HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Where Raw Power Meets Refined Comfort

HONOR Magic8 (TV series) We’ve recently reviewed one of the members of this show, the HARNOR magic8 Lite. That’s what the company’ – which was quite compelling, is its budget offering. But it’s time for the main course, though, but that’ll be time to review HONOR Magic8 Pro. The company’s new flagship smartphone, the pride and joy of its. I’ve been testing the device for about a month now and have much to say about it.

It may look very similar to its predecessor, but at least the HONOR Magic8 Pro (which is for sure more than it offers) does have much more to offer. HONOR was quite an expert on the camera aspect, not to mention that Android 16-year MagicOS 10 brings its own charm to the table. And, of course, those are just two examples. HONOR Magic8 Pro What is the meaning of that, let’s get to it with that saying, shall we?

Table of Contents

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• Specs
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Design
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: What’s in the Box
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Display
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Performance
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Battery Life
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Camera
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Software
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Audio
• HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Should you buy it?

HONOR Magic8 Pro

£1,099.99

Flagship power, clever cameras, and serious comfort.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Great build quality
• Feels smaller than it actually is
• Excellent display
• Top-notch performance
• MagicOS 10 is a step in the right direction
• Very capable cameras
• 3D facial scanning works like a charm
• Useful side button
• Great battery life

Cons

• Charger & case not included
• MagicOS 10 still needs work
• Camera performance lacks consistency

Disclaimer

HONOR gave us a review unit of the HARNOR Magic8 Pro, but did not have any opinion about this or had they seen this review before you read it. I have used it for about a month and we’ve been using the device before making an opinion.

Buy from HONOR

Specs

HONOR Magic8 Pro Specs

| | |
| — | — |
| Display Size | 6.71 inches |
| Display Resolution | 2808 x 1256 |
| Refresh Rate | 1-120Hz |
| Dimensions | 161.5 x 75 x 8.4 mm |
| Weight | 213 grams |
| Chipset | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 |
| RAM | 12GB (LPDDR5X) |
| Storage | 512GB (UFS 4.1) |
| Battery | 6,270mAh |
| Charging | 100W wired, 80W wireless (charger not included) |
| OS | Android 16 with MagicOS 10 |
| Main Camera | 50MP (f/1.6 aperture, 1/1.3-inch sensor size, OIS) |
| Ultrawide Camera | 50MP (f/2.0 aperture, 122-degree FoV, 1/2.88-inch sensor size) |
| Periscope Telephoto Camera | 200MP (f/2.6 aperture, 1/1.4-inch sensor size, 3.7x optical zoom, OIS) |
| Front-Facing Camera | 50MP (f/2.0 aperture, 3D depth camera) |
| Network and Connectivity | Wi-Fi 7, GPS, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC |
| Water Resistance | IP68, IP69, IP69K, SGS |
| Colors | Sunrise Gold, Sky Cyan, Black |

View Device Specs

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Design

It is not a small phone, but in the hand it feels smaller than you’d imagine. Certainly this is the most comfortable large smartphone with a screen of 6 at least in fact. My biggest or 7 inches I’ve ever handled. HONOR did a great job with the design. That’s something you really have to handle the phone to know if it is this, so I had no choice but open this section. Am I wrong, it’s still not a small phone and also slippery; but… it is smaller than you think and so much comfort can be held and used. At least that was the case of me for at least.”

HONOR combined aluminum & fiber-enhanced plastic

A fiber-enhanced plastic back is used as the phone, which is made of aluminum and a fiber inert plastic backing. You read that right, yes you read the phrase There’s no glass on the back of the device. honest, that’s probably not something you’d even know on your own. Honestly, I really like this change because it makes the phone lighter than with an eye back. In addition, if you drop the phone, this backplate won’t shatter like glass would so that’s another plus. This matte finish is also used for , as does the frame all around the device. here is not the place to welcome smudges, nor does it invite.

