Honor 9X Pro comes at a cheaper price than Apple iPhone SE and Google Pixel 3a. But what most users are wondering now is whether the phone is worth their attention.

Honor is known for its modern design and hardware that can rival competitors of the higher price range. However, the weak software makes everything goes waste.

The phone was launched in India on May 20, 2020, with only two color options, Midnight Blue and Phantom Black.

Compared to its non-Pro option, the Honor 9X, this phone has a similar camera setup but with improved software for better pictures.

Display

Honor 9X Pro has a massive display, for a budget device, measuring 6.59 inches. Bur that much screen estate is paired with a modest resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels, which seems to more suitable to be on the regular Honor 9X.

The panels is LCD, like that of Moto G Stylus, not an OLED screen like on the Galaxy A51. The difference is obvious. The viewing angle on Honor 9X Pro isn’t as wide as on Samsung’s phone and the colors are far from natural or vibrant.

However, the lack of an OLED screen is far from being a deal-breaker as this is a budget phone after all.

The screen is perfectly flat without any curves to reduce refection or soften the appearance. The screen isn’t bright enough to be legible under sunlight and getting the right viewing angle is quite challenging. But again, this is a budget device so you cannot exactly expect it to be like other higher-end devices.

For day-to-day tasks like reading news, surfing social media, and texting, Honor 9X Pro’s screen is more than enough. The screen isn’t interrupted by any hole-punch selfie camera or notch; instead, the front camera is hidden inside a pop-up module on top of the device.

If you care a lot about taking pictures, Honor 9X Pro isn’t what you want to get. Much like its non-Pro version, its selfie camera is under par. It takes the camera longer than anyone would expect to come out of the phone’s body, not something you would expect from the usual excellent build quality of Honor.

This speed also means you shouldn’t expect to see face unlock on Honor 9X Pro.

Overall, while the phone doesn’t have a modern screen and curves to soften the look, the display of the 9X Pro is suitable for everyday use.

Processor

Under the hood, Honor 9X Pro runs on Kirin 810 octa-core processor with RAM of 6GB and inbuilt storage of 256GB. The phone has support for NFC but unfortunately, not Google Pay.

When the phone is run through some benchmark tests, its scores are better than Google Pixel 3 and Samsung A51 but cannot come close to what OnePlus 8 with a Snapdragon 856 chipset.

For gaming, Honor 9X Pro can hold up well for games like Asphalt 9: Legends, which is available on the App Gallery. The racing game is more than playable on the phone, it runs quite well, more than anyone expects with a budget phone.

Many users report that they have no problems with the phones’ performance. The audio arrangement consists of a single downward-firing speaker, which lacks details and bass.

RAM

When it comes to RAM, users only have 6GB onboard. This little RAM is enough for multitasking and gaming.

Battery

The phone draws power from a 4,000mAh battery, which can hold up quite well with usual tasks. Under average use, the phone can last to the second day with ease.

This is a good piece of news for users as the Honor 9X Pro doesn’t have fast charging and comes with only 10W USB Type-C charger.

From 0%, it takes the phone around 2 hours to be fully charged so you might want to leave it on charge overnight.

Since Huawei owns one of the best fast charging technologies, it’s a real shame Honor 9X Pro doesn’t benefit from this advantage.

Camera

On the rear, the phone has a triple-camera setup consisting of a 48MP/f/1.8 primary camera, an 8MP/ f/2/4 wide-angle snapper, and a 2MP depth-sensing lens.

If you feel a familiarity here, it’s because this is the exact camera setup found on the Honor 9X release in mid-2019. Honor decided to improve the software front, which partly solves the problem of oversaturating images. However, you will still notice the issue when taking pictures on sunny days.

While many people will love saturated and vibrant pictures, the Honor 9X Pro seems to do that too much.

You can have wide-angle images with 2x zoom. However, without using any telephoto lens, these photos will be cropped digitally.

Overall, the zooming feature works quite well, taking in enough details without too much loss. This achievement appears to be the work of Huawei’s top-notch artificial intelligence technology for cameras.

The aperture and portrait mode has nothing to write home about and even if you get close to the subject, the phone will give you out-of-focus shots whenever you make an effort to blur their backgrounds.

The aperture mode’s edge detecting ability is limited as the phone fails to detect edges of even some really simple shapes. The Night Mode can brighten up your shots but the pictures will lack details and life.

On the other side, the same performance can be found on the selfie camera. Shots taken with the front camera are only acceptable, not outstanding.

The beauty mode is on so expect to see skin smoothing. The selfie camera also has an under par edge detection so don’t expect too much at it.

There are some special modes to love here. Honor 9X Pro’s Gallery App has some excellent photo editing tools and the Splash mode, which removes all others but one color.

When it comes to cameras, Honor 9X Pro has little difference to Honor 9X, an even cheaper phone. The cameras can be fun to use and the pictures they take can be shared on social media platforms after some editing, but not the best you can have.