Honor Magic8 Pro Review

The Honor Magic range of flagship phones has been my favourite flagship Android phone for several years. I reviewed the Honor Magic7 Pro last year and thought it was outstanding.

As usual for Honor, they have launched the successor at the start of the year, making it one of the first phones to feature the latest flagship chipset from Qualcomm available in Western markets.

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Specification

Design and build quality

Honor has trimmed the size slightly this year. The Magic8 Pro uses a 6.71 inch panel instead of 6.8 inches, and the chassis is fractionally shorter and narrower, so it does feel a bit more manageable in one hand. It is still a big and heavy phone at 219 g, so this is not a compact device, but weight and thickness are in line with other large flagships.

The camera module is still enormous. It takes up a large portion of the rear, though the circular layout is symmetrical and doubles as a natural resting point for your finger when holding the phone in portrait. You are not going to forget this is in your pocket, but the shape means it is less likely to dig awkwardly into your leg.

The Sunrise Gold colourway I have is more subtle than the name suggests, with a mostly silver finish and a warm tint when the light hits the back. The matte rear does a good job of hiding fingerprints and general grime, which I appreciate given how often many flagships still insist on glossy glass backs. If you prefer something more understated, Sky Cyan and plain black are also available.

Build quality is excellent. Honor uses an aerospace-grade aluminium frame and its NanoCrystal Shield glass, and the phone has survived a few drops in my use without visible marks. The IP68 / IP69 / IP69K ratings mean it will handle immersion in water and high-pressure jets, which is beyond what most competitors offer. It feels like a device you can comfortably use for several years without babying it.

Ergonomics and biometrics

Honor still uses flat sides with very subtle micro curves on all four edges of the display. The bezels are slim on all sides, and overall it looks and feels closer to the current iPhone design than many Android competitors.

The in-display ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is one of the better ones I have used. It is quick, accurate, and does not seem fussy about finger placement. On top of that, you get a 3D face unlock system that uses the secondary front sensor, not just a basic 2D camera. That gives you a similar convenience level to Face ID while retaining the option of a more traditional fingerprint unlock.

The only downside is the pill-shaped camera cut-out. It is larger than a standard single punch hole, and you will notice it in full-screen content. You do get used to it, but if you dislike any intrusion into the display then this is something to keep in mind.

Display quality and eye comfort

The 6.71 inch LTPO OLED panel is one of the best aspects of the Magic8 Pro. It hits up to 6000 nits peak HDR brightness, with around 1800 nits global peak, which is stronger than many rivals. Outdoors readability is excellent, and I had zero issues using maps or the camera in bright winter sunlight.

Resolution is 1256 x 2808. It is not quite as high as some QHD-class panels, but at this size and pixel density it looks sharp in day-to-day use. You get 10-bit colour and full DCI‑P3 coverage, and colour tuning is on the saturated side in the default mode. You can switch to a more natural profile if you prefer a less punchy look.

Honor continues to lean heavily into eye comfort. The display supports 4320 Hz PWM dimming, dynamic dimming and a chip-level AI defocus mode that aims to mimic myopia-control lenses by slightly shifting the apparent focus depth. You also get a circadian night display that warms the colour temperature more aggressively in the evening. I am mildly sensitive to OLED flicker, and I have had no issues using this panel for long sessions of reading or browsing.

Touch responsiveness is good in day-to-day use, with a fast sampling rate that suits high refresh gaming. It does struggle a little when the screen is wet, which is common for most phones, but some rivals manage moisture better.

Stereo speakers and audio

Honor includes a dual speaker setup using the bottom driver and earpiece. Volume is high enough to fill a small room, and clarity is decent at moderate levels. At maximum volume there is a lack of bass and the sound becomes a bit thin, so I would not choose this as a primary music speaker.

There is no 3.5 mm jack, which is expected at this level now. Bluetooth performance is solid with support for higher quality codecs including aptX Lossless and LHDC 5, so with the right headset you can get decent wireless audio quality.

Haptics are a step up from some mid-range devices but not quite at the level of the very best flagships. The vibration motor is tight and precise for notifications and typing, although the feedback is slightly weaker than what Samsung and Google currently offer.

Performance and benchmarks

The Magic8 Pro runs Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on a 3 nm process, paired with up to 16 GB of RAM and UFS 4.1 storage. The combination is predictably quick. General UI performance is smooth, app launches are fast, and multitasking across several heavy apps is not a problem.

In synthetic benchmarks, the phone pushes close to 4 million in AnTuTu with performance mode enabled. In 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme loop, the first-run score is comfortably above 8000, which puts it at the top end of current Android phones. The downside is that, like other 8 Elite Gen 5 devices, it does throttle under sustained load. After a 20 minute loop the score drops by roughly half, which is consistent with the platform’s tendency to run hot.