On top of a flat display… it has slightly curled glass on the front, and is ‘s own. The cutout is smaller than pill-shaped, and you’ll notice that it’s also a little smaller like the one on the iPhones. More on that later. It is always good to see the bezels around the display, which are very thin and uniform. A third addition lower on that side is its power/lock and volume up and down keys, which are placed on the right of it (and a third key below) with its powers/locked and volumes up or down. While that button is supposed to be an AI button, that buttons are supposedly designed to work as an artificial button but it is slightly customizable. In the software section we’ll discuss that later, too. The frame is almost flush with the button, which is nearly flush for .

It feels smaller than it actually is, which is a good thing

The HONOR Magic8 Pro has a large, round camera island on the back of its HAR-type model. Quite often, it is intruding on the back of itself but also provides an excellent finger anchor when you’re holding the phone. If you’re trying to use it without a case, that’s really useful. It is slightly rounded backplated on all four sides towards the frame by . It also has curves towards the edges of the frame itself, which help to give me that in-hand feel I spoke about earlier.

HONOR Magic8 Pro is one of the best features in my opinion about its design, all in all. That’s just a good thing to hold and use, as I said several times already… the phone really feels smaller in the hand than you’d think it would be for if you were going to have 6 on your hands. paraphrasing 7 inch device.

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: What’s in the Box

Usually we discuss accessories that come with the box when using a phone, in this section. I don’t have much to say here, so let’s just go over what is in the box and really fast. Along with phone itself, there are some documents, a Type-C to type–c charging cable and ejector tool for SIM. No, a charging brick is not included in the retail box; that’s what for if it comes to. In HONOR both of those accessories were once added to the inside by HAR, but not anymore. HONOR Magic8 Pro If you want to use the full power of the charger, you have to separate a charger.

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Display

A 6 is there. This phone also has a 71-inch OLED display with its own camera. This displays is flat, but the glass on top of it is not clear and a display itself is Flat. Quad-curved It’s a quad-shaped setup with it slightly curved on all four sides of . There’s a really sharp and subtle curve, but I personally prefer this to perfectly flat displays. This panel has a resolution of 2808 x 1256 pixels, and refresh rate up to 120Hz. Refresh rates are a adaptive refresh rate, which can be reduced to 1Hz when needed.

The display can get immensely bright when needed

What else? Well, in theory this panel can reach 6,000 nits at its peak brightness. It’s not true that you’ll never soar so high, but when it is needed the display can be extremely bright. No problem, I had a great deal of adaptive brightness and that was the best for me. It’s just leave it on, and that’s what is this with . Can it even be a of 1? A wide DCI-P3 color gamut, and has a 07 billion colors . A part of the offering also includes high-frequency PWM dimming (4,320Hz) (high frequency).

Several other features of this display are available, as HONOR’s panels usually do. here, as is Motion Sickness Relief feature and Dynamic Dimming). The same can be said of Chip-Level AI Defocus and the Natural Tone feature, among others. As well as being great on paper, the panel is a good one for use in real life and even so. Both the HONOR Magic8 (which I already reviewed) and Magic8, Pro were simultaneously received, and when you compare the two models, it is really fast to light. But just to be sure, the Magic8 Lite has a solid display too.

It offers excellent viewing angles, too

It has great viewing angles and a good display is very sharp. I had no problem with refresh rate, neither color accuracy or refresh speed. But if you’d like to fine-tune your display experience, of course, there are some settings in granular. Here’s also Always-On Display, which is a decent level of customization and an acceptable level for its own sake. This is also something that allows you to turn down blue light, which you can automatically activate when the night knocks on, and more. In all honesty, there is really nothing to complain about here. For example, a screen protector comes out of the box and is pre-installed as’screen protectors’ to make things even better. Of course, if you want to upgrade your into one of the tempered glass ones, you can always change it.

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Performance

An extremely powerful phone is the HONOR Magic8 Pro, which s are so strong that it can be very hard. Qualcomm’s most powerful processor at this time, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 is it’–it uses its latest. Aside from this, there was 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4 in HONOR. here 1 flash storage of . Assuming that the global model has only one 512GB storage variant, there is no more than an equivalent of . Hence, that’s a 12GB RAM + 512GB storage combo and no, you can’t expand internal storage using. Certainly some of you would have been expecting more RAM, but that’s what was expected and quite frankly it’s not an issue at all.

