Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has been on a roll lately, bringing in a number of new smartphones with flagship grade features. The Chinese phone maker launched the Honor 9i, the Honor 7X and recently, the Honor 9 Lite. The Honor 9i and Honor 7X were launched at the end of last year, and there are hardly any differences between the two. Then just a few weeks back, they launched the Honor 9 Lite smartphone, which again arrived with similar hardware as the other two. Now a big question should be on your mind: Which one should I pick between the three? Well, let's find out.
Honor 7X vs Honor 9i vs Honor 9 Lite: Display & Design
All three smartphones feature a similar design language up front, making it almost difficult to distinguish between them. One of the reasons for identical looks is that all three Honor smartphones feature tall 18:9 displays. The only differ in terms of size and have minimal bezels on the sides.
The Honor 7X (first impressions) and Honor 9i sport a 5.9-inch display while the Honor 9 Lite comes with a slightly smaller 5.65-inch panel. All three handsets get an IPS LCD display and feature the same FHD+ (1080 x 2160 pixels) resolution.
As for design, the Honor 7X and Honor 9i come with an aluminium unibody design featuring toughened glass at the front. Ironically the cheapest phone has a is most good looking, as Honor 9 Lite stands apart with its all-glass design.
Honor 7X vs Honor 9i vs Honor 9 Lite: Hardware
All the three phones sport near similar hardware under the hood. Huawei’s own HiSilicon Kirin 659 chipset along with the Mali T830 MP2 graphics chip is used to power them all. The CPU comes paired either with 3GB or 4GB RAM options.
The Honor 7X comes with 4GB of RAM and two storage options of 32GB and 64GB. The Honor 9i ships with just one variant 4GB RAM + 64GB storage version. The Honor 9 Lite again comes in two options 3GB RAM + 32GB memory and 4GB RAM + 64GB memory.
While ideally the performance of the devices should be at par with each other, this is not the case. The Honor 9 Lite, though cheapest of all, posted highest scores in benchmark tests, while the Honor 7X and the Honor 9i follow suit with slightly lesser scores. This is because the Honor 9 Lite comes with Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box while the other two run Android 7.0 Nougat.
As for the battery, the Honor 7X and the Honor 9i being similarly sized handsets, get a large 3340 mAh battery. The smaller Honor 9 Lite gets a 3,000 mAh battery.
Honor 7X vs Honor 9i vs Honor 9 Lite: Camera
Coming to cameras, the Honor 9 Lite and Honor 9i are quad camera phones featuring dual cameras both on front and back. The Honor 7X, however, has the dual combo for the rear primary camera only.
The Honor 7X comes with a 16 MP + 2 MP dual camera on the rear side of the smartphone and an 8 MP front camera. The Huawei Honor 9i comes with a 16MP + 2 MP shooter on the rear and a 13MP + 2 MP dual front shooter. The Honor 9 Lite comes incorporates 13MP+2MP camera setup on both front and back. Overall, the Honor 9i has the best camera among the three while Honor 9 Lite does slightly better than the Honor 7X on paper.
Honor 7X vs Honor 9i vs Honor 9 Lite: Which to buy?
Honor’s all three devices are undoubtedly good phones in the mid-range segment and packing with same hardware Honor ensures your performance is not compromised even if you have a tighter budget. In our opinion though, the Honor 9 Lite is an ideal purchase because the device comes with a glass sandwich design, smaller size and runs latest Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box. The Honor 7X is also a great choice if you are looking for a device with a larger screen and if the camera is your thing go with the Honor 9i.