem.
The gaming performance of the Honor X9a 5G is a definite happy surprise. The GPU performance, ergonomics of the design and decent thermals helps make gaming a pleasant experience.
Battery life
Battery life is another strong point, with the device being powered by a large 5100 mAh battery. Throughout the review period, I found myself charging the device once every two days with regular use. Most of the screen on time was spent using YouTube or Netflix, Google Chrome, Facebook, WhatsApp and Messenger. It was only with heavy use of gaming and photography that I found myself needing to charge the phone on a daily basis. Charging is a breeze too with the included 40W charger juicing up from 20% to 100% in about 90 minutes.
The Verdict: A solid all-rounder headlined by a flagship display
After an in-depth hands-on experience, the Honor X9a 5G was a pleasant surprise in how it performed. Its strengths lie in its flagship-quality display, premium build quality and excellent battery life. For weaknesses, there is no particular department that is truly a deal breaker. Even the camera which has a weak macro and ultrawide performance, does a more than serviceable job in the main shooter and selfie cameras. Conversely, apart from the display, there is no other truly standout feature of the device when compared to the other devices in its price range. Retailing for RM1499, the Honor X9a 5G is up against the likes of Samsung’s A53 5G, which we reviewed not too long ago, and the recently released Poco X5 series. While these other devices have their own clear strengths and weaknesses, the Honor X9a 5G is good across the board, making it an all-rounder device. If you want a mid-range device that is value for money, can do the essentials and has a robust build quality, then this is the device for you.
You can get the Honor X9a 5G, available now from the HiHonor website, retailing for RM1499. Honor is also bundling a free pair of noise-cancelling Honor CHOICE Earbuds X3 and 180 Days of Screen Crack Protection if you purchase now.
And here is the obligatory video of nut crushing with the Honor X9a 5G.