The difference with the Magic8 Pro is that surface temperatures stay a bit lower than some rivals. Where I have measured over 50 degrees Celsius on certain metal-framed devices, the Honor tends to settle in the mid‑40s. It still gets warm, but not to the point where it becomes uncomfortable to hold in normal ambient conditions.

Storage performance is excellent thanks to UFS 4.x. Sequential and random reads and writes are all very fast, and I did not see any noticeable I/O bottlenecks during heavy installs or game asset downloads.

Gaming experience

Gaming performance is strong across the board. Heavy titles such as Genshin-style open world games and Weathering Waves equivalents run smoothly at high or maxed settings. The phone supports a high frame-rate mode at up to 120 fps in supported titles, and Qualcomm’s GPU-NPU pipeline allows Honor to offer AI-based upscaling and frame generation in certain games, raising 60 fps at a lower internal resolution to something closer to 120 fps at 1080p.

Thermals stay under control when gaming on battery power, and I did not encounter major frame drops during prolonged sessions. You will get the odd dip after 15 to 20 minutes in extremely demanding titles, but it remains playable. If you play while charging, the chassis gets noticeably warmer and you start to feel the heat along the frame. There is no battery bypass mode to power the phone directly from the charger while leaving the battery at a fixed state of charge, which is a missed opportunity for people who game while plugged in.

Battery life and charging

Battery tech is one of the main reasons I have liked the recent Magic series. Honor has been early to silicon-carbon batteries and consistently ships higher capacities than many rivals. The Magic8 Pro pushes the European cell to 6270 mAh, up by around 1000 mAh from the Magic7 Pro. Some global versions use a 7100 mAh pack, which is frustratingly not available in all regions, but 6270 mAh is still generous.

In real-world use, the phone handles a day and a half easily for moderate to heavy use. With lighter workloads, a full two days is realistic. On a mixed day of 5 to 6 hours screen-on time covering email, messages, social media, some camera use and streaming, I still had over 30 percent remaining at night. Continuous heavy gaming will eat into it more rapidly; you are looking at just over 4 hours of intensive 3D gaming at max settings from a full charge.

Charging is handled by 100 W wired and 80 W wireless. Using the bundled wired charger, a full 0 to 100 percent charge takes around 45 minutes on the larger battery variant. With the slightly smaller EU cell it should be closer to the mid-30 minute range. A 15 minute top-up will get you into the 40 percent area, which is enough to comfortably finish a long evening. There is also reverse wired and wireless charging at up to 5 W for accessories.

The only criticism here is more to do with regional differences than the phone itself. It is hard not to feel short-changed knowing that some regions get 7100 mAh while Europe is limited to 6270 mAh at the same broad price point.

MagicOS 10 & Software Support

The Magic8 Pro ships with Android 16 and MagicOS 10. Honor now promises seven years of OS updates and security patches, matching Samsung and Google, which is a key improvement over earlier Magic models and makes the phone more viable as a long-term purchase.

MagicOS 10 has been stable in my time with the phone. I have not run into app crashes or notification issues, which used to be occasional problems on earlier Honor firmware. The UI still feels busy in places, and the design language will not be to everyone’s taste, but day-to-day it is quick and predictable.

Honor continues to pre-install a fair number of its own apps. You get proprietary tools for video playback, health, system management, AI utilities and even a dedicated mirror app for selfies. Most of these can either be disabled or ignored, but it does add clutter compared to a Pixel or Android One style build. Third-party bloat is limited to a handful of apps like Facebook out of the box, which is at least better than some Chinese brands that still ship a dozen or more partner apps.

AI button and AI features

One of the headline features this year is the dedicated AI button on the side. By default, a double press launches the camera, and a long press triggers AI screen suggestions, while a short press does nothing. You can remap each action to different functions: camera, AI screen suggestions, AI settings agent, AI photos agent, Honor AI, or Google Lens.

The implementation is more flexible than the old hard-wired assistant keys we used to see a few years ago. In practice, I found the default double press to open the camera useful and left it as-is, mainly because the button sits where your fingers will hit it when pulling the phone from a pocket. I preferred not to assign anything to a short press to avoid accidental triggers.

MagicOS also leans heavily on AI features in general. Highlights include:

• AI screen suggestions, which pop up context-aware actions such as summarise, translate, circle to search, blur private info, or AI photo editing based on what is on screen.
• AI photos agent, which wraps up AI eraser, outpainting, colour grading, cutouts and similar tools into a single interface.
• AI settings agent, which lets you use natural language to trigger system settings changes.
• AI memories, which stores rich snapshots of web pages, images and content so you can revisit them later.
• AI safety tools, including deepfake detection and voice cloning detection for calls and video chats.

