The Honor 8X is here to shake up your holiday gift list

As price points for the newest smartphones have catapulted past the 4-digit barrier, devices that can bring power, portability, and price simultaneously are becoming more and more in-demand. The fully equipped Honor 8X is built to satisfy everyone on your Black Friday shopping list, whether they’re an avid gamer looking to take their skills on the road, mobile shutterbugs who demand only the best in their phone’s cameras, or tech-heads who want to see if it can stand up to the competition. (And hey, we won’t judge if you end up buying yourself an early holiday gift, too.) Let’s break it down by the numbers:

The first thing you’ll notice about the Honor 8X is that, even with a small top notch, the screen takes up more than 90 percent of the phone’s body. That screen-to-body ratio is well beyond what you’d find on phones that cost four times as much, and it blows other budget offerings from brands like the Xiaomi Mi Mix out of the water, which is about 84 percent ratio.

The Honor 8X’s 6.5-inch screen pushes it into phablet territory and puts it on equal footing with the Apple iPhone XS Max and Samsung Galaxy Note. The screen specs are impressive as well: a 19.5:9 aspect ratio and a maximum resolution of 2340 x 1080. That means that everything from games to movies to pictures can be blown up to take advantage of the phone’s display without sacrificing detail or colour clarity.

The Honor 8X’s camera capabilities are where the phone really flexes its muscles. It’s outfitted with twin lenses on the back: a 20-megapixel main camera and a secondary 2-megapixel lens used to pick up on depth and reduce motion blur. Turn the Honor 8X around and you’ll find another mighty 16-megapixel front-facing camera, making the phone a great gift for all the selfie-obsessed on your Black Friday shopping list. Both cameras benefit from patented AI-assisted camera technology, which is able to recognize backgrounds and scenarios and adjust settings to match the photo being taken. That same intelligent technology will also help keep your images blur-free through AI-assisted image stabilization and help make your low-light photos pop with the phone’s “Night Mode.” You’d be hard pressed to find this powerful a camera set in another phone at the Honor 8X’s price point, making it a great value for anyone looking to check another gift off the shopping list.

After you’re done celebrating the fact that the Honor 8X actually has a headphone jack, you’ll notice that this doesn’t look like a budget phone. It’s sandwiched between two panes of 2.5D textured aurora glass, the first time a phone in the Honor X series has had a glass back. The juxtaposition of matte and glossy finished glass lends a striking, industrial-inspired design sensibility to the phone, whether it’s in red, blue, or black.

The Honor 8X runs on the eight-core Hisilicon Kirin 710 processor as well as 4GB of RAM, which can be upgraded to as much as 6GB. That’s enough to multitask without seeing a performance break, but this phone really shines when it comes to playing games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Asphalt 9. That’s because the Honor 8X comes equipped with GPU Turbo mode, which boosts GPU performance without burning through your battery. GPU Turbo will also be able to help the performance of virtual and augmented reality applications, a welcome capability for a phone in the 8X’s price range. Speaking of battery life, thanks to the 8X’s massive 3750mAh battery, you won’t be reaching for the power cable every few hours even if you’re in the middle of an epic PUBG battle.

The Honor 8X impresses on the inside and outside, and it’s bound to make even the most demanding techie on your holiday shopping list swoon.