HONOR 600 Review

The new HONOR 600 is out, and I know, it looks a little too familiar. But, appearance is just one piece of the puzzle. I say puzzle, ‘cause their naming convention still doesn’t make sense to me. Like, can’t you just say HONOR 6 or something? (There’s just way too many syllables.)

Beyond the sleek looks, it’s got promising cameras and a battery life that lasts for days. The question now is, would that be enough to retain its name as a hot topic in the midrange segment? Let’s find out in this review.

Design and Construction

At first glance, not gonna lie, someone could easily mistake this for an iPhone 17 Pro Series, especially with that colorway.

Our unit is in Orange, obviously—with color-matched design elements all around, including the matte metal frame, the camera rings, and even the buttons right on the side.

The back panel also comes in a matte finish, but it feels plasticky in the hand. I do like that it’s not a fingerprint magnet at least. Of course, we can’t ignore the “camera plateau” that houses its two rear cameras. It protrudes quite a bit and has a glossy finish, which in turn attracts smudges.

It’s pretty lightweight and compact, weighing around 190 grams and rocking a screen that measures 6.57 inches, diagonally. If you’ll notice, the rounded corners are slightly more pronounced, making it more comfortable to hold.

One big improvement in terms of build quality is having a stronger IP rating. For context, the HONOR 400 only had IP66. Now, the HONOR 600 is rated IP68 and IP69K, which means it’s well protected for ingress of dust and water submersion. The “K” here means that the phone can also withstand high temperature water jets.

On top of that, it also has an SGS 5-Star drop and crush resistance, which isn’t a surprise since pretty much every HONOR phone nowadays has this certain certification.

That said, it’s still a good idea NOT to expose your phone to the elements nor try to test out how tough it really is. (You have been warned.)

For inputs and outputs, found on the right side are the power button, volume rocker, and a dedicated AI button; there’s nothing on the left, while the top has a loudspeaker along with a couple of mics; and at the bottom, there’s the SIM tray, USB-C port, another mic, and the second loudspeaker.

Display, Multimedia, and Biometrics

Flip the phone to the front, its 6.57-inch screen uses a flat AMOLED panel with a Full HD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. This is a big claim from HONOR, but it is said to have up to 8000 nits of peak brightness. I’m not even kidding.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but no matter how big that number is, that’s just “peak” brightness which is not really useful for daily use. What we should be looking for is the “typical” brightness, and HONOR hasn’t mentioned anything about it.

In my experience though, the phone gets bright enough to actually remain visible under direct sunlight. So, that’s reassuring.

Now, when it comes to the visuals, I would say, it is superb. Everything looks great. The bezels here are insanely thin and they’re uniform all around which is always a plus.

I also like this feature called “Motion Sickness Relief” that I think other brands should also implement on their phones. This feature is a blessing for someone like me who gets dizzy quickly in a moving vehicle.

It works simply by adding some little dots or even shapes on the screen that move depending on the vehicle’s movement. Not to mention, you can even set it to automatically enable every time the phone senses that you are in transit or driving.

Going back to the multimedia experience, I’m afraid the audio quality is a bit of a downside. Don’t get me wrong, the sound stage is decent for the most part with clear highs and respectable mids, but lacking bass.

However, once you start cranking up the volume, it gets too distorted, especially at max 200%. You can even hear a lot of harsh “ess” sounds, it’s kind of annoying. That said, it won’t be as immersive when watching movies, but it’s decent enough for casual listening to music.

As for biometrics security, it features an under-display fingerprint optical sensor along with face unlock. Both methods unlock the phone reliably and quickly, but as always, I’d suggest using the fingerprint sensor as it is more secure.

Cameras

One thing that HONOR is known for is its focus on photography, and for a midrange series phone, that impression seems to hold true, but with a caveat.

The HONOR 600 boasts a 200-megapixel main sensor with OIS alongside a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera. These are the exact same specs from last year’s HONOR 400, and what’s worse is still no telephoto camera here.

Setting those aside, the phone actually takes impressive shots with sharp picture clarity, accurate colors, and a pretty high level of dynamic range.

HONOR 600 sample shots

Apr 28 – May 1

Portraits look nice with natural-looking bokeh and a subject-background separation that’s not harsh for something like hair. The collaboration with Studio Harcourt also remains here with different studio-level filters that actually look neat.

Despite the low megapixel count, ultrawide shots are surprisingly good with plenty of detail and the colors are generally consistent as with the main sensor.

What’s a bit of an ick for me is that the phone is heavy on AI processing. Yes, that’s mostly helpful since it can enhance detail for photos shot at 4x zoom or whatnot. But, I really don’t need it to be enabled all the time.

Selfies, for example, the image output generally has nice skin texture and accurate skin color. However, when shooting in low-light, the output would look rather different, unrealistic even, from what you saw on the screen while taking the shot.

As for video, the phone can shoot up to 4K at 30 frames per second (fps) and the quality here is also good. The footage is well stabilized with the main camera able to quickly focus on subjects and to output consistent colors across all zoom levels.

Switching to ultrawide, however, it offers far less detailed shots and leans more toward warmer tones, making it look inconsistent from the main shooter.

Performance and Benchmarks

Under the hood, the HONOR 600 is equipped with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4. Our unit comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage.

Looking at our synthetic benchmarks, the phone garnered favorable results. In AnTuTu V11, the HONOR 600 surpassed 1 million points. And in 3DMark Wild Life, which is a GPU-intensive benchmark, it had an average frame rate of 43 FPS, which is not bad.

It’s not all about the numbers though. It’s more about the experience, and so far, I haven’t encountered any stutters in terms of everyday use.

Gaming is not its strongest suit, but technically, it can still game reliably. Playing titles like Mobile Legends: Bang! Bang! (MLBB) and Call of Duty Mobile (CODM), the phone was able to run these games at up to 90 FPS.

