The Honor Magic5 Pro was my favourite phone of last year. It may not have been the absolute best device all around, but I believe it had the best performance for the price. In particular, I much preferred it to the Pixel 7 Pro. While the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra may have been better, it also cost a lot more.
I have, therefore, been quite excited about the launch of the Honor Magic6 Pro.
I have previously reviewed the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Pixel 8 Pro, and I think the Honor Magic6 Pro easily competes with these and is almost certainly one of the best flagship Android phones of the year.
Like most phones nowadays, the yearly launch cycle has led to incremental upgrades as mobile technology has started to plateau.
While I wouldn’t recommend rushing out to upgrade your Magic5 Pro, I think the Magic6 Pro has some decent improvements:
It had been rumoured this phone would feature emergency SOS via satellite (calls as well as messages). It does, but this is limited to models sold in China.
The design of the phone is similar to that of the previous generation. The main differences are that the pill-shaped selfie cut-out is now placed central on the display, and the camera bump is now dreadfully named a squircle.
The squircle camera bump is rather large and not the most attractive, but it is a necessary evil when you have increasingly advanced camera sensors. The periscope sensor appears to take up a lot of room.
My review sample is classed as black but is more of a dark grey, and this has a glass back, but there will also be an option with a green eco-leather silicon polymer back. Other colour options that have been leaked and appear to be used on the models in Chinea include blue, purple, and white. Leaks of the white colourway show it with an attractive marbling effect.
The display is listed as using Jurhino glass, which apparently is 10 times more drop-resistant (but it is not clear what it is 10x more drop-resistant against) and has won the world’s first Swiss SGS multi-scene gold label for five-star drop resistance.
Similar to other brands, Honor ditched the included charger in the packaging with last year’s phone. However, they have now also removed the included case. The problem I have with this is that Honor doesn’t have the same options for third-party cases. Spigen is my normal go-to brand, but they only make cases for Apple, Samsung, Google and OnePlus.
While Samsung and Pixel have both got flat displays now, Honor has stuck to the curved design. It does look more attractive and minimises the bezel, but the curve can impact usability when you swipe from the edge of the screen.
The curvature isn’t too aggressive, so I don’t find it affects my experience too much.
Then, you have the pill-shaped cut-out for the selfie camera and TOF sensor. This obviously takes up more room than a single camera cutout, which is not ideal, but it enabled significantly more secure and faster face unlock, and I think that outweighs the negatives of a large cutout.
Beyond that, the display is superb. Honor states that this has an astounding 1600 nits in High Brightness Mode (which matches the Pixel 8 Pro), but more impressive is the claimed 5000 nits peak brightness. That’s almost twice the peak brightness of the S24 Ultra and Pixel 8 Pro.
Then, with the LTPO (Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) OLED display, you have refresh rates from power-saving 1 Hz during static images to a smooth 120 Hz during dynamic scenes.
After using the Pixel 6 for a couple of years, which had no face unlock and a poor fingerprint scanner, I have come to appreciate how much of a difference fast and accurate biometrics have on your user experience.
Chinese brands have always been good for unlock speeds, but some people criticise how secure things like face unlock are.
With the Honor Magic6 Pro, you have an incredibly fast and reliable fingerprint sensor. Then, you have face unlock with raise to wake, which is far faster and more consistently reliable than the Pixel or Samsung. Adding to this, the TOF sensor allows Honor to facial unlock more securely than phones with a single selfie sensor.
The camera is one thing that differentiates many flagship phones. For Honor, they have switched things up a bit this year and have quite a unique camera arrangement.
The zoom lens has been massively upgraded to a 180MP Telephoto Camera Lens (f/2.6, OIS) with 2.5x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom.
Then, the main lens is a powerful 50MP main camera with variable aperture capabilities (f/1.4 and f/2.0, OIS) to capture fast-paced moments with exceptional clarity without compromising on details.
Finally, you have what appears to be the same 50MP ultra-wide camera (f.2.0, EIS) as last year.
Honor has always been good with low-light performance, and the Magic6 Pro is no exception. I would easily place it above the S24 Ultra but probably below the Pixel.
One thing I found quite disappointing with the camera was the digital zoom. It is something I prefer to avoid in normal use, so it is not a huge problem, but I found that zooming in degraded the image quality much faster than the Pixel 8 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
The zoom lock doesn’t work great, or at all, so once you go up to 20x zoom or so, you will really struggle to get a good photo. I found I got better results by taking a photo with the normal 2.5x or 5x zoom and then cropping manually. I did find the performance hit or miss; some zoom shots looked great, so it is possible the issues I experienced were user errors.
I have benchmarked the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 twice before with the IQOO 12 and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. It is a superb chipset offering phenomenal performance, and the same is true for the Honor.
In the 3Dmark Wild Life Stress Test, the Honor is fractionally behind the IQOO 12 for the high score, low score and stability, but the battery depletes slightly less. It then performs better than the S24 Ultra for all aspects of the test. The Pixel 8 Pro with the Google Tensor G3 doesn’t even come close.
For day-to-day usage, the Honor, just like all flagship phones, has flawless performance. The UI is incredibly responsive, apps load instantly, and there is no shutter lag or other annoying performance-related quirks.
