Honor 8X Review: Premium Metal For The Price Of Plastic
Just when you thought that budget phones couldn’t look any better, Huawei’s Honor line goes and drops the Honor 8X. Usually, budget phones only offer the bottom of the barrel features & specs but not this time around. The goal here w/ the 8X is to be a more premium phone at a low cost. The specs sound great on paper but how well is it all executed. We spent a few weeks w/ it to see if this has more to offer than just a pretty glass body. Let’s dive into it.
Premium hardware w/o premium pricing
The Honor 8X has a bit more heft than other Honor devices – even the Mate 10 Pro. This is due to them utilizing a metal frame w/ anti-glare film & 2 visual effects on a 2.5D double texture glass body. Honor is showcasing their 90% screen to body ratio here as well. This is executed quite well for a premium look & feel. It is on the slippery side of things thought as it will slide right off of jeans & non-flat surfaces. As pretty as it is, there’s no IP rating behind it so don’t get it wet. BTW, It also attracts fingerprints but not on the level of the Note 9. And lastly, the bottom-firing speaker gets pretty loud & clear despite not being a stereo speaker setup.
Handling all of the computing processing is their very own Kirin 710 CPU coupled w/ 4GB of RAM as it does a stand-up job in handling multitasking and such. The GPU Turbo inside does a good job in handling intense smartphone gaming as well. In regards to storage, your 64GB built-in and expandable up to 400GB via microSD card.
- 6.5inch FullView LCD display w/ 2340 x 1080 resolution
- Kirin 710 CPU + GPU Turbo
- 4GB of RAM + 64GB of storage expandable via microSD
- rear-facing f/1.8 20MP standard + 2MP depth-sensing cameras w/ AIS (artificial image stabilization) + super slow motion video 480fps @720p
- front-facing 16MP selfie camera
- rear fingerprint reader
- EMUI 8.2 on top of Android 8.1 Oreo
- 3750 mAh battery
A bright & impressive display made w/ your eye health in mind.
The massive 6.5inch FullView LCD display is something to see. Other than being on the large side, it is definitely one of the more brighter panels I’ve seen on 2018 smartphones. Along w/ being bright, the 8X is made for better eye health w/ a new eye comfort mode to reduce the blue light radiation to cut back on eye fatigue. This is certified by TuV Rheinland as you can control the overall temperature of the display as well. We’ll have to see how well it helps out your eyes over a longer period of time.
Flagship battery life
Its battery is a lot larger than many or damn-near most budget & many flagships in regards to its capacity size. Inside the 8X is a massive 3750 mAh battery. I was getting close to 15 hours w/ heavy usage and up to 2 days w/ light-to-moderate usage. This is hours of streaming media (YouTube, Google Play Music, SoundCloud, etc.) and some gaming to test out their GPU Turbo. Honor does an impressive job in handling the battery management here as well.
Versatile AI-powered camera
The 8X offers a great shooter that is good in many areas. This is thanks to the f/1.8 20MP shooter combined w/ the power of artificial intelligence. The results makes for a better shooter in the budget market and better than what we tested on the Honor series. This is due in part of 2 of their new features of AI Camera & Night mode.
FYI: The backlight portrait selfie feature wasn’t available at the time of our review.
AI Camera
- Honor showcases their new AI Camera feature for their rear shooters. The rear camera can recognize 22 different categories & up to 500 scenarios in real-time via AI. It does add a bit of better dynamic range & some punch to the colors. This is one of the better AI cameras I’ve seen as it is more of a thing this year. You don’t have OIS but an AIS (artificial intelligence-based image stabilization) which works fine.
New Night Mode
- Honor is taking a different approach to capturing low-light photos w/ the 8X. It takes a few seconds and captures multiple photos in analyzes them using AI to create a pretty good final product. It adds more detail in low-light & beefs up the sharpness a bit. It does help out a lot but not enough to compete w/ the low-light champs on the market but a great improvement for a budget.
Not quite game-changing but something that could be amazing after several updates + iterations.
Nothing new on the software side of things
You got EMUI 8.2 on top of Android 8.1 Oreo on the 8X. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you feel about EMUI, there aren’t any new changes or features present here. So you still have the same icons, built-in Screen Recorder, dual SIM card support and other ups & downs that come w/ EMUI. So you gotta take it as it is at this point.
Honor 8X: the new standard for premium budget Android phones.
Honor did a good job here in regards to pushing the boundaries of what a budget phone is supposed to offer, perform, & look like. The 8X offers flagship level hardware + battery life and better than your average mid-range cameras. We’re still waiting for the official US pricing but we’re expecting it to be around the $200-$300 price point. Just about everywhere else in the world can pick this up now. I’m just not sure how the competition will compete against this one.
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