There is also tight integration with Google Gemini. You can summon Gemini directly from the power button or via a back-tap gesture, and Gemini Live supports real-time visual understanding, live translation and cross-app actions.

Some of this is genuinely useful – AI eraser and reflection removal can tidy photos quickly, and the summarisation tools help when skimming long articles. Other bits feel more like features in search of a use case. There is also the usual question of how comfortable you are with cloud-driven AI workflows built into your core device. Honor does at least run a lot of the perceptual and safety functions on device.

Camera hardware and features

On paper, the rear camera setup looks similar to the Magic7 Pro with some targeted tweaks:

• 50 MP wide main camera, f1.6, OIS, CIPA 5.5
• 200 MP periscope telephoto, f2.6, 3.7x optical, OIS, CIPA 5.5
• 50 MP ultrawide, 122 degree field of view, 2.5 cm macro
• 50 MP front camera with TOF 3D depth sensor

The main downgrade on paper is the loss of a variable aperture on the primary sensor. The Magic7 Pro could shift between f1.4 and f2.0, which helped balance bokeh and sharpness in different scenes. The Magic8 Pro is fixed at f1.6. In real use I have not missed the variable aperture as much as the spec might suggest, though I would still count it as a slight step back for camera nerds who liked that level of control.

The telephoto moves from 3x to 3.7x optical and still benefits from a large 1/1.4 inch sensor and strong optical stabilisation. Honor claims CIPA 5.5 steadiness on both the main and telephoto lenses, which lines up with the calmer viewfinder behaviour I have seen in low light.

The camera system is closely tied to Honor’s AiMAGE pipeline, which combines hardware and AI for night photography, motion capture and creative effects. Magic Color allows you to apply film-like looks or copy colour styles from reference photos, while the updated moving photo system adds modes like slow motion, motion trail and motion clone.

Photo quality

In decent light, the main camera produces detailed, bright images with wide dynamic range. Exposure is generally on point, and HDR is not as aggressive as some mid-range Chinese phones. Colours are vivid by default, particularly in the “vibrant” mode, but you can dial this back with the natural colour mode if you prefer a more subdued look.

In low light, the main camera remains strong. Handheld night mode shots are sharp, with good control over noise and highlight clipping. The phone can handle a 2 second exposure handheld without major blur thanks to the stabilisation and AI stacking, which puts it towards the top of current smartphone night shooters. Dynamic range is wide enough to keep shadow detail without blowing out bright light sources.

The 200 MP telephoto is a highlight. At its native 3.7x, images are crisp with natural-looking detail and good contrast. At 10x, shots remain very usable, especially in bright city scenes. You can push to 50x and even 100x, and while those are often more for novelty than critical use, the level of detail retained is still better than many hybrids at similar focal lengths.

At night, the telephoto remains surprisingly capable out to around 10x. Beyond that, noise and softness creep in, but again it hangs on better than several competitors. Honor offers an AI sharpening toggle that can add perceived detail when you zoom in. I am glad this can be switched off, because when it is on it can sometimes introduce artefacts and make fine text look odd. With it off, the phone errs on the side of slightly softer but more natural images, which I prefer.

The ultrawide is competent rather than outstanding. It delivers decent detail and consistent colour with the main camera in daylight, with minimal distortion at the edges. In low light it falls behind the main and telephoto in terms of detail retention and noise, which is typical. The 2.5 cm macro mode is genuinely useful for close-up shots of small objects, though like most phone macros it benefits from a steady hand.

Portrait mode does a good job with subject separation and bokeh, especially when using the telephoto. Skin tones are mostly natural, though certain lighting conditions can push them a bit warm. Night portraits handle tricky backgrounds better than many phones, keeping the subject well exposed while not blowing out neon and street lights entirely.

Video quality

Video tops out at 4K 120 fps on the rear cameras and 4K 60 fps on the front. At 4K 30 and 60 fps, footage from the main camera is sharp with good stabilisation and consistent focus. Colours follow the same profile as stills, slightly punchy but not wildly oversaturated.

Low light video is decent but not class-leading. The phone keeps things bright and relatively clean, but autofocus can occasionally hunt when there are multiple moving subjects in busy scenes, and you can see small frame dips when it struggles to lock onto faces. Using general continuous autofocus rather than face tracking helps when filming crowds.

The telephoto produces pleasingly stable footage at its native zoom level and a bit beyond, with the stabilisation doing a lot of work to keep handheld shots watchable. The ultrawide is fine for casual clips but not something you would choose for critical work.

Audio capture on video is acceptable. Voices are clear when you are close to the phone, but they can sound a little thin when recording at distance. Wind noise reduction works in light to moderate wind, but strong gusts will still overwhelm the microphones.

