Honor 9N Overall Review: Perfect Competitor of Mi A2 Lite?

Honor 6X, Honor 7X and Honor 9 Lite have been bestselling smartphones of Huawei’s sub-brand – Honor. These three handsets have done very well in the Indian market. With these three handsets, Honor became one of the biggest competitors of Xiaomi. And now, the company has introduced the Honor 9N – another budget smartphone which is supposed to be the perfect competitor of Xiaomi’s newly launched Mi A2 Lite.

We will put the Honor 9N against several smartphones in this price range but that’s for upcoming weeks. In this article, we are going to review the Honor 9N and will try to find if it is really worth. Before we start, let’s have a look on the specs of this handset.

Honor 9N Specifications and Features

Display	5.84-inch IPS LCD, 1080x2280px, 19:9 Ratio with Notch
Processor & GPU	Octa-Core HiSilicon Kirin 659 | Mali-T830 MP2
OS & RAM	Android 8.0 Oreo | 3GB or 4GB
Storage	32GB, 64GB or 128GB | Expandable up to 256GB
Primary Camera	Dual 13MP (PDAF) + 2MP (Depth Sensor), LED Flash
Secondary Camera	16MP
Battery	Li-Po 3000 mAh

Honor 9N Design & Build Quality

In terms of design, the handset looks exactly like the Honor 9 Lite. The company hasn’t done any change except for the build quality. The 9 Lite was fragile but the newcomer comes with a tougher glass panel on the rear and the front. It has a compact body which means people with small palm can easily operate it. It’s also ideal for one-handed operation.

The handset looks beautiful and comes with notched display. The company has managed to keep minimal bezels which makes the front nearly all-screen. It features a fingerprint sensor on the rear that can be used for various purposes apart from unlocking the device.

What’s disappointing that it lacks USB type-c port but yes, it does come with 3.5mm audio jack. It has dual SIM functionality with second SIM doubling as MicroSD reader. Anyway, design wise, the handset is beautiful and looks stunning in hands.

Honor 9N Display, OS and UI

The Honor 9N features a 5.84 inch display which isn’t small. With full HD+ resolution, the display shows realistic colors. It is bright and crisp. It does reflect under direct sunlight but can be operated easily by setting the brightness at maximum. It has a notched display and fortunately, it can be hidden if you want.

It runs on Android 8.0 Oreo with EMUI 8.0. Honor’s custom UI is much like Xiaomi’s MIUI. It is highly customizable and one can completely change the look and feel of the device by using different themes.

Honor 9N Performance and Gaming

The Honor 9N comes with the same processor that we have seen on Honor 9 Lite and Honor 7X; it’s the Kirin 659 which is a bit old now. Anyway, this processor is good for handling normal as well as heavy tasks. It doesn’t lag whether you are doing social media, playing normal games or doing multi-tasking.

As the Kirin 659 is a lower mid-range processor, it can’t handle heavy games that well. I mean, it will play the games but it won’t be able to handle graphics; especially when you are playing PUBG Mobile, Gangster Vegas and Hopeless Land. Random frame drops and lags are expected. You might be able to play while setting the graphics to the minimum.

We will talk more about the performance in our in-depth article.

Honor 9N Camera

Starting with the daylight, the Honor 9N takes better than average photos. When I was looking at the samples closely, I found that it captures good details and accurate colors. Daylight images also look sharp. It comes with wide-aperture mode which is just buggy.

Apart from this, the camera also lets you use “pro” mode which allows several customizations in order to take better photos. It also has several AR stickers, 16 effects and 14 backgrounds to help you take a creative photo.

Coming to the lowlight, its performance is poor. Samples taken in lowlight situation lack details and are over sharpened. Focusing speed is also slow during lowlight. Talking about front camera, it comes with 10 level beautification features that work fine.

We will talk more about the camera performance in our in-depth article.

Our Verdict

The Honor 9N comes with a lower mid-range price tag. It has good build quality, beautiful design and a vibrant display. In terms of performance, it is average and you can just play normal games. Playing heavy games on this device isn’t fun as its graphics performance is poor.

The handset offers better than average camera performance during daylight or good light situation but doesn’t satisfy when it comes to lowlight situation. So if you don’t click photos during lowlight, you can consider it.