Honor Magic 6 Pro Review: The Price Is Not Right
- Neat AI Tricks
- Fun (but polarizing) build
- High-powered processor
- Expensive
- Uninspiring software
- 180MP sensor is more gimmick than substance
Here in the United States, we have a decent number of choices for a flagship smartphone, and they're all excellent. But once you leave U.S. shores, your choices grow dramatically. To be frank, the duopoly that is Apple and Samsung exists overseas, but it's a much smaller piece of a much bigger pie, and brands like Honor are fighting for that larger pie. Honor is doing it with a 180-megapixel telephoto zoom camera. That is not a typo, nor a misplaced decimal point.
Unfortunately, that number is backed up by an unimpressive 2.5x optical zoom lens. When piling a massive sensor and multiple lenses for optical zoom into a camera module, there's only so much space for one or the other. But there's more to this phone than just a camera. There's also the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor at its heart, which enables some other cool tricks, but only if you have other Honor devices.
So, will the Honor Magic 6 Pro be your next phone? It won't be if you live in the U.S. but beyond that, is it worth checking out? The review was written after spending 10 days in the U.S. with an Honor Magic 6 Pro review sample provided by Honor.
Remarkable hardware
2024 is setting a trend in terms of phones with fun designs — except for the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, of course. The Honor Magic 6 Pro joins the OnePlus 12 in the polarizing design department. The back of the Epi Green Magic 6 Pro is a vegan leather cover surrounding a camera bump that's large enough to serve a burrito on.
That camera bump sports three large black holes for its three cameras, with the distinctive upper-middle lens holding the massive 180-megapixel telephoto sensor. The rest of the camera module has a green pattern you could describe as a wave or a swirl that is not unlike the marble appearance of the back of the aforementioned OnePlus 12.
On the front, you get a huge 6.8-inch LTPO Quad curved floating screen with a selfie camera and 3D TOF sensor at the top in a don't-call-me-a-dynamic-island narrow punch hole — more on that later. The surrounding edge of the phone has a gold trim which is striking and goes well with the green. You will either love it or hate it, but it certainly stands out.
On the inside, you get 12 GB of RAM along with 512 GB of storage and a second-generation silicon-cabon battery which Honor adopted in order to bring more power to smaller packages. This battery is a 5,600 mAh power pack that gets 80W of wired charging or up to 66 W of wireless charging.
Still Plagued by lackluster software
It's not uncommon for Chinese-made phones to make some controversial choices when it comes to software. Chief among the choices on this phone is the lack of ability to launch the camera with a double press of the power button. That's a feature that is available on every other Android phone in the U.S. and when you don't have it, you miss it terribly. Instead, the volume down button stands in for that capability, so it becomes a matter of muscle memory. Over the long haul, this is probably not that big a deal, but initially, it's annoying.
Next, is Honor's choice to ape Apple in as many ways as possible. This results in a split pull-down gesture to get the control center and settings when you swipe down on the right side of the phone or notifications when you swipe down on the left side. When you're right-handed, accessing the notification shade can be difficult.
Add to that, Honor's definitely-not-a-dynamic-island Magic Capsule that copies some of the functionality of Apple's mechanism. For example, if you're listening to music or a podcast and leave the app, you'll get play controls in the Magic Capsule. The only problem is, even when you stop the music and swipe away the app and there's no longer anything playing, the Magic Capsule insists that you are still playing something. Also, not all apps that work on the iPhone's Dynamic Island work here, most notably, Google Maps. Honor has some work to do here.
Some AI magic
Honor has some AI features coming down the pipe, though those will be coming with a future update. One of those is eye-tracking which can tell when you look at the magic capsule so it can automatically open the app that is displayed. That feature is not here as of this writing, so it's impossible to comment on its functionality, but it could be cool, potentially.
One trick that the Honor Magic 6 Pro can do now is part of the Magic Portal. When you select something on your screen and then long-tap it, you can drag it off to the side of the screen. When you do, the Magic Portal tries to magically "guess" what you might want to do with that text and offers you apps to accomplish that task.
For example, if you tap and hold on a photo in an app or website, and drag it to the portal, you'll get options like Instagram, Gmail, or Slack. If you select an address and drag it to the side, you'll get maps as an option. If you select text, you get options like Gmail or Notes.
This is all cool in theory, but like most features of this variety, discoverability is tricky. You can get a demo of this function by going into Settings and turning on the Magic Portal, but if you don't, you'll only ever find it by accident. You can't blame Honor for this; discoverability is one of the trickiest parts of new software features like this. Once you discover it though, it can be pretty neat...assuming you remember it exists.
Performance and Battery
Right off the bat, you will notice that this phone is a mover. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor is even faster than last year's which was already a notable performer. Extended gaming sessions barely warm the phone, which is lovely for those gamers who want to take on "Genshin Impact," or "Fortnite" for hours at a time. Geekbench registers 2,186/5,698 single/multi-core scores which is competitive with the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. So you get some power.
