Honor MagicPad 4 Review: This Is What Android Tablets Should Feel Like

The Android tablet segment was in the doldrums not so long ago with lackluster hardware, thick bezels, and a poor software experience. These days, it's a different story entirely.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab S series has been the consistent benchmark since the original Galaxy Tab, but outside the US, there are other excellent options worth your attention. Honor's MagicPad 4 is one of them — flagship power, a proper OLED display, and a chassis that measures just 4.8mm thin. Packed with AI and productivity features and priced well below the iPad Pro, it makes a strong case for being the best value flagship Android tablet on the market right now.

Design

Clean, flat edges, 4mm bezels, available in Grey or White. The MagicPad 4 doesn't do anything flashy with its design — it doesn't need to. The proportions are excellent, and it sits comfortably in one hand for extended reading or browsing sessions in a way that larger, heavier tablets such as the OnePlus Pad 3 simply don't.

The aspect ratio is worth flagging. At 3000 x 1920 across 12.3 inches, it's slightly more compact than the MagicPad 3 and has a different aspect ratio to most Android tablets. For content consumption and reading, that works in its favor — it feels natural in both orientations. For landscape gaming, it's a slightly different story. Putting a few hours into Call of Duty Mobile, the aspect ratio felt a touch shorter than I'm used to on something like the OnePlus Pad 3, where the taller format feels more native to the game. It's a minor adjustment rather than a genuine problem, but worth knowing before you buy.

With the optional Smart Keyboard attached, the experience shifts convincingly toward productivity without sacrificing the tablet's lightness, which makes it so pleasant to use. Naked, it almost feels too light. That's the good kind of almost.

Display

Honor shipped the MagicPad 3 with an LCD. It went down badly. The MagicPad 4 corrects that decisively — the 165Hz OLED panel here is brilliant. Vivid, responsive, and consistently impressive across everything from video playback to gaming to just reading articles. The 165Hz refresh rate isn't a number you consciously notice, but you would notice if it weren't there when playing a fast-paced game.

Peak HDR brightness reaches 2,400 nits, making outdoor use practical rather than theoretical. PWM dimming runs at 4,320Hz by default, reducing the eye strain some OLED panels cause during long sessions. After extended use, the display holds up. It's the kind of screen that makes going back to anything lesser feel like a downgrade.

Performance

A Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 crammed into a 4.8mm frame invites obvious questions about heat. The honest answer is that Honor has handled it well. After an hour of Call of Duty Mobile at maximum settings, the tablet was warm — as you'd expect — but never close to uncomfortable and never showed signs of throttling. Daily use doesn't register at all. Everything is immediate, multitasking is genuinely smooth, and there's none of the app-reload behavior that still plagues a lot of Android tablets when you switch between tasks.

Honor attributes this to an Ice Cooling System that distributes heat across an 81,000mm² area. Whatever the engineering behind it, the practical result is a flagship chip in a flagship-thin chassis that runs composed under real workload. That's not a given, and it's worth crediting.

Battery

The 10,100mAh cell is smaller than the MagicPad 3's 12,450mAh unit, but that comparison isn't straightforward — this is a smaller tablet running a more efficient processor. In practice, getting through a full day of mixed use without reaching for a charger is realistic. Lighter usage stretches it further.

66W wired charging handles top-ups quickly. Wireless charging isn't here, which makes sense given the 4.8mm thickness. Honor commits to six years of OS and security updates, which at this price matters — you're not buying a device that'll be abandoned in two years.

Software

MagicOS 10 runs on top of Android 16, and this is where the MagicPad 4 makes its productivity argument most clearly. PC Mode activates when you connect the keyboard, opening apps in resizable floating windows with taskbar-style navigation. It doesn't feel bolted on. The Global Taskbar extends this further, letting you drag apps into split-screen or floating mode from anywhere in the interface.

The AI toolkit, bundled under the AI Efficient Office banner, is one of the more complete implementations I've seen on an Android tablet. It covers AI Writing Tools, an AI Meeting Agent, automatic Meeting Minutes and Summaries, Speech-to-Text, Smart Reminder, and AI Voiceprint Noise Cancellation. The meeting-focused tools, in particular, feel genuinely useful rather than checkbox features — automatic transcription and summarization are the kinds of things that change how you actually work on a device.

Magic Portal lets you circle anything on screen with a knuckle gesture and send it to Notes, email, or the share sheet. It takes about ten minutes to feel natural, and then you miss it when it's gone. AI Memories collects and stores text and image information from across the system for later reference. YOYO, Honor's AI assistant, underpins all of it with what Honor describes as agentic behavior — contextual awareness, persistent preferences, and task execution without constant prompting.

A couple of caveats: some AI features may be restricted in the UK and EU due to regional privacy regulations, so not everything on the spec sheet is guaranteed to be available out of the box. There's also a significant amount of preinstalled bloatware during the initial setup. Neither ruins the experience, but both are worth knowing.

For those straddling MacOS, Windows, and Android, the Honor Connect function makes sharing files, networks, calls, apps, and what you are doing on-screen really easy. You can even share the camera on the MagicPad 4 with your laptop.

Cameras

The 13MP rear camera is fine for scanning documents and grabbing the occasional shot. The 9MP front camera handles video calls cleanly in standard indoor conditions. You don't buy a tablet for the cameras, and nothing here changes that equation — but equally, nothing here embarrasses the rest of the package.

While we always say never to buy a tablet to take photos with, if it's the only device at hand, it will be the best camera you have. That being said, here are a couple of images taken with the rear and front sensors.

Audio

Eight speakers with spatial audio and IMAX Enhancement support is the kind of spec that sounds like marketing until you actually watch something. The audio on the MagicPad 4 is legitimately good — better than most laptops, and better than anything else I've used at this price point in a tablet. For media consumption, it matches the display in quality.

Specs

Pricing and Availability

The MagicPad 4 is available in the UK and across Europe. It is not sold in the US. UK pricing starts at £599.99 for 12GB/256GB and £699.99 for 16GB/512GB. Using the code AMP4UK100 at the Honor eStore drops the base model to £499.99. Add £50 to that and Honor bundles in the Smart Keyboard and Magic Pencil 3, accessories with a combined RRP of £170. If you're considering the accessories at all, the bundle is an easy decision.

Verdict

The MagicPad 4 is the best Android tablet that you can't buy in the US, and it isn't particularly close. The thinness and weight stop being specs the moment you hold it — they become the defining characteristic of the whole experience. The OLED upgrade from the MagicPad 3 is significant and long overdue, and paired with 165Hz and that brightness ceiling, it's one of the best tablet displays available at any price. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 brings more than enough grunt to any scenario, the AI toolkit is genuinely useful, and the keyboard case turns it into a productivity device that takes itself seriously.

The one thing I need to criticize is the lack of any water or dust protection, which makes outdoor use a gamble if there's a cloud in the sky.

The aspect ratio needs a slight mental adjustment for landscape gaming, some AI features may be region-locked, and the bloatware situation on first setup is untidy. None of that changes the conclusion. Starting at £599, Honor has made a real alternative to Samsung's best offerings, and is a better value option in most areas.