- Among the new smartphones sold around 200 euros, the new Honor 9X knows how to fare well with serious arguments.
- We appreciate its large 6.6-inch screen, its 128 gigabyte expandable capacity, but also its ultra-wide-angle photo sensor and its autonomy of 2 days.
- If it offers us value for money, the Honor 9X will nevertheless quickly confront image enthusiasts with its technical limits.
The war of smartphones sold around 200 euros is raging. And it is the Chinese manufacturers who cross the line in the field of mid-range devices: Oppo and its A9, Xiaomi and its Redmi Note 8 Pro, Realme and its Realme 5 ... Honor, the sister brand of Huawei, is not remains. After its Honor Play now sold 239 euros, here is the Honor 9X offered at 229 euros.
An invisible front camera
In appearance, the Honor 9X may seem a bit flashy with its back in iridescent blue or black finish. The visual effect is there, but fingerprints quickly reduce the emotional impact. In use, we spend a little time wiping the shell of the smartphone on his pants. Must love…
At the front, the large Full HD + screen of 6.59 "/ 16.73 cm (2340 x 1080 pixels) does not reveal any front camera: it is hidden in a small" pop-up "module which mechanically extracts itself from the upper border of the screen when the selfie is taken. Nice!
And we note that in addition to the USB-C socket of the smartphone, Honor has kept a 3.5 mm mini-jack socket that audiophile users will appreciate. The memory card slot reminds us that the 128 GB capacity of our smartphone can be extended to 512 GB. Not bad!
Very large image, small sound
Tested with a few episodes of season 2 of the fantasy series Lost in Space on Netflix, the screen of the Honor 9X offers a very pleasant viewing quality. Admittedly, the contrasts are not as pronounced and the blacks are not as deep as with an OLED screen smartphone, but the beautiful size of the image more than makes up for it.
The ability to change the screen resolution at any time and reduce it to 1560 x 720 pixels helps reduce the effects of poor 3G / 4G coverage when watching your favorite series in streaming. Quite a few reflections are to report. Too bad a single speaker (at the bottom of the smartphone) deprives us of a stereo that would necessarily have been welcome.
Just the right photos
Taking themselves for a big one, the Honor 9X is equipped with three rear photo modules *. We find the usual hitch composed of a main sensor associated with an ultra wide-angle sensor and a third sensor to measure the depth of field. What to be comfortable in all configurations. What our tests confirm. The photos taken by the Honor 9X are of an honest invoice, even if the treatment applied by the smartphone cannot help but carry out smoothing sometimes too strongly.
Portrait mode would have deserved better software processing: hair trimming is not always up to par and we recommend that you try more and more to obtain an impeccable photo.
Where we appreciate nevertheless to benefit in this price range from the possibility of ultra-wide angle photographs, always welcome to take a step back in front of a monument, for example.
The 6X digital zoom, on the other hand, obtains rather disastrous results, being quite incapable of preserving a level of detail in the image which is significant.
Regarding selfies, the camera ** which goes up and down always amazes the gallery. The quality of the photos is visible, even if there again, the clipping of the subject's hair lacks precision.
We feel that we do not have a high-end smartphone in our hands. On video, the Honor 9X films in Full HD (up to 60 frames per second) and not in 4K. A lesser evil.
He gives us our money's worth
Overall, this smartphone achieves what is expected of it for its price. And if we are not too fussy about certain details (such as shots in low light, often poor), we can largely be satisfied with it on a daily basis for playing, watching videos, communicating and taking photos which will be mainly intended for social networks. One would have imagined that at 229 euros the Honor 9X would get its feet in the carpet of autonomy. Not even: its 4000 mAh battery ensures about two days of use with conventional use. An argument to which many are likely to be sensitive.
* 48 megapixels (26 mm equivalent, f / 1.6); 8 megapixels (17 mm; f / 2.4); 2 megapixels (depth of field).
** 16 megapixel on the front.
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