As I review a lot of networking products, I can’t ignore the bizarre decision to hobble the WiFi by not including the 6GHz band. It is still technically WiFi 7, so you will get the improved throughput on the 5GHz network, and I would assume/hope that multi-link operation works, allowing you to connect to both bands at once.
But, you won’t be able to achieve 3Gbps+ that 6GHz is capable of when using 320MHz wide channel.
Admittedly, I doubt anyone needs that sort of throughput on a mobile phone, but I do find it disappointing.
Honor is not the first brand to mess around with the WiFi. The Pixel 8 Pro can’t do 320MHz.
Perhaps I am traumatised from the days of having to charge my Android phones mid-day, but I get bad nomophobia.
The Honor Magic5 Pro had an incredible battery, which put my Pixel 8 Pro to shame, and that was with the smaller 5100 mAh on the global variant, whereas China got the fancy Silicon-carbon 5450 mAh battery.
So, the significant battery upgrade on the Honor Magic6 Pro is one of the main selling points to me.
In the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test with the brightness fixed at 50% the Magic6 Pro achieved 14h 3 mins with an average performance score of 17057.
I have only had the phone for a couple of weeks, so I can’t comment on long-term performance, but I comfortably end each day with over 50% battery life.
Adding to the incredible battery life, you have ultra-fast charging with 80W wired and 66W wireless. Sadly, you don’t get a charger included.
As you’d expect, this has launched with Android 14, and it runs MagicOS 8.
I am probably biased towards MagicOS as I used the Magic5 Pro for half of last year and previously used Huawei phones for several years. So MagicOS feels more normal to me than One UI on my S24. Both phones are more bloated than the Pixel experience, and they both include their own annoying app store.
One area that Honor hasn’t developed quite as well as Samsung or Google is AI.
Like most brands, Honor is jumping on the AI bandwagon, and it does have some useful features, but it is not quite as good as Google and Samsung.
One unique feature is the Magic Capsule, where the pill-shaped cutout is. It is a bit like the Apple Dynamic Island; with a simple tap on the notifications banner at the top of the screen, the Magic Capsule expands to offer additional information and related options, granting users instant access to essential resources and eliminating the need to navigate through multiple apps for maximum productivity and efficiency.
Then, Magic Portal harnesses the power of AI to understand user messaging and behaviour, streamlining complex tasks into a single-step process. For example, Magic Portal’s AI quickly recognises addresses in a text message and directs users to Google Maps, enabling effortless navigation. For social media like TikTok and Facebook, it also streamlines the access and sharing, allowing users to forward booking details or online search results with just a single drag. Magic Portal facilitates image-based shopping experiences, seamlessly guiding users to platforms, where they can find and purchase desired items.
Honor does promise more AI features. From the press release:
Honor and Qualcomm have worked together to bring the LLaMA 2 large language model (LLM) inside the Honor Magic6 Pro, which is able to complete functions such as Q&A, text creation and reading comprehension in an offline environment. As a demo, bringing the Llama 2 LLM on device is the ability of Honor and Qualcomm to work together to solve problems and enable innovation. Collaboration within the industry like this can lead to a more imaginative future for users.
Demonstrating the possibilities that smartphone eye-tracking may unlock in the future, Honor revealed how it is possible to control a car hands-free through the Honor Magic6 Pro’s AI-powered eye-tracking system. The experimental concept showcases how the interplay between AI-enhanced smartphones and vehicles can go beyond screen or voice controls, unlocking a realm of human-device interactions that hold immense possibilities.
The Honor Magic6 Pro has launched for an RRP of £1,099.99, but as usual with Honor, there are some fantastic pre-order offers.
The Magic6 Pro can be purchased from HiHonor using a £250 off subscriber voucher when users subscribe to HiHonor, and use the code AM6PP250 in checkout. HiHonor shoppers will also receive complimentary 12-months screen protection, plus the opportunity to purchase a Pad 9 for £149.99 (£299.99 RRP). The Magic6 Pro is also available to pre-order from the 1st of March with sales from the 8th of March with a complimentary launch bundle worth £359, including HONOR Earbuds X6, HONOR 100W SuperCharger and HONOR Pad 8 from Amazon, Very and Currys.
In comparison, the base Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is £1250 or £1350 with 512GB storage.
The Pixel 8 Pro starts at £999 but is £1179 if you want 512GB storage to match the Honor.
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra should be announced when this review goes live, and this will likely be the only other flagship phone that stands out this year.
The Honor Magic6 Pro is an outstanding phone, just like I had hoped it would be.
Similar to last year, I think they have positioned themselves well in terms of price and performance.
I am not convinced it is better than the S24 Ultra, but it is £150 cheaper at RRP, which is significant. It will almost certainly be available at a lower price at various points around the year as well.
People may criticise me for this, but I prefer it to the Pixel 8 Pro. The battery life was poor, there was much slower charging, the chipset was not as good, and the biometrics were still a bit hit or miss.
Samsung and Google definitely have the advantage of AI, but apart from Magic Erase and Live Transcribe, many of the features seem gimmicky to me.
As for the camera, it is tough to decide which is best. The Pixel and Honor are best at low light. The Samsung is best for Zoom, and Honor sits somewhere in the middle.
Finally, the Honor is comfortably the best for battery, but the Samsung is great.
Summary
The Honor Magic6 Pro is an outstanding phone which easily competes with the best options on the market like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and I’d personally regard it better than the Pixel 8 Pro.
Pros
Cons
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