Honor X9d Review: Is being super sturdy enough for the price?

Honor’s new phone, the Honor X9d, is finally here with me, everyone. It’s Honor’s first smartphone in 2026. Now, if you look at Honor Nepal’s performance last year, in 2025, they actually did extremely well. They recorded over 150% growth in Nepal, and a big reason behind that was the kind of products they launched.

There were some really good phones, like the Honor 400 and the Honor 400 Pro, which I personally really liked. Another phone that stood out was the Honor X9C. If you remember that phone, it was a very tough device. We did a lot of stress tests on it, and we even put it through a dozer. Under 50,000 rupees, it was the only durable phone you could buy. And for 2026, Honor is looking to start strong with their first phone, the Honor X9d. 

Exciting Prebooking Offer

Pre-booking has just started, and it is available in two variants with 8/12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The official price of the Honor X9d is NPR 54,999 for the 8/256GB trim and NPR 59,999 for the 12/256GB version. And as always with Honor phones, there are some really exciting pre-booking offers.

1. You get breakage insurance for both the front and back glass for one year.
2. You also get one year of water damage insurance.
3. Honor is also giving away the Honor Watch 2 Pro smartwatch worth around 12,000 rupees for free.

And that’s not all, there is also a lucky draw where one lucky winner can win a Deepal S05 car. So yes, there are a lot of pre-booking offers, as we usually see with Honor phones.

But the real question is, are these offers enough, and more importantly, is the Honor X9d actually worth its price of 54,999 rupees? That’s exactly what we’re going to find out in our Honor X9d review.

Honor X9d Specifications:

• Design, build: 161.9 × 76.1 × 7.76 mm, 193g, IP69K/IP68/IP66 rating, 2.5m drop resistant, shock-absorbing frame
• Display: 6.79-inch AMOLED, 2640 × 1200 FHD+, 120Hz adaptive, 6000 nits peak brightness, 3840Hz PWM dimming
• Chipset: Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 (4nm), Octa-core, VC Ice Cooling with 29,500 mm² surface
• Memory: 8/12GB RAM, 256/512GB storage
• Software & UI: MagicOS 9.0 based on Android 15
• Rear Camera: 108MP main (f/1.75) with OIS, 5MP ultrawide (f/2.2), 4K video, AI Star Editor tools
• Front Camera: 16MP (f/2.45), 1080p video, portrait mode, gesture control
• Security: Fingerprint sensor (in-display)
• Connectivity: 5G NR, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, USB Type-C 2.0
• Sensors: Gravity, Gyroscope, Compass, Acceleration, Ambient Light, Proximity
• Battery: 8300mAh silicon carbon, 66W wired charging, reverse charging support
• Price in Nepal: NPR 54,999 (8/256GB), NPR 59,999 (12/256GB)
• Buy here

Honor X9d Review:

The Design

Okay, so now let’s begin this review, with the positive side of this phone.

The first positive, and probably the biggest one for me, is the design this year. It’s not just about durability anymore; this year, it’s also about how the phone looks. I think the design is much more modern this time, mainly because of the flat design.

The phone is flat from all sides - from the front, from the back, and you also get flat frames. Overall, it gives the phone a very clean and modern look. And despite featuring a big 8300mAh battery, it is still surprisingly very lightweight. It weighs around 193 grams, which is actually quite impressive considering how big the battery is.

Just to give you a quick comparison, if you put the X9D side by side with something like the Redmi Note 15 Pro Plus, which has a 6500mAh battery, Xiaomi is actually heavier. So Honor has done a fantastic job on this front.

I also really like this red color variant that I have with me. I honestly think this is the color most people will go for. It has a really nice leather-like finish on the back, which adds to the overall feel and grip of the phone.

It's super sturdy

On top of the design, you also get official IP68 as well as IP69K certification. This basically means the phone is not just water-resistant, but it can also withstand higher-pressure water jets, if you’re into those kinds of things.

Honor also claims drop resistance of up to 2.5 meters. And based on what we have seen with previous Honor X-series phones like the X9b and X9c, we know that Honor uses its own proprietary technology to make these phones more robust.

Because of that, this phone should easily survive small and minor drops from your hand.

Now, yes, there has been a lot of crazy marketing from Honor around durability. In Nepal, we saw phones being dropped from paragliding by our good friend Hemanta from Nepal 8th Wonder, and from places like Dharahara. Even on Honor Thailand and Honor Philippines pages, there were even more extreme tests.

But please don’t try any of that. What it actually means is that the phone can handle normal, everyday drops. And at the end of the day, glass is glass, and glass can break. If you’re unlucky and the phone hits/impacts the ground at the wrong angle, it will still break.

Display Quality

Likewise, there are some really nice improvements in the display aspect, too. First of all, of course, we finally get a flat display, which I personally really like. But there are two major upgrades when it comes to the display this year. The first one is brightness. This is a really bright display, and it’s one of the brightest displays you can get in this price segment. You get up to 1800 nits in high brightness mode *HBM, and it can go all the way up to 6000 nits peak brightness - very visible even on a bright sunny day.