The device offers outstanding performance and great animations

Sadly we don’t get the full picture from their own pictures of s, so they do not show us the whole picture. Despite the hardware power, it is not necessarily what does the phone actually do (day-to-day) but that’s true performance of the device. In essentially every way, the phone performs well in all ways.’ The phone is also an excellent performance provider for and other people who use it to do so. Whenever it comes to regular, day-to-day use of s, it’s very smooth. No lag here, no liar at all. Animations by HONOR are just for the stuff that needs help. fast and intentional, they’re a quick-thinking . And HONOR took a big step forward in that regard as they’re not meant to slow down your use at all, and the way you do so is what makes it possible. I like the animations here a lot more than last year,’ said Mr McDonnell. We thank MagicOS 10 for that, but we have a little more than one thing to say about it.

But the fact is that, in some ways, gaming is not a problem either, and quite like it’s so much the opposite. Like other flagships, the phone did get warm during long gaming (although it didn’t overheat) even though I was trying to get it to do just that — a fact that is not unusual for me to be sure. One minute later I’ll tell you why. The HONOR Magic8 Pro was the one who kept everything running smoothly. For 2 hours I was gaming (Genshin Impact), and threw in some Subway Surfers and Chesses in for good measure. And I also tried Call of Duty Mobile to wrap things up. I did not feel the phone got too warm at any time, nor was it’slow down’ in performance.

It did a fantastic job in benchmarks, too

But even if we look at benchmarks, things are right. A recent HONOR Magic7 Pro crashed during 3DMark’s Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, which only got hot at the time of brutal benchmarking process and was just too hot. That’s not happening on the HONOR Magic8 Pro. My attempt to get it down benchmarking three times was unsuccessful, but the phone did manage to push through all that with ease. The HONOR Magic8 Pro is a true powerhouse, and it shows the real power of . perform-wise wise, there’s really nothing you should worry about here.

Benchmarks:

Geekbench:

| | | | |
| — | — | — | — |
| Device | Single-Core | Multi-Core | GPU |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 3,637 | 9,419 | 23,965 |
| OnePlus 15 | 3,648 | 10,788 | 24,530 |
| Vivo X300 Pro | 3,388 | 10,393 | 23,051 |

3D Mark (Wildlife Extreme Stress Test):

| | | | |
| — | — | — | — |
| Device | Best Loop | Lowest Loop | Stability |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 7,083 | 4,488 | 63.4% |
| OnePlus 15 | 6,878 | 4,434 | 64.5% |
| Vivo X300 Pro | 6,809 | 3,563 | 52.3% |

Capcut video export:

| | |
| — | — |
| Device | Time to export (seconds) |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 7.02 |
| OnePlus 15 | 15.75 |
| Vivo X300 Pro | N/A |

Thermals:

3D Mark (Wildlife Extreme Stress Test) thermals:

| | |
| — | — |
| Device | Temperature (F) |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 118.3 |
| OnePlus 15 | 119.6 |
| Vivo X300 Pro | 112.8 |

Genshin Impact thermals:

| | |
| — | — |
| Device | ****Temperature (F)**** |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 96.2 |
| OnePlus 15 | 97.6 |
| Vivo X300 Pro | 93.5 |

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Battery Life

TEXT

| | | |
| — | — | — |
| Device | Battery life | Charging |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 26:02:35 | 0:40:37 |
| OnePlus 15 | 23:52:47 | 0:40:21 |
| Vivo X300 Pro | 23:57:00 | 0:39:20 |

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Camera

HONOR’s flagship The Pro is the acronym for “HOOR Magic8 Pro” (a ) At least to a degree, it has always been ‘camera-centric phone’ so you’d think very capable cameras would be added. That is the case here as well, Well, that’s what we say in a . Which is the best camera smartphone in the world? No, probably not. In other areas, I think it’s more than in a lot of ways. Nevertheless, it does have both an extremely compelling camera setup and the ability to perform as well as cameras. That’s a good thing about it, that’ll be the quality of its camera performance like if you have gotten branded.