Selfie camera

The 50 MP selfie camera produces detailed shots with a wide default field of view, which is handy for group selfies. You can switch to a more cropped view if you prefer. Portrait mode for selfies benefits from the TOF depth sensor, with reasonably clean separation around hair and glasses.

Selfie video at up to 4K 60 fps is one of the stronger implementations I have used. Stabilisation is good enough for walking vlogs, and exposure on faces is handled well even with backlit backgrounds. For creators who do a lot of front-facing recording, this is one area where the Magic8 Pro holds up well.

Connectivity, calls and extras

The Magic8 Pro supports tri-band Wi‑Fi 7, which is useful if you have a compatible router and want to push high throughput on 6 GHz. Cellular performance has been reliable, and call quality is in line with other flagships, with decent noise reduction and clear voice reproduction.

There is support for dual nano SIMs, and the USB‑C port can output video to a monitor, which is handy if you want a quick desktop-style setup.

Cross-device integration is another focus area for Honor this year. Using MagicOS 10 and Honor Connect / Super Workstation you can share files between the phone, Windows PCs, Macs, iOS and Android devices, and clone data from an iPhone when you first set the phone up. It is still not as seamless as Apple’s own ecosystem, but it is heading in that direction and is more open than some vendor-specific systems.

Price and Alternative Options

At launch, the Honor Magic8 Pro comes in at around £1100, which matches the Magic7 Pro’s introductory pricing. At the time of writing it was already available for about £900 with various bundle deals direct from Honor, which is closer to where I think it needs to sit to make sense as a purchase.

Against direct rivals, the pricing looks like this for base models:

• Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra: around £1249
• Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge: around £1100 but with weaker battery and charging
• Google Pixel 10 Pro XL: around £1200 for 12 GB / 256 GB
• OnePlus 15: around £829 for 12 GB / 256 GB

Compared to Samsung and Google, the Magic8 Pro gives you a larger battery, faster wired and wireless charging and a slightly lower price at RRP, and more so when discounted. Samsung still wins on video, ecosystem and brand support in the UK, while Google’s software experience and camera processing remain very strong, particularly for stills and skin tones.

The OnePlus 15 undercuts Honor by a decent margin, offers an even larger battery and very fast charging, but its camera hardware is weaker. On paper, for people who value battery and performance over camera versatility, the OnePlus looks like strong competition. I have not used the latest OnePlus extensively, so I cannot comment on long-term software behaviour, but it is a device worth considering if you want to save a couple of hundred pounds and can live with a step down in camera flexibility.

Compared to last year’s Magic7 Pro, the Magic8 Pro brings better brightness, battery life, telephoto reach, video frame rates and software support. The main regressions are the loss of variable aperture on the main camera and the reduction in battery capacity for the EU model versus the Chinese one. Whether that is enough to justify upgrading if you already own a Magic7 Pro will depend on how much you value the telephoto improvements, AI features and longer support window.

Overall

The Honor Magic8 Pro is not a radical reimagining of the flagship formula, but it is a very competent high-end phone that gets the basics right and offers a couple of genuine strengths. The combination of a large silicon-carbon battery, very fast charging, bright and comfortable display, strong telephoto camera and solid performance makes it easy to recommend if you are shopping in this price range.

The Honor Magic7 Pro was the phone I would have bought last year if I were buying a new flagship phone, and this is currently true for the Honor Magic8 Pro. Obviously, it is early in the year, and other flagship phones haven’t launched yet, but I suspect this will continue to be my preferred flagship phone.

It may not be the objectively best phone all around, but I think it strikes the best balance. You have a lower price than the Samsung flagship phones with a substantially larger battery and faster charging than both Samsung and Pixel.

The OnePlus 15 could be a better buy, but I haven’t used a OnePlus phone in a few years, so I can’t provide an honest opinion on them.

Overall, if I were buying a new Android flagship around the £900 to £1000 mark today, the Magic8 Pro would be very high on my shortlist and would probably edge out the alternatives for my own use. It strikes a sensible balance between price, battery, performance and camera versatility, without leaning too hard into one area at the expense of others.

I am James, a UK-based tech enthusiast and the Editor and Owner of Mighty Gadget, which I’ve proudly run since 2007. Passionate about all things technology, my expertise spans from computers and networking to mobile, wearables, and smart home devices.

As a fitness fanatic who loves running and cycling, I also have a keen interest in fitness-related technology, and I take every opportunity to cover this niche on my blog. My diverse interests allow me to bring a unique perspective to tech blogging, merging lifestyle, fitness, and the latest tech trends.

I’m proud to share that Vuelio has consistently ranked Mighty Gadget as one of the top technology blogs in the UK. With my dedication to technology and drive to share my insights, I aim to continue providing my readers with engaging and informative content.