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| The Honor Tablet X10 Mini features a slim metal body and a single rear camera |
Honor has quietly put a new budget tablet on sale in China, and if the spec sheet looks familiar, there's a good reason for it. The Honor Tablet X10 Mini went live on Chinese retail channels on October 23, and its hardware is essentially a match for the Honor Pad X7b that the company launched in Saudi Arabia earlier this year.
That means buyers get a 9.7-inch 2K panel, a metal unibody, and a battery that Honor claims can sit idle for the better part of three months — all for a starting price that works out to roughly $165 before subsidies.
A 9.7-inch 2K display aimed at portrait use
The headline feature is the 9.7-inch LCD, which runs at 2,052 × 1,152 pixels — that's a 2K-class resolution at 243 PPI — with a 90Hz refresh rate, 500 nits of peak brightness, and full 100% sRGB coverage. Honor is pitching the 9.7-inch diagonal as a "golden portrait" size, meaning it's tall enough for vertical feed apps but still manageable in one hand.
The panel sits behind secondary toughened glass, which Honor says is designed to suppress crack propagation and improve both drop and scratch resistance. There's also a full eye-comfort stack here: dynamic dimming, an e-book mode, software low blue light, and TÜV Rheinland certifications for low blue light and flicker-free operation.
One thing worth flagging for shoppers comparing options: the Xiaomi Redmi Pad 2 offers a 120Hz refresh rate at the same 9.7-inch screen size, so the Honor tablet gives up a little smoothness in exchange for its price point.
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| Honor Tablet X10 Mini rear design |
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| Honor Tablet X10 Mini front display |
Snapdragon 685, 8,000mAh, and a genuinely tough chassis
The Saudi-market Pad X7b runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 685, a 6nm entry-level octa-core chip, and the global product page still lists that silicon. Honor hasn't confirmed whether the Chinese X10 Mini uses the same processor, so treat that as unconfirmed for now.
Battery is the other big talking point. The 8,000mAh cell is rated for up to 16 hours of video playback, 122 hours of music, 21 hours of e-book reading, and 82 days of standby — all manufacturer estimates from Honor's own lab rather than independent testing.
Durability is unusually well documented for this price bracket. Honor lists SGS five-star certification for drop and pressure resistance alongside MIL-STD-810H compliance, with claims of surviving 1.6m face drops, 1.2m corner drops, and pressure loads equivalent to a 10-ton vehicle roll-over. The full test suite covers 11 categories, including thermal shock, salt fog, sand and dust, humidity, and shipboard vibration.
The body is stamped from a single piece of aluminum alloy with a sandblasted finish, measuring 235.37 × 141.43 × 8.48mm and weighing 447g. Cameras are modest on both sides — 5MP front and 5MP rear.
Memory, storage, and pricing
Chinese buyers get a configuration that isn't offered in Saudi Arabia. The X10 Mini comes in 4GB/128GB and 6GB/128GB variants, both with 128GB of internal storage expandable by up to 2TB, plus up to 4GB of virtual RAM borrowed from storage. Full details are on Honor's official product page, and the Chinese retail listing is live on JD.com.
| Configuration | List price | After national subsidy |
|---|---|---|
| 4GB + 128GB | 1,099 yuan (~$165) | 934.15 yuan (~$141) |
| 6GB + 128GB | 1,399 yuan (~$210) | 1,189.15 yuan (~$178) |
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| Honor Tablet X10 Mini shown during a durability test |
The international question
Here's the catch for anyone outside China: Honor has not announced international availability for the Tablet X10 Mini, and hasn't confirmed whether it will be sold in other markets under the Pad X7b name. Given that the two devices appear to be the same hardware under different regional branding, the Pad X7b remains the model to watch if you're in Europe, the Middle East, or elsewhere.
At under $150 with subsidies applied, the X10 Mini undercuts most of the 9.7-inch Android tablet field while offering military-standard durability and a battery that laughs at a full day of use. The trade-offs are clear — a 90Hz panel, entry-level silicon, and 5MP cameras — but for media consumption, e-reading, and kids' use, it looks like a sensible package.
Sources: Notebookcheck, Honor Global — Pad X7b, JD.com listing