A back of the HONOR Magic8 Pro, you’ll see three cameras on the back. A main 50-megapixel camera with an f/1 is also available, . a 1/1, and 6 aperture lens. Sensor sizes are 3-in and a half inch, . Its second camera is an f/2 ultra-wide 50-megapixel unit with an ink/much less than . 0 aperture lens, 1/2 . sensor size of 88 inches, and a 122-degree FoV. It’s a very compelling 200-megapixel periscope Telephoto unit (f/2) with the third camera being an extremely strong 300-mp telephoto device. A 1/1 – 6 aperture lens, 1-1 . 4 inch sensor size, 3. inches of sensor length ? Ois (OIS) 7x optical zoom. A 50-megapixel camera (f/2) was added on the front of HONOR, which is also known as a “horr” in French. A 3D Depth Camera for facial scanning and 0 aperture) and an 0-address camera. But, by the way, Facial scanning works perfectly here like it did on the previous model. And it’s so beautiful, .

Shutter speed is not as fast as I’d like

HONOR Magic8 Pro (camera prowess) I loved the HARMON magic8, but there are some complaints. But so I’ll just get those out of the way first, before we start talking about a lot of good things that you’re getting here. I noticed that the first thing I notice is a slightly slower shutter, as opposed to competition. It is a lot of shutter speed, don’t get me wrong, it’s just slightly slower than what I used to say. But when the light is not around, that’s especially true for . HONOR can make some improvements here in this area of .

That brings us to the second small complaint, low-light results of a . But they’re not bad at all, in fact, low-light pictures are great but a bit unrealistic. This phone eventually led to a bit over-lighting up some of the low-lit scenes. They were all outstanding, but most looked very bright – some unrealistically bright. But that’s why the shutter takes a bit longer in such situations, so could be changed by the company. In contrast many people probably like such results, so if you’re here and the performance is here, then you will love that.

Reds tend to look off at times

Also, I’ve noticed that the red color is sometimes a bit overemphasized and it just looks off (you’ll notice in the camera samples). While that isn’t always the case, it has to be more of a red color in play. Three smaller complaints, that is pretty much wonderful and those are three of the most beautiful things about s. What I mentioned above may not annoy many people, but as this is a flagship we’re talking about it had to be mentioned.

The main camera provides great results, usually

For all the good things, start with the main camera. Those images end up looking great in general, according to . with plenty of detail and a lot of sharpness in all. They’re a nice-looking guy, but not too sharp or artificially sharp. colors, and the dynamic range is great.’ The colours are a good one for s to look at in detail as well as being very strong on his own right side of the head with an impressive array of words that was never used before it had been written by him or her but were also excellently high from underwear (e.g. The same can be said for white balance, as is the case with . The pictures end up looking vibrant, which most people will want to see as a result of the images being parody. You can see below, but there is really no much to complain about here in terms of performance. I spoke about that red color, which is a bit over-rated but it’s the only thing I noticed (in fact) that’s really what I notice.

Main camera samples (daytime):

What is the point of low-light performance? Well, most pictures are pretty much exactly where they go on a good spot. Others have a little too bright for the low-light conditions, but are in ‘a large minority’. You’ll get some great examples of s below. there’s a lot of details and almost no noise, as is the case with . It’s a great color, and the colors are good for . I can’t really complain about paraphrasing, a lot. In low light, the main camera does a wonderful job in .

Main camera samples (low light):

The ultrawide camera is technically the weakest one, but it’s still good

What is the point of ultrawide camera? Well, technically it is a weakest link (based on hardware) The ultrawide camera is actually better than you think, but it’s a much better device in fact than the one you know. During low light even in the case of , it is still possible. It matches the main camera color profile, and I expected to perform worse in low light if it was bigger than the sensor. But the camera deliver, albeit with . They’re slightly softer than the ones from the main camera, and do give you a bit less detail but still very nice looking. I have spotted the flagships with far worse ultrawide shooters.

