The work aims to research the cushioning performance and energy absorption characteristics of new bubble paper honeycomb sandwich composite board and paper honeycomb sandwich composite board to widely use the new honeycomb sandwich composite board in transportation packaging. The stress-strain curves, total energy absorption charts, unit volume energy absorption charts and cushioning coefficient-strain curves of honeycomb structural boards with different core heights were studied by static compression experiments to analyze the effects of structure and core heights on the static compression properties of honeycomb structural boards. The data show that the peak stress of paper honeycomb sandwich composite boards was slightly higher than other boards with the same core height. The total energy absorption and the energy absorption per unit volume of paper honeycomb sandwich composite boards were the best. Due to the effect of bubbles structure, the cushioning property of bubble paper honeycomb sandwich composite board was greatly enhanced. Therefore, it is concluded that the paper honeycomb sandwich composite boards have the best flat compression strength and the cushioning performance of the bubble paper honeycomb sandwich composite board is better than that of the honeycomb paperboard with the same structure. Both of them have good application prospects.