Honor X9b review – Does it come in black?

Ever since Honor’s emancipation from the now Google-less Huawei, we found ourselves spending more and more of our time in their company. Having somewhat recently played with the higher-end Honor 90 and less recently the scrappier X9a – which we praised as an “admirable all-rounder” – we were keen to see what Honor had in store next for South Africa.

That turned out to be the Honor X9b, a follow-up to that scrappy mid-ranger we had a good time with about a year ago. It’s (almost) everything a sequel should be; improved specs, a new letter in the name, a much larger battery, and a minimum price jump – coming in at a R13,000 (or cheaper if you know where to look). Oh, and it does come in black. Whew.

Like Clockwork (Orange)

If you’ve seen our review for the X9a, you’ve already got a good idea of what to expect from this younger sibling. Honor doesn’t like to fiddle where it’s not needed, so despite a shade like a forgotten toffee, the familiar design didn’t bother us at all.

The X9b is surprisingly light. Honor’s added 10g to the weight of the last model but at 185g, complaints are few and far between. It’s a bit thicker, but Honor’s managed to keep it from exceeding the 8mm mark (though only just), so it gets a pass.

Unfortunately, the best bit of our review model’s design — the vegan-leather backing that so excellently defends against fingerprints (and doubles as a conversation starter) — is exclusive to the Sunrise Orange hue we landed up with. It’s not a big deal, though. The included see-through cover rendered the discussion almost moot — meaning you won’t get a good feel of that leather-like backing anyway.

Surrounding those smooth metal edges are all the bits you’d expect. USB-C has the charging handled, parked right next to the SIM slot and singular speaker that proved to be quite lonely. The right-hand side is where you’ll find the volume rocker and power button. The IR blaster is the only blemish to the X9b’s minimal top rail.

Goodluck breaking this

Honor’s made quite a splash where the X9b’s display is concerned. We aren’t talking about the curved-edge display that returns for another round but rather the X9b’s launch event, where a crowd of people were instructed to try to break it. It doesn’t matter how tough your screen is. When there’s a R25,000 prize up for grabs, folks will find a way.

Break it they did but it still took a good three hours of constant drops, hits from a miniature wrecking ball, and shots of paintballs so it should survive the occasional drop without issues. Underneath the tough glass protection sits a 6.78in FHD+ AMOLED screen featuring a 120Hz refresh rate and 1,200 nits of peak brightness.

That refresh rate came in handy once we got to gaming, but we’ll sing those praises a little louder once we get round to the internals. The display played its part well; we didn’t notice any stuttering when loading up PUBG Mobile’s “Ultra” framerate setting or aimlessly scrolling around the OS.

If only the screen’s colour reproduction had us feeling as affectionate – often leaving the darker bits of the screen in the shadows despite the AMOLED tech — most noticeable during a late-night YouTube session. It didn’t bother us, but if Game of Thrones season 8 is your go-to mobile entertainment, it’s something to consider.

Chasing the Snapdragon

To keep the budget down, Honor shoved in Qualcomm’s octa-core Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 which proves to be a competent daily driver. It can’t compete with the flagship chipsets but those are usually more than double the price. The older entry-level chip means you won’t find any on-device AI capabilities, Honor’s saving those for its own flagship devices. Still, the X9b handles itself well considering its price bracket.

Our model showed up donning 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage – but you’ll regularly hear Honor touting 20GB of RAM here thanks to what it calls ‘Honor RAM Turbo’. The idea isn’t new but it’s supposedly in place to expand the device’s reach and make multitasking quicker. The X9b didn’t put up a struggle trying to multitask games and apps, but how much of that was down to the ‘RAM Turbo’… we can’t say.

Pair those specs with the Adreno A710 GPU and you’ve got yourself a nifty little gamer. We’ve already said PUBG Mobile behaved better than expected, but that was the case across the board. Marvel Snap might not seem like a difficult game to wring good performance out of, but bump the settings up and watch it struggle elsewhere. It did just fine here, even if the battery took a hit during longer stints.

Speaking of which, the 5,800mAh battery was superb, managing to provide around a day and a half’s worth of life before whining about it. Long gaming sessions bring that number down, but confine your usage to mundane tasks and you’ll net 36 hours easily.

The X9b’s not a very feature-packed phone (see the R13,000 price tag), but the few it does include work (almost) flawlessly. Only rarely did we have to jam our finger back on the display fingerprint sensor to get a correct reading and the face unlock worked rain or shine, day and night. Audio quality is where things begin to fall apart. It’s passable for scrolling socials but the lack of bass made almost any music sound hollow and thin. You’ll want to keep your wireless headphones within reach.

Enter the Matrix

Honor proves that bigger doesn’t always mean better. If you can get past the absolutely mahoosive three-camera array taking up a lot of the phone’s rear, you’ll find a 108MP main sensor doing all the heavy lifting, with a 5MP ultrawide, and 2MP Macro lens thrown in.

You’ll get some half-decent shots that hold onto a good amount of detail — as long as you’re blessed with rays or the right lighting. Thrust it under the moonlight (or say, a cloud) and the images soften up on you, blurring the edges. Flipping to night mode can help — but it applies an artificial-looking filter on top of it all that we weren’t particularly fond of.

Expect similar performance from the 5MP ultrawide sensor, though images here tend to lean on the side of grainy. It’s ‘good enough’ for a R13,000 phone, but we’d advise throwing a few filters at those images before posting to Instagram. We had more luck with the 2MP macro lens, but it’ll take some fiddling to get right. Super macro mode was probably the best of the bunch, but it’ll need some very up-close subjects before it spits out anything detailed.

Honor X9b verdict

Hollywood, take notes. This right here is how you do a sequel. It retains what we loved about the first — in this case that mid-range price, decent 120Hz AMOLED display, and great body — and improves on the rest where it can. That’s evidenced by the impressive 5,800mAh battery and overall upgrade to the processor that makes this such an excellent daily driver and occasional gamer. It’s not faultless (looking at you, camera and speaker) but they’re much easier to overlook with that R13,000 RRP. Now just to get rid of that orange, man…