Ultrawide camera samples:

The periscope telephoto camera does a fantastic job

For HONOR flagships, I always enjoy the most when it comes to my use of periscope telephoto cameras. In fact, the case here was the same as this in a statement. This 200-megapixel unit is a very good performance for . Using it to shoot images up to 30x, I’d say that it was a great job for s. If you eat 30x, HONOR’s AI is nice to help out and the images do look far less artificial than was the case in the past. The colors and details are at a high level of . periscope telephoto camera, which does great job even when the light goes away. Those are some really nice low-light shots I’ve taken, below. A high degree of detail even in low light is maintained by the level of a .

Periscope telephoto camera samples:

Here’s exactly what should be the camera UI of . Besides the shutter key, there is a scrolling menu that allows you to switch between your favorite modes (Photo/Video), Portrait, Night and Pro. Above that you’ll see preset zoom options and if you scroll over that menu, you can fine-tune zoom. A bottom-left corner is the gallery, and some more are at the very top of the . It’s easy and fast to get everything, if you don’t like something, then HONOR gives you the opportunity to make things your own.

Camera UI is highly customizable

In a way, what is the most appropriate thing to customize? Well, everything that matters, basically speaking. Scrolling menu above the camera shutter, and various options at the top ( below your status bar) are available. When you’re really trying to set just the options that you will actually use, it’s very easy for me to get them without messed up with the menus. It’s one of the best camera UI implementations out there. If you’re taking so many pictures/videos, then it’s sure that I’ll appreciate the customizability options available.

Camera UI:

4K video recording thermals:

| | | |
| — | — | — |
| Device | 5 minutes | 10 minutes |
| HONOR Magic8 Pro | 95.7 | 100 |
| OnePlus 15 | 98.7 | 100.7 |
| Vivo X300 Pro | 93.9 | 98.2 |

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Software

HONOR Magic8 Pro Android 16 of the box is included in the HARWAY Magic8, Pro. HONOR’s Android skin is now available in MagicOS 10, the latest version of Google’S operating system. In my experience, MagicOS 10 is much more effective than Magic OS 9, and it does make some changes from the design point of view too. It is now a more consistent design, and the animations have been greatly improved. I noticed the most that was a , so that’s what I saw. They’re so fluid and yet very fast, they’s really that snappy to use the UI.

MagicOS 10 is notably more polished than MagicOS 9

And if you have MagicOS, all of your favorite Magicos features are still here. Don’t worry! HONOR has been very much appreciated for its polish up the UI, but did not remove anything of note from HAR. And of course, there are things that could and should be improved some options were not available to but… well, should not be missing. In the process, HONOR wants to distinguish itself from others but did not provide some of the somewhat standard features that you might think are expected in your opinion. We have to discuss those before we get to features in general, let’s say Let’t talk about them.

For example, if you’re missing something, one of those is the notification shade. In fact, this is a two-pronged problem with s. A lot of users swipe down across the home screen to see their notification shades were available. You can do that here too, but if you go through the settings and choose that option instead of HONOR’s search for . If you do, but things will not work as you used to even when you use some other Android brand so far?

HONOR should have handled some parts of MagicOS 10 a bit differently

If you swipe from left side of the screen, your notification shade is available to you but only when you look at it through a swipe. If you swipe down from the right side of the screen, you’ll get quick toggles. If you can swip left and right through them, but for right-handed users, at least this is not the best way to do it. It will be much more common for you to open your notification shade than quick toggles, so it would make sense to have that swipe easily accessible (not having to do it on the left side of the screen). I don’t think it’s a big problem, but that’d be an extra step for not many people to appreciate. You have to be used to it as a .

Upon arrival, we arrive at the notification shade itself. You can swipe from left to right to dismiss notifications, but you cannot do it the other way around. If you do it the other way around, no matter how fast, you’ll receive an additional menu in which you tap the trash icon to dismiss a notification. I think this is the best answer, but that’s what HONOR has been doing it and company remains committed to its . Only a few of these are examples, but MagicOS 10 does things slightly differently.

