The work aims to study the effects of different levels of pre-compression on the cushioning performance of different types of honeycomb cardboards under the same temperature and humidity. The electronic material testing machine was used to compress the materials. Then, the stress-strain curve, static cushioning coefficient curve and energy absorption curve were drawn with Matlab software. The pre-compression limited the online elastic stages and it had no significant impact on all the performances of honeycomb cardboard. When the pre-compression entered the elastic-plastic stage, all the performances of honeycomb cardboard were quite obviously decreased. When the pre-compression entered the plastic collapse stage, all the performances of honeycomb cardboard were significantly decreased and even its cushioning performance was lost. With the increase in the pre-compression level, the static compression performance, static cushioning performance and energy absorption of honeycomb cardboard will be reduced accordingly.