The HONOR Magic5 Pro is the company’s latest flagship device announced in February alongside the standard model. If you visit the official product page here, the first two things you’ll see are the DxOMark ranking for the camera and display, ranking first in both categories as of the time I’m writing this review. I’ve been using the phone for nearly a month and it’s time to find out in this full review.
HONOR Magic5 Pro Specs
- 6.81-inch (2,848×1,312) OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor
- 12GB LPDDR5X RAM
- 512GB UFS 4.0 storage
- Cameras
- Rear: 50MP main with a customized 1/1.12″ sensor, f/1.6 aperture, and OIS + 50MP f/2.0 ultra-wide 122° + 50MP Sony IMX858 periscope with 3.5x optical zoom
- 12MP selfie camera
- 5,100mAh battery with 66W wired and 50W wireless SuperCharge
- MagicOS 7.1 (Android 13)
- IP68 water and dust resistance
Design
The Magic5 Pro features the all-new Eye of Muse design language, inspired by the first image of the black hole at the center of the milky way. It has a huge camera bump but my index finger could rest on the curve as a support while holding the phone. The matte finish feels pleasant to the touch, and the fact that the camera bump is at the center means the phone won’t wobble when you are touching the screen while it is laying on the table.
It has a Quad-Curved Floating Screen, that’s what HONOR called which also means that all four sides of the screen are curved. The phone looks beautifully symmetrical and well-designed until you notice the pill shape cutout on the top left corner, which kinda ruins the symmetrical design.
Unlike many flagship phones, HONOR decided to place an individual speaker on top of the phone to complete the stereo speakers experience, most phones nowadays have an earpiece that doubles up as a speaker for the stereo setup. Next to the speaker is an IR blaster, which is pretty uncommon for flagship phones nowadays.
Display
The Magic5 Pro sports a 6.81-inch (2,848×1,312) OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate. The LTPO 2.0 panel features an adaptive dynamic refresh rate (1Hz-120Hz) and boasts 1,800 nits of peak brightness and HONOR claims that the screen provides vivid contents thanks to the Novel Display technology and the Super Dynamic Vivid Display.
Additionally, the screen also features up to 2,160Hz High-Frequency PWM Dimming, Dynamic Dimming, and Circadian Night Display, making your eyes comfortable. It is also the first mobile phone to get the TÜV Rheinland Circadian Friendly Certification.
It has a great display that shows vivid colors, but its dynamic refresh rate is not up to my expectation. Dynamic mode balances smoothness and battery life with a max refresh rate of 120Hz, but on certain occasions scrolling doesn’t feel that smooth at all especially when I’m scrolling the YouTube app. What I would recommend is to switch it to high then everything just feels smoother, though keep in mind that this mode uses more power, and if the phone temperature went up, it will thermal throttle to keep the phone cool. Hence, affecting the overall smoothness as well.
Performance
Powering the Magic5 Pro is the latest 4nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage. This set of configurations is maxed out as expected for an Android flagship phone. From doing simple tasks such as switching apps to gaming, the Magic5 Pro’s performance will not disappoint you. However, I find that its software is still not fully optimized, which we will talk more about it later. Overall, I would rate its performance as excellent, but we all know powerful hardware is not everything.
Software
The HONOR Magic5 Pro runs on MagicOS 7.1, a custom skin on top of Android 13. The user interface looks pretty much the same as before, you still don’t get an app drawer. You can group apps into a folder just like other phones, but HONOR goes one step further by allowing you to enlarge the folder to directly click the app.
Overall, the user experience is relatively smooth, but the app optimization needs to improve. For starters, my Outlook app will automatically remove my account, probably because I’ve updated the app via HONOR App Market. Yup, it has two app stores — Google Play and App Market, and there are many more duplicate apps as well. Some apps are not compatible with this phone, even Netflix too!
There are still some cool tiny details, it has a nice transition from homescreen to always-on display when you press the lock button, though it only applies to certain pre-installed themes.
Camera
Here comes one of the main selling points of the phone — the cameras. The HONOR Magic5 Pro has a triple-camera setup on the back — 50MP main with a customized 1/1.12″ sensor, f/1.6 aperture, and OIS + 50MP f/2.0 ultra-wide 122° + 50MP Sony IMX858 periscope with 3.5x optical zoom. The phone also has a 12MP front-facing camera for taking selfies.
HONOR calls it Falcon Camera System, which allows you to snap a shot without hesitation, day or night, distant or close-up. It comes with AI Motion Sensing Capture that can intelligently select the best shot among multiple shots within 1.5 seconds before and after pressing the shutter. When you enable Auto Capture, it will automatically capture highlights of smiling, running, and jumping people as well as cats and dogs.
When it comes to the zoom lens, HONOR has interesting algorithms when you switch to different zoom ranges. With the Ultra Fusion Computational Optics, images appear to be sharper in the 2x zoom range and between 7x to 14x zoom range, anything beyond 14x doesn’t have a significant difference.
Image quality generally is quite good, though some photos look overprocessed. The colors between ultra-wide and main cameras are relatively consistent, but the colors on the telephoto camera look cooler. In summary, the Magic5 Pro has a capable camera setup that can shoot nice photos with good noise control.
Battery Life
The HONOR Magic5 Pro packs a 5,100mAh battery that supports 66W wired and 50W wireless SuperCharge. The good news is it even comes with the 66W charging adapter, which takes less than an hour from 15% to full. The phone can last through a day easily and you can even get up to two days of battery life if you are a moderate user.
Final Words
Retailing at RM4,299, the HONOR Magic5 Pro is a solid flagship smartphone with great cameras and performance. However, HONOR still needs to polish its software. We are living in 2023 and it’s unacceptable to see app-incompatible issues on an Android flagship. Other than that, I would say HONOR did quite a good job this time around.
Buy Here
Yay
- Impressive display
- Great performance
- Good cameras
Nay
- Huge camera bump
- Software not optimized
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