HONOR has a very compelling AI suite to offer

This is a great feature of , but there are many other good features here. Does features you’ll love? Like HONOR AI, for example. It has a lot of features, in fact, like . The HONOR included the AI Button, Magic Portal, AI Memories,Mag Sidebar,AI Translate, and AI Subtitles as well as many others. So there’s plenty to choose from here, and I really liked some of these, actually. talk about AI Button first, let’s say. It’s the physical key on the right side of the phone, that’s what you can customize. Unfortunately, the UI looks very much like Apple’s and options are not exactly unlimited either. There is no app that you can (at least not yet) launch by that button to put on a . There are AI, camera and a lot of other things you can do with your . It’s good news that you can set whatever you like with a single click, double click and press-and-hold options.

AI Memories are essentially an archive of information you extract from screenshots, web pages, videos, documents and images. In contrast, Magic Sidebar allows you to launch apps quickly in a windowed format or split-screen mode. The only thing you have to do is swipe from the right and hold for a second. The most interesting thing I saw in Magic Portal was the . You can touch and hold text, images or other content for a short time to get what you want. When s drag and drop an image from the screen to an app of your choice, so you can then drag it down into a picture. This is a nice feature, but it doesn’t work great with all apps, results are different. Ideally, it would be nice to drag and drop something in a particular third-party app (but not as good as HONOR) but that’s very close.

You’ll find plenty of customization options here

There is also a lot of customization for MagicOS 10 as well. Home screen and lock screen are easy to customize, you can easily change your own. Change themes, Always-On Display, fonts, icons and so on. You can’t even use third-party icons from the Play Store, unfortunately, and there are only a few options. I would like to see HONOR add that feature, so it’s good. Some of these options are quite neat, however, as is the case with .

In general, MagicOS 10 is a step in the right direction for . But it does offer much better animations, a couple of cool new features and feels more consistent in design. Yet, many of its old pain points remain in the body of . I don’t like it on Android but as a commentator, “it’s just going in the right direction and works really well” (I said). Many of you seem to love it, and if you liked MagicOS 9, you’ll love this.

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Audio

How do I know what speakers of the phone are? Well, it has a stereo speaker setup and in all honesty was completely detonated by them from the get-go. First thing I noticed was a lot of loudness from the speakers, and how clear is the sound. At the same time, almost at that exact tim. I realized that when you’re using the speakers, the back side of the phone vibrates quite a bit. I don’t know if that’s because it’re not glass, but when you’m holding the phone there’ll be something to see.

In HONOR, the company used 1216 (12-x 16mm) speakers here and chose two symmetrical speakers (symbol as in size). Other than that, these speakers are quite large. It also had a design of an open cavity, as was the case with . Those speakers could deliver clean vocals, the bass was good and accurate. When it comes to the output of the phone’s speakers, there is really no one thing you should complain about (although for some of you at first they may be a bit weird).

HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Should you buy it?

Are HONOR Magic8 Pros worth it, or not? Well I mean, especially if you want the best hor has to give me. So, for sure, it’s one of the most powerful phones on the market. Amongst other things it is good performance, better software, very capable cameras and great battery life. The shutter was a little bit faster, most of all, but that’s not something that will bother everyone who is reading the news about it. It is a good choice to get the sure of The HONOR Magic8 Pro, which s are well known.

You should buy the HONOR Magic8 Pro if you:

• Want the best facial scanning tech on Android
• Want to get the best phone HONOR has to offer
• Take a lot of pictures
• Have been waiting for an improved MagicOS experience
• Love having a physical shutter key
• Appreciate good battery life and fast charging

You shouldn’t buy the HONOR Magic8 Pro if you:

• Used camera phones with blazing fast shutter speed
• Want a charger & case to be included in the retail box

Thanks for reading HONOR Magic8 Pro Review: Where Raw Power Meets Refined Comfort