TL;DR: The HONOR Pad X9b Max combines a huge 13-inch 2.5K 120Hz display with IMAX Enhanced, four-speaker DTS:X Ultra audio and a 10,100mAh battery. Add expandable storage and useful MagicOS 10 productivity features, and it’s a compelling tablet for movies, everyday work and everything in between.

Some tablets spend far too much energy pretending they can replace everything else in your tech bag. The HONOR Pad X9b Max takes a more convincing approach. It gives me a massive 13-inch display, a huge battery, proper speakers and enough productivity features to make that screen useful when I’m not watching movies. It’s a refreshingly focused formula that puts the everyday tablet experience ahead of benchmark bragging rights.

The star is the 13-inch 2.5K display running at up to 120Hz, but HONOR has built a surprisingly complete entertainment package around it. There’s IMAX Enhanced support, four speakers with DTS:X Ultra, a 10,100mAh battery, 45W charging and expandable storage up to 2TB. MagicOS 10 adds the productivity side of the equation, while keyboard support gives the Pad X9b Max considerably more flexibility than a giant Netflix machine.

What I like about the overall approach is how well these features complement one another. The big display isn’t left hanging with mediocre audio, and the entertainment focus isn’t undermined by a tiny battery. Instead, HONOR has concentrated on the things I’m going to see, hear and use every day, creating a tablet that feels designed around a clear purpose.

Big screen, clean design

There’s no getting around it: 13 inches is a lot of tablet. The Pad X9b Max isn’t something I’d choose because I wanted the smallest device possible. Its size is precisely the attraction, and that larger canvas changes the way I look at what a tablet can comfortably handle.

Movies have room to breathe, documents don’t feel cramped, websites look closer to their desktop counterparts, and split-screen multitasking becomes genuinely useful rather than feeling like two phone interfaces awkwardly squeezed together. The 88% screen-to-body ratio also helps HONOR keep the bezels relatively restrained, preventing the Pad X9b Max from becoming unnecessarily enormous around an already substantial display.

I also like that HONOR hasn’t overcomplicated the exterior. The design is clean and understated, while the compact camera module avoids the increasingly popular habit of turning every mobile device into an imitation professional camera. With a tablet like this, the display should dominate your attention, and that’s exactly what happens here.

Naturally, a 13-inch tablet won’t be as convenient for extended one-handed use as something smaller. But criticising the Pad X9b Max for being large rather misses the point. This is designed for the desk, sofa, flight tray and anywhere else where extra screen space becomes an advantage.

That 13-inch 120Hz display is the main event

The 13-inch LCD has a 2500 x 1560 resolution, 228ppi pixel density, refresh rate of up to 120Hz and peak brightness rated at 700 nits. HONOR also lists support for 1.07 billion colours, using an 8-bit panel combined with software processing to produce the additional colour depth with compatible content.

For me, the combination of size, resolution and refresh rate matters more than any individual number. At 13 inches, there’s enough room for films and games to feel properly immersive while documents, websites and productivity apps benefit from the additional workspace. The 2.5K resolution keeps everything suitably crisp without wasting processing power pushing an unnecessarily extreme number of pixels.

Then there’s 120Hz, which is one of those features that’s difficult to give up once you’re accustomed to it. Scrolling through long webpages feels smoother, interface animations look cleaner and moving around documents feels more immediate. HONOR notes that refresh behaviour can vary depending on the application, but having up to 120Hz available remains a major benefit on such a large panel.

The screen is also a significant step forward from the previous Pad X9 generation. It’s larger, offers considerably more pixels and occupies more of the tablet’s front surface. That makes the X9b Max feel like a genuinely more ambitious device rather than the usual annual refresh where someone changes three numbers and starts designing a new box.

And while premium OLED tablets will still have an advantage when it comes to perfect blacks and extreme contrast, I think HONOR has made sensible choices here. Screen size, resolution, brightness and refresh rate are benefits you’ll appreciate constantly, and the Pad X9b Max delivers plenty of each.

IMAX Enhanced is where things get interesting

The HONOR Pad X9b Max is clearly built with movies in mind, and IMAX Enhanced is one of the features that helps separate it from the usual big-screen Android tablet.

With compatible content, IMAX Enhanced can take advantage of an expanded 1.9:1 presentation, allowing more of the image to appear vertically. That’s particularly effective on a 13-inch tablet because there’s enough physical display area for the difference to actually matter. Combine that with the 2.5K resolution and the Pad X9b Max starts feeling less like an oversized mobile device and more like a genuinely portable entertainment screen.

For me, that’s where IMAX Enhanced makes the most sense. Cinematic presentation is ultimately about immersion, and a 13-inch display sitting relatively close to you can deliver a surprising amount of visual presence. Compatible movies can make better use of the available screen area, while the combination of resolution, colour reproduction and brightness gives the content the hardware foundation it needs.

It also makes the Pad X9b Max particularly attractive for anyone who spends a lot of time streaming movies and series. Phones have become spectacular entertainment devices, but there’s only so much cinematic grandeur you can squeeze into something that fits inside a trouser pocket. Moving to 13 inches changes the equation dramatically.

