The Honor Pad X8a has a footprint of 257 × 168.5 mm and sits at 7.3 mm thick, giving it a relatively slim build for its class, while tipping the scales at 495 g with a total volume of approximately 316.12 cm³. The tablet ships without a stylus, detachable keyboard, or backlit keyboard, and it offers no water resistance rating of any kind. Tilt sensitivity is also absent, which aligns with the lack of any included pen accessory.
The Honor Pad X8a features an 11-inch IPS LCD touchscreen with a resolution of 1920 × 1200 px and a pixel density of 206 ppi, paired with a 90Hz refresh rate for smoother on-screen motion. The panel does not include branded damage-resistant glass, sapphire glass, or an anti-reflection coating, and it offers no support for HDR10, HDR10+, or Dolby Vision, nor does it use e-paper technology.
The Honor Pad X8a is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 4G chipset, built on a 6 nm process with an octa-core CPU running at up to 2.4 GHz across four cores and 1.9 GHz across the remaining four, using big.LITTLE technology and spanning 8 threads with a TDP of 6W. Graphics are handled by the Adreno 610 GPU, clocked at 845 MHz with a turbo of 800 MHz, supporting DirectX 12, OpenGL ES 3.2, and OpenCL 2, with integrated graphics included. The tablet comes with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM running at 2133 MHz across two memory channels, a maximum memory ceiling of 8GB, and a peak memory bandwidth of 14.9 GB/s, alongside 128GB of eMMC 5.1 internal storage and an external memory slot for further expansion. It runs Android 14, supports 64-bit processing, includes NX bit and TrustZone security features, and has integrated LTE on the SoC. Geekbench 6 scores sit at 416 single-core and 1466 multi-core.
The Honor Pad X8a features a 5 MP rear camera with an f/2.2 aperture, a CMOS sensor, and a flash, capable of recording video at 1080p and 30 fps with support for slow-motion capture and a video light. It includes touch autofocus, continuous autofocus during recording, and a range of manual controls covering ISO, focus, white balance, and exposure, though manual shutter speed is not available. The main camera lacks a back-illuminated sensor, optical image stabilization, optical zoom, burst mode, and panorama shooting in any form, and it does not support HDR10 or Dolby Vision recording. On the front, a 5 MP camera with the same f/2.2 aperture is present, though it has no dedicated LED flash. HDR mode is available, while 3D photo and video recording capabilities are absent.
The Honor Pad X8a includes stereo speakers and a single microphone, but omits a 3.5 mm headphone jack and has no built-in radio. On the wireless audio side, none of the Bluetooth codec enhancements are supported — aptX, aptX HD, aptX Low Latency, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, and LDAC are all absent.
The Honor Pad X8a is equipped with an 8300 mAh rechargeable battery that includes a battery level indicator, though it is sealed inside the device and cannot be removed. Neither fast charging nor wireless charging is supported.
The Honor Pad X8a connects wirelessly via Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 with download and upload speeds of up to 390 Mbits/s and 150 Mbits/s respectively, and pairs with devices over Bluetooth 5.1, though it lacks cellular connectivity, 5G support, NFC, GPS, Galileo, and HDMI output. Wired connectivity is handled through a USB Type-C port, and there is no Ethernet support. On the hardware sensor side, an accelerometer is present, while a gyroscope, compass, barometer, infrared sensor, and built-in projector are all absent. Biometric security options are limited as well — there is no fingerprint scanner, iris scanner, or 3D facial recognition. Software-side, the tablet supports a solid set of features including split-screen multitasking, Picture-in-Picture, dark mode, dynamic and manual theme customization, full-page screenshots, a media picker, widgets, sharing intents, customizable notifications, an extra dim mode, voice commands with offline voice recognition, on-device machine learning, device tracking, and a child lock. Privacy controls cover location, camera and microphone access, clipboard warnings, and app tracking blocking, though cross-site tracking blocking, Mail Privacy Protection, and Wi-Fi password sharing are not included. The system supports multiple user accounts, but does not offer Quick Start, app offloading, focus modes, or direct OS vendor updates.
In Geekbench 5 testing, the Honor Pad X8a scores 385 single-core and 1550 multi-core, reflecting the processing capacity of its octa-core configuration. The device uses DDR4 memory.
