Xiaomi had a busy 2019 as it launched a slew of smartphones including the Redmi Note 8 Pro. Despite being a phone from 2019, it continues to be one of the people’s preferred option when looking to buy for under Rs 15,000.
But snapping at Xiaomi’s heels is another Chinese player with its latest offering, the Honor 9x which was recently launched in India. Since you’re taking on a heavyweight like Xiaomi, you ought to pack some serious hardware and Honor claims to have done that with the 9X.
So does Xiaomi chew up another Chinese competitor or does Huawei’s sub-brand offer enough value and quality to defend its ‘Honor’? We compare both the phones to find out.
Design & Display
Both the Xiaomi Redmi Note 8 Pro and the Honor 9x are 6.5-inch smartphones that come with IPS LCD displays. The duo offers FHD+ resolution and for the price we’ve got nothing to complain about that.
While the Honor 9x sports a very eye-catching bezel-less design, the 8 Pro’s only blemish is the water-drop notch. Personally, when it comes to displays, I’m a fan of a clean real estate and Honor gets the points for keeping it simple.
Redmi Note 8 Pro sports Gorilla Glass 5 protection on both the sides, while the Honor 9x gets a polycarbonate panel at the back. The choice of material used to make the Honor 9x makes it a fingerprint magnet, and some of you might not like that.
Both devices weigh almost 200 grams, which is why it’s hard to call them lightweight devices.
When it comes to the ergonomics of both the phones, there’s very little to separate, which is why we’ll give equal points to both of them on that front.
Hardware & Processing
The Honor 9x is running on the company’s native Kirin 710F chipset and you can buy with RAM options of 4GB or 6GB.
Having said that, it was surprising to see the device could not run PUBG in HDR mode, and the message “this mode will be available soon” kept popping up. This was really disappointing.
Yes, the Honor 9x does offer 128GB of internal storage which is more than the 6GB+64GB variant of Note 8 Pro but will you compromise on the performance for 64GB of extra space on the 9X? We’ll leave that for you to decide.
Although we’re not complaining about the performance, it’s hard to ignore the amount of bloatware you’d come across on the Honor 9X. Why Honor, why?
I am not saying that Xiaomi has done an exemplary job with the MIUI (especially the incessant ads) but in terms of performance and running games in HDR, the experience was smooth. Another big advantage that Xiaomi holds over the 9x is the 8GB RAM variant but for that, you’ll have to shell out extra bucks.
Both come with fingerprint scanners at the back and support Face ID technology that is built over the software.
Camera & Battery
The Honor 9x comes with a triple camera setup which comprises a 48-megapixel primary sensor and an 8-megapixel ultra-wide and a 2-megapixel depth sensor.
You get a 16-megapixel pop-up selfie camera. Yes, a pop-up selfie camera in 2020. It’s one of the compromises the company made to offer a full view display. The pop-up selfie camera response time isn’t fast enough compared to other pop-up selfie shooters in the market.
Also, where the Note 8 Pro comes with 4K video recording, the same is missing on the Honor 9X. A deal-breaker?
Here’s are some sample pictures from the Honor 9x:
Captured using standard mode.
(Photo: The Quint/Sumit Badola)
The Redmi Note 8 Pro’s camera does really well for its price range. To check out the performance click here.
Captured using standard mode.
(Photo: The Quint/Sumit Badola)
If you see the above images you’ll clearly be able to distinguish that the images from the Redmi Note 8 Pro offer the right amount of saturation and sharpness while capturing in the landscape mode.
However, I felt that macro shots from both phones were equally good. Especially with the Honor 9x offering slightly better edge detection of subjects in the bokeh mode.
I also wanted to highlight the Night Mode on both phones. Where the Honor 9X delivers more natural colours the Redmi Note 8 Pro tends to oversaturate the pictures but offers a better dynamic range and more clarity thanks to a 64-megapixel primary sensor.
Which One to Buy?
Despite being launched in 2020, I still feel there are some kinks in Honor 9x’s armour that makes it feel dated.
The Honor 9x does give us the Google Suite support assurance bundled with an impressive spec sheet but it still doesn’t manage to beat the Redmi Note 8 Pro in a lot of areas, most notably camera and battery life.
What the Honor 9x brings to the table is a full view display, more than decent in performance but it’s still not enough to overtake the Redmi Note 8 Pro in the sub-15k segment.
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