Obviously, I’m not expecting a tablet to recreate the experience of an enormous cinema auditorium. Physics remains stubbornly resistant to software updates. But as a personal entertainment device that can sit on a desk, tray table or bedside stand, the Pad X9b Max has all the right ingredients. IMAX Enhanced isn’t just another badge here; it fits naturally into what HONOR has designed the tablet to do.

Four speakers give the display some muscle

A great movie experience needs more than pixels, and HONOR hasn’t forgotten the audio side. The Pad X9b Max uses four speakers alongside HONOR Sound and DTS:X Ultra, with Hi-Res Audio and Hi-Res Wireless support also included. HONOR also specifies up to 200% powerful sound through its audio technology.

That four-speaker arrangement is exactly what I want to see on a tablet this large. There’s enough physical separation across the chassis to produce a broader presentation than you’ll get from a phone, which matters for dialogue, music, games and especially movies. It also means the Pad X9b Max isn’t entirely dependent on headphones to deliver an enjoyable entertainment experience.

More importantly, the audio system completes the IMAX Enhanced proposition. The large display provides the visual scale, while the four-speaker setup gives soundtracks somewhere to stretch their legs. DTS:X Ultra adds another layer to that experience, helping the tablet create a more immersive sense of space than basic stereo speakers could manage.

It’s this combination that makes the Pad X9b Max particularly appealing to me. A large display on its own is useful. A large 2.5K 120Hz display combined with IMAX Enhanced and a proper four-speaker system starts feeling like a dedicated entertainment device.

The battery matches the Max name

Powering a 13-inch 120Hz display requires a serious battery, so the 10,100mAh cell is another important part of the package.

HONOR’s laboratory figures put local video playback at up to 16 hours, PDF use at 13 hours, notebook use at 12 hours and PUBG at eight hours. Local music playback stretches to 73 hours, while standby endurance can reach considerably further under specific testing conditions. Actual battery life will naturally change depending on brightness, connectivity, refresh rate and workload, but 10,100mAh gives the Pad X9b Max plenty of capacity to work with.

There’s also 45W HONOR SuperCharge, with a full charge listed at around 105 minutes under HONOR’s test conditions. Considering the sheer size of the battery, that’s a sensible turnaround. Faster is always nice, but endurance matters far more to me on a tablet than winning the 0-to-100 charging Olympics.

Performance keeps things sensible

Inside the Pad X9b Max is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 685. This isn’t flagship silicon, but it fits the tablet’s priorities reasonably well. The X9b Max is primarily about entertainment, browsing, studying and everyday productivity rather than demolishing synthetic benchmarks for internet bragging rights.

For streaming, web browsing, document editing, email, video calls and regular Android applications, the Snapdragon 685 has the right sort of workload ahead of it. HONOR offers up to 6GB of physical RAM, while RAM Turbo can use internal storage to supplement memory for up to 12GB combined. Virtual memory isn’t the same thing as physical RAM, of course, but it can provide some additional breathing room when keeping applications available in the background.

Gaming is still part of the equation, especially when you’ve got such a large 120Hz display sitting in front of you. Popular Android games fit naturally here, although more demanding titles may require some adjustment to graphical settings. I wouldn’t buy the Pad X9b Max specifically as a hardcore gaming tablet, but gaming works nicely as another part of its broader entertainment package.

MagicOS 10 makes better use of 13 inches

The Pad X9b Max runs MagicOS 10 based on Android 16, with several features designed to make its large display genuinely useful. PC-style file management, AI Memo and keyboard support give the tablet stronger productivity credentials, particularly when working with documents, downloads and multiple apps.

HONOR Connect also allows file transfers with iOS devices and products from other brands, which makes the tablet far less dependent on a single ecosystem. I particularly appreciate that approach because cross-device features become much more useful when they don’t demand complete brand loyalty from every gadget I own.

HONOR Kids adds individual profiles, passwords and controls for applications and content, giving the Pad X9b Max additional flexibility as a shared family tablet. Taken together, these features give that enormous screen plenty to do once the movie ends.

Expandable storage deserves applause

One of my favourite specifications is also one of the least glamorous: expandable storage up to 2TB. It’s a fantastic match for an entertainment-focused tablet. High-quality movies, television series, games, music and offline content can devour internal storage remarkably quickly. Being able to add substantially more space means I don’t have to perform digital triage every time another giant game or movie download arrives.

Verdict

The HONOR Pad X9b Max knows exactly what it wants to be: a big-screen entertainment tablet that remains useful when the movie ends. Its 13-inch 2.5K 120Hz display, IMAX Enhanced support, four-speaker audio, 10,100mAh battery and expandable storage create an excellent foundation for movies, games and everyday use.

MagicOS 10, PC-style file management, HONOR Connect and keyboard support add enough productivity muscle to make that huge screen useful for work and studying too. The Snapdragon 685 isn’t aimed at hardcore gaming or heavyweight creative workloads, but that’s not where this tablet shines.

For me, the combination of screen size, IMAX Enhanced entertainment, strong audio, huge battery and practical versatility makes the HONOR Pad X9b Max a compelling big-screen Android tablet.