Yep, no “Ultra” frame rate for MLBB, and no, it can’t go past 120 FPS on CODM either, even if settings are toggled to Low graphics and Ultra frame rate.

Meanwhile, for titles like Wuthering Waves with all toggles set to High, the game was barely playable. Average frame rate hovers around 30 to 40 FPS, and there were lots of frame drops with Maxed out settings. Interestingly, even if setting it to “Ultra Performance”, the average frame rate still hovers around 40 FPS.

To be fair, this phone is not designed for gaming, so set your expectations here.

Thermal management is serviceable. It heated up rather quickly when playing Wuthering Waves at Maxed out graphics. And when I adjusted it to Low graphics, the heat still lingered for some reason. Still, it didn’t cause any thermal throttling and it didn’t get to a point where the phone was uncomfortably hot.

OS, UI, and Apps

Now, onto the software side, the HONOR 600 ships with MagicOS 10 based on Android 16, and HONOR has surely come a long way with its own Android skin.

I know, most of its UI design took inspiration from iOS, but I personally don’t mind as long as they’re implemented beautifully across the OS.

I definitely like the glass blur aesthetics throughout the system, and there are far more customization options available now. That includes a variety of lock screen styles, updated app icons, and a full screen Always-on Display (AoD).

Remember the dedicated AI button? Well, as the name suggests, it’s used for accessing a number of AI features such as AI Photos agent and AI Screen Suggestions among others.

By default, a long-press triggers AI Screen Suggestions, and depending what’s on the screen, it generally saves screenshots through AI Memories.

Think of it like the Essential Space on NothingOS where it provides detailed information from the screenshot you just took. The AI button also acts like a shutter button and can launch the Camera with a double-press by default.

Moving on, I still have some of my nitpicks like less fluid animations, text inconsistencies, and a Dynamic Island rip-off, called “Magic Capsule”, that isn’t so feature-packed. Bloatware is also present with app folders for recommendations, and some pre-installed ones like Lazada and TikTok.

Despite all that, I think you still get more pros than cons with MagicOS 10. Not to mention, HONOR is said to provide up to six years of major OS upgrades and security patches. So, that’s already a big win—having the assurance that this phone will serve you well in the long run.

Connectivity and Battery Life

Battery life is probably my most favorite thing about the HONOR 600. It packs a whopping 7000mAh capacity and this thing lasts for days.

In our proprietary video loop test, the phone achieved 41 hours and 28 minutes of uptime and in PCMark Work 3.0 test, it lasted 18 hours and 33 minutes. I mostly used the phone to watch content on YouTube and it barely drained the battery during my usage.

When it does run low on battery, the included 80W power brick can refill its juices from zero to 100% in about one and a half hours. Interestingly, that’s a bit slow with that much charging rate.

No bypass charging here though, but it has 27W of reverse wired charging that may come in clutch to charge your other phones or accessories.

Connectivity-wise, it covers all the essentials including Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, NFC, an IR blaster which is located below the LED flash, and dual nano-SIMs with eSIM support and 5G connectivity.

Verdict

So, after diving into our experience with the HONOR 600, here comes our verdict. On the surface, the HONOR 600 builds on the best qualities of its predecessor…but it left us wanting more.

I think HONOR is trying to replicate that release pattern of introducing an all-new model in two years and an iterative improvement in between—the HONOR 600 is the latter.

You see, everything else is a really good upgrade like the bigger battery, a stronger build, sleeker design, and a more polished software experience. They almost knew what they were doing until they skipped on upgrading the more crucial parts. The cameras? Carryovers. The performance? Largely the same.

That’s not to say they’ve made bad choices, it’s just that they certainly could’ve done better. I mean, the 2024 HONOR 200 had a telephoto camera, why did they even remove it in the first place? Besides, this might just be a whole marketing strategy before our eyes and we don’t even know it.

In its own right, the HONOR 600 gives off a strong competition in the upper midrange market, as it always has been.

Sadly, as of making this video, we don’t have the pricing info just yet for the HONOR 600 Series. Considering that everything is going up in price lately, it’s getting harder and harder to justify which one’s good or not.

If the price is right, then the HONOR 600 is one interesting option out there, especially if you pay attention to camera performance, long battery life, and a good-looking phone. But, if you prefer more raw power, then you might want to look elsewhere.

What we liked:

• Sleek, premium-looking design
• Above-average camera performance
• Solid battery life
• Big improvements on MagicOS 10, longer software support

What we didn’t like:

• No telephoto camera
• Too reliant on AI-enhanced image processing
• Limited gaming performance (no 120 FPS gaming on CODM, MLBB)

HONOR 600 specs:
6.57-inch FHD+ AMOLED display
2728 x 1264 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate
8000 nits (HDR) peak brightness, 1 nit ultra dark mode
Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4
8GB, 12GB RAM
256GB, 512GB storage
Dual rear cameras:
– 200MP f/1.9 main, 1/1.4” sensor, OIS
– 12MP ultrawide, 112° FoV
– Color temperature sensor
50MP f/2.0 selfie shooter (punch hole notch)
Dual nano-SIM (supports eSIM)
5G, 4G LTE
Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth 5.4
GPS, AGPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, NavIC
USB Type-C
NFC
Under-display fingerprint sensor, face unlock
IP68, IP69, IP69K dust and water resistance, high temperatures
5-Star SGS drop and crush resistance
Dual stereo speakers, IR blaster (rear-mounted)
MagicOS 10, Android 16
6 years major OS upgrades and security patches
7000mAh battery
80W charging (wired)
27W reverse wired charging
156.0 x 74.7 x 7.8 mm (dimensions)
~190g (weight)
Orange, Black, Golden White (colorways)