The Honor MagicPad 3 is a professional-looking tablet with great accessories – but it's let down by a poor LCD screen

The Honor MagicPad 3 is the Chinese company's latest flagship tablet with the new model housing a larger 13.3in display and a thinner frame. Not all changes will be welcomed, though, as it has also switched to an LCD panel over an OLED one.

The issue here is that a low-quality display makes it harder for Honor to stand out in what is a very competitive market; it is up against some high-quality models from OnePlus, Apple, and Samsung. So what does the Honor MagicPad 3 have that the others don't?

Honor MagicPad 3: Design

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Starting with design, it is fair to say that the MagicPad 3 is a professional-looking device. It differentiates itself from the previous model with an all-aluminum design that is both sleek and sturdy. Its 5.79mm thick frame and 595g weight is also lighter and thinner than the OnePlus Pad 3.

Our review unit is the white model, which has a subtle two-tone coating. The feel is almost like an art canvas, and you can also opt for a Gold or Grey model. In the middle of the back cover is a shimmering Honor logo, while a square camera bump decorates the top right corner. Two lenses can be found here: one 13MP and one 2MP.

The accompanying keyboard/case is elegant with a professional shade of navy. The kick stand is the top half of the back of the case, so the part that includes the camera cutout. It looks and feels unusual, but it works well, giving you a fairly flexible stand without adding more materials. And the white stylus attaches to the top of the tablet to charge. The pen and the case together do raise the design up, creating an attractive and professional-looking device.

Honor MagicPad 3: Display

The 13.3in LCD screen has a 165Hz refresh rate and a 2136 x 3200 resolution. We measured its peak brightness at 730.56 cd/m2, which is actually less than the MagicPad 2, but still somehow an excellent score. But that is the only metric it has above any of the other premium tablets.

For business use, the MagicBook 3 is fine, and it is a decent tablet for streaming. But for photo editing, it is limited. Unlike last year's MagicPad 2, the 3 uses an LCD panel, so you lose those deep black levels you had with the OLED.

You can choose from two color profiles, vivid or natural. The former is slightly more vibrant, but the latter is truer to the sRGB color space. Even so, color representation is a little below the standard of recent tablets tested at ITPro. The 92% the MagicPad 3 scored for sRGB color coverage is lower than the M5 iPad Pro, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra, and the OnePlus Pad 3.

Honor MagicPad 3: Specs and performance

The Honor MagicPad 3 has a 4nm-developed Qualcomm SM8650-AC Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. Our review unit came with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, though you can have as much as 1TB for the latter.

In Geekbench 6, the MagicPad hit 2237 for single-core and 6979 multi-core workloads. For pure benchmark performance, the MagicPad is far behind the M5 iPad Pro but only slightly behind the OnePlus Pad 3 on both scores (3130-9083). If you're using a tablet for fairly intensive workloads, then the Apple and OnePlus models are better, but the MagicPad is still powerful and fast.

In our experience, the MagicPad 3 was highly responsive and rapid, no matter how many tabs or applications we used. And it's battery life is up there with the best. In our looped video test, the MagicPad lasted 22hrs 44mins – almost seven hours longer than the OnePlus Pad 3. What's more, the tablet charges in a fairly reasonable time; 0% to 100% in an hour, which is good, though the OnePlus Pad 3 and its red cable can do it much quicker.

Honor MagicPad 3: Features

Far and away, the best two features on the MagicPad 3 are the Smart-Touch Keyboard and the Magic-Pencil 3. The keyboard is elegant and understated. With decent travel and a nice muffled click sound. You need a sturdy surface to use it, as it will be too flimsy on a lap. The pencil is fluid and smooth, and easy to draw with. Though it lacks the innovative controls of the OnePlus stylus. Both keyboard and pencil are free with the tablet (at the time of writing), and you can even buy all three as part of a bundle that comes with a portable coffee machine -- sadly, we didn't get to review that.

AI features on the MagicPad 3 include tools to help edit, summarise, and create text. The summarisation features seem most useful, though the 're-writing' capability does help with small jobs like email – it's similar in quality to what Grammarly offers.

Cameras on tablets have always been an issue for ITPro. We don't see the point of them being there, and the technology is never anywhere near that of smartphones. On the MagicPad, you have two rear cameras (13MP and 2PM) and one selfie lens (9MP). There are heaps of enhancements available, and the system will try and make point and shoot as easy as possible, but we found both rear and front cameras to be slightly grainy and often blurry.

Honor MagicPad 3: Is it worth it?

There is a lot to like about the Honor MagicPad 3, particularly its keyboard, pencil, and battery life. However, in comparison to the OnePlus Pad 3 and the iPad Pro, it does fall short when it comes to CPU power and display quality.

For business use, it is an acceptable laptop replacement, provided you're not going to use it for intensive workloads or image or video editing. But it is light enough to carry around, slim enough for your average backpack, and strong enough to last well beyond the average workday.

Honor MagicPad 3 specifications