We also get high PWM dimming as well, which is great if you’re sensitive to flickering. There are also a lot of display certifications, like always. Another nice upgrade this year is that you get HDR10 certification, and it plays well on Netflix, Youtube and other OTT platforms.

And to nicely complement the display experience, you also get surprisingly good stereo speakers. They’re loud, they’re clear, for bingewatching movies. Treble and percussion are a bit bland, but thevocal and bass are pretty clear. But overall nice speakers for the price.

Anyway, we still get an optical fingerprint sensor instead of an ultrasonic one. Ultrasonic sensors are usually reserved for more expensive phones, so it’s understandable.

Exceptional Battery

Now, another thing that is just awesome, and honestly exceptional, is the battery. This is currently Nepal’s biggest battery phone, with an 8300mAh battery. Yes, in the future, phones from brands like OnePlus or even Honor themselves might come with even bigger batteries later in mid-2026. But right now, 8300mAh is huge.

This is a silicon-carbon battery, and Honor has actually been one of the pioneers in this space. They were one of the first brands to bring silicon-carbon battery technology to smartphones.

The battery life I’m getting on this phone is awesome. I was easily getting two days of battery life. In fact, if you are a very moderate user, even three days of usage is possible. You get a 66W charger inside the box that can top it up in 1 hour.

Not So Great Performance

Okay, so now let’s talk about the not-so-good areas of this phone, and it mostly starts with performance and software. Here we get the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset, which is a 4nm chip, so yes, it is very efficient, but it’s definitely not the best-performing chipset you can find at this price.

For normal day-to-day usage and light gaming, it is completely fine. But if you are a heavy gamer, or if you do a lot of multitasking, you will feel a bit of sluggishness. This is simply not the fastest phone in this price segment. BTW, we get LPDDR4X RAM and UFS 2.2 storage!

Even for high-end gaming, you will have to dial down the settings a little to get stable performance. You can play games like PUBG Mobile at 90 FPS. That said, one thing I genuinely liked about the performance is that I never faced any heating issues. Honor has included a vapor chamber cooling solution here, so maybe because of that, there is no overheating at all.

But, yeah, if you are a geek or someone who really wants very fast performance, this phone will not satisfy you.

MagicOS

Another thing I was slightly disappointed with is the software. This phone does not come with Android 16 out of the box. Instead, it runs on Android 15 with MagicOS 9. I really wish this phone had launched with Android 16, because I’m currently using the Honor Magic 8 Pro, and MagicOS 10 is just so much better. I honestly think MagicOS 10 is one of the most improved Android skins, similar to what we saw with Vivo and OriginOS. Unfortunately, the Honor X9D will only get that update after around six or seven months from today.

What’s even more strange is that Honor has not committed to any clear software update policy for this phone. With the Honor 400 series, it felt like Honor had changed its strategy because, if you remember, they offered six years of updates. That was a bit disappointing to see.

The Cameras

And even when it comes to cameras, I would say they are not that impressive. We get the same camera setup as last year’s X9c: a 108MP main camera at the back, a very basic 5MP ultra-wide camera, and the same 16MP front camera.

That said, I’ve already received a couple of updates on this phone, and the cameras are not terrible. I was able to click some decent photos, especially in good lighting conditions. But they are not extraordinary by any means.

Ultrawide

As a 5MP unit, the UW is just average, nothing extraordinary.

Portraits

Portraits, in particular, are not very good, and that 5MP ultra-wide camera in 2026, on a phone costing more than 50,000 rupees, is honestly unacceptable.

Selfies

Even the selfies are just okay, not great.

Videos

Video-wise, 4K at 30 FPS from the main camera, 1080p from the main and U/W camera, and the quality is average at best.

So yeah, just like performance, cameras are also an area where compromises have been made. I really feel if not for the performance, Honor could have done better with the cameras, maybe by including a proper portrait lens, a better ultra-wide camera, or a newer main camera sensor altogether.

For a similar price, something like the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, which is available under 60,000, offers one of the best camera setups in this segment, including a 3X periscope telephoto lens, and that clearly delivers better photos.

• Best Mobile Phones Under Rs. 60,000 in Nepal [Updated 2026]

Honor X9d Review: Conclusion

So overall, to conclude, the Honor X9d is definitely not a phone for everyone. If you are someone who values durability, wants a long-lasting marathon kinda battery life, needs a nice display for watching movies/reels, and doesn’t really care much about cameras or heavy gaming, then this is actually a very good device.

In fact, I think it’s a perfect phone for 3 kind of people: 
1. For parents
2. for drivers or ride-hailing users (Pathao / Indrive), 
3. If you’re a bit clumsy and want a tough, long-lasting phone that just works,

For those genres of users, the Honor X9d makes a lot of sense. However, if you are someone who plays a lot of games or is serious about camera quality, then this is definitely not the phone for you.

Honor X9d Review: Pros and Cons

Pros

• Super strong build
• Good display

• Exceptional battery life

   Cons

• Average gaming performance
• Average cameras