On the battery side, the Honor Magic 6 Pro uses a second-generation silicon-carbon battery and packs 5,600 mAh into it. According to Honor, you can play a YouTube video for 81 minutes in the highly specific scenario of -20 degrees Celsius when you have just 10% left in the tank. Most likely, you'll find that you can use this phone for up to two days of moderate usage without breaking a sweat. When it is time to recharge, you can do so at 80W wired and be full in just over 40 minutes.
Breaking down the cameras
The Honor Magic 6 Pro comes with an impressive triple camera setup, including a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50-megapixel Ultrawide camera, and the star of the show — a 180-megapixel 2.5x optical sensor. But it doesn't stop there. The main camera has an automatic variable aperture of f/1.4 – f/2.0 which should allow the camera to capture more detail in lower light situations. You can control this variable aperture in Pro mode, which is a nice excuse to learn what the other controls in Pro mode do.
The ultrawide camera also has a 122-degree field of view that is wider than many. If you're someone who's into ultrawide camera photography, that's a nice get.
Adam Doud/SlashGear
Finally, Honor has its automatic capture function which detects when a subject enters the frame and snaps the best photo it thinks you want. There's a certain amount of trust involved in that — you have to trust that the AI will capture the best photo without actually pressing the button.
It does a decent job of minimizing motion blur, but it comes at the expense of letting the camera decide your shot — that doesn't always produce advantageous results. Instead, it would be nice if this feature were reimagined a bit, so you can press the shutter button around the neighborhood where you want to capture the action, and then let the camera decide which of the photos it snapped are the best. But let's break down the hardware's results.
Highs and lows
The aforementioned ultrawide camera has an impressive 122-degree field of view, which is good, but that comes at the expense of quite a bit of warping. In a field of grass, it's quite obvious that you are using the ultrawide camera due to the fisheye effect creeping around the edges of the photo. Additionally, elements get stretched as they get closer to the camera. The ultrawide camera could use a lot more post-processing to clean all that up.
Adam Doud/SlashGear
Color consistency between the lenses is quite good and the main sensor is very capable of solid photos in the daylight. Portrait mode is also quite good with only the ends of whisps of hair getting lost in the artificial bokeh blur. This is one of the better portrait modes you'll find on a phone camera, so if you're into those, this is a good choice.
Adam Doud/SlashGear
Meanwhile, the 2.5x periscope lens has some frustrating elements to it. The good news is that you can capture really fine detail from a long way away. In the photo of the artificial plant above, you can see the fabric pattern from about 25 feet away at 5x zoom. That's very good. However, some photos will choose the wrong subject to focus on, so make sure to tap your screen before capturing a zoomed photo.
Adam Doud/SlashGear
The downside is that after 5x, the camera quality takes a nosedive, and that should absolutely not be the case with a sensor this large. Once you hit 10x, you lose all sense of texture and depth. At 100x, photos are unusable, but the good news for Honor is that no one has gotten this right yet. That's probably the reason that video capture is limited to 10x zoom.
Night and video
At night, all the same limitations are present, but so are the benefits. The main issues you'll run into at night are with moving subjects and focus issues with the selfie shooter. Zoom will still be limited to just 5x if you want anything usable. If you stick with the main and telephoto sensors and subjects that aren't moving, you'll be fine.
Video capture during the day is quite good, aside from the aforementioned zoom limitation. Stabilization is quite nice with both the front-facing and rear cameras. That's true even if you're walking and whether or not you have a subject in the frame.
Adam Doud/SlashGear
At night, you will see a bit of judder when walking, but that's mainly concentrated around light sources. If you're standing still and your subject is moving, you'll get better results, but the judder is a lot better than even some flagships that are out there. Overall, Honor has done some good work with the camera setup, but there is some room for improvement.
Honor Magic 6 Pro Price, availability, and verdict
The Honor Magic 6 Pro has been available in China for just over a month now and just launched in Europe. Pricing starts at €1,299 which is on the high side, compared to others in this field. In USD, that converts to just north of $1,400, and for an extra $100 you can pick up a OnePlus Open, which remains one of the best smartphones you can buy.
The Honor Magic 6 Pro has some good ideas, and some splashy specifications, which is great, but it's not priced very competitively compared to what else is out there. Honor is doing some really interesting things in terms of ecosystem, utilizing Snapdragon Seamless, but that's assuming you also have an Honor tablet, and/or an Honor laptop which are equally hard to import in the U.S. Add that to the AI features that are coming to this phone in the future, and maybe there's some justification to pick one up. But for now, if you are in the E.U., this is not a great buy, and if you're in the U.S., where there are comparable options for a lot less, this is very skippable.