Honor’s 13-inch tablet is going international as the Pad X9b Max

Honor has started selling its 13-inch tablet outside China. The Pad X9b Max is listed on Honor’s own stores in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Peru and Turkey. Honor Philippines announced it on 16th September, with sales opening on 19th September.

It is the tablet Honor put on sale in China on 28th August as the Pad X10 Pro Max. Same specs: 297.62 x 192.72 x 6.72mm, 618g, a 13-inch LCD running 2500 x 1560 at 228 pixels per inch, 120Hz with 90Hz and 60Hz steps, 700 nits at its brightest, 1500:1 contrast, and screen across 88% of the front. Honor has not said why the name changes at the border. A few days ago we wrote about two completely different tablets both sold as the MagicPad 4. Honor has now done the opposite with this one.

What the chip actually is

Inside is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 6s 4G Gen 2, announced in December 2025. It is a 6nm chip running four Arm Cortex-A73 cores at 2.9GHz next to four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.9GHz. Arm designed the A73 in 2016 and the A53 in 2012. Qualcomm has clocked them higher than anyone did then, which is where its claim of 51% more performance than the last 6s comes from. They are still cores from a decade ago.

What you are buying, then, is a large bright screen attached to a slow processor. Video, textbooks, browsing and video calls will be fine on it. Games and heavy multitasking will not.

The battery is 10,100mAh with a 45W charger in the box. There are four speakers, plus DTS and IMAX Enhanced certification for video. Both official spec sheets list a 5MP autofocus rear camera and a 5MP fixed-focus front camera. A microSD card can add up to 2TB.

What changed on the way out of China?

Memory. In China the Pad X10 Pro Max comes with 6GB or 8GB of RAM. The international Pad X9b Max stops at 6GB, and the cheapest listing, in the UAE, is 4GB. Honor markets the 6GB model as 18GB by counting 12GB of storage borrowed as virtual RAM, which is slower than real memory and does not do the same job.

Prices, converted at 17 September rates:

• China: CNY 1,899 for 8GB and 128GB, about KES 36,700. CNY 2,199 for 8GB and 256GB, about KES 42,500.
• UAE: AED 849 for 4GB and 128GB, about KES 29,950. That is a Pad Carnival promotion price, and Honor has not given an end date for it.
• Saudi Arabia: SAR 999 for 4GB and 128GB, cut from SAR 1,199, about KES 34,500. SAR 1,099 for 6GB and 128GB, about KES 38,000. SAR 1,499 for 6GB and 256GB, about KES 51,800.
• Philippines: PHP 19,999 on its own, about KES 41,400, or PHP 21,999 with the keyboard, about KES 45,500. Buyers before 30 September also get a JBL GO4 speaker.
• Turkey: TRY 21,999 for 6GB and 128GB with a keyboard and stylus, about KES 58,700.
• Peru: S/1,999 for 6GB and 256GB, about KES 77,300, currently promoted at S/1,699, about KES 65,700.

The same tablet costs more than twice as much in Peru as it does in the UAE.

It is not on Honor’s Android 17 list

The Pad X9b Max runs MagicOS 10, which is Honor’s skin on top of Android 16. On 15th September Honor released MagicOS 11, its Android 17, with an upgrade plan covering 51 phones, 12 tablets and four watches through November. We went through that list on Wednesday.

The 12 tablets on it are the MagicPad3 Pro, MagicPad3 Pro 12.3, MagicPad3 12.5, MagicPad3, MagicPad2, Pad GT2 Pro, Pad GT Pro, Pad GT, Pad V9, Pad 10 Pro, Pad 10 and Pad 20. The Pad X10 Pro Max is on none of the three batches, and neither is the Pad X9b Max. Anyone buying one should know that Android 16 is probably the version the tablet will stick with.

Kenya

Honor has not announced the Pad X9b Max for Kenya. Honor sells here through authorised resellers rather than a local operation, which is why the Magic flagships never get a Kenyan launch while the X series does. If the X9b does arrive, the UAE and Saudi listings are the ones to watch, because that is the route most Honor tablets take to get here.