Honor started the year strong, constantly introducing new smartphones in the past few months. The latest one is the foldable Honor Magic Vs, which you can check out our review here. Today, we’re checking out another model from the brand’s new flagship lineup – the Magic5 Pro.
It’s got everything you’d want in a flagship model – a powerful chipset, a nice camera, a beautiful display, and many more. But is it a flagship phone you should get for yourself? Well, let’s find out in this hands-on review.
Table of Contents
Design & Construction
So let’s start with the design of the Honor Magic5 Pro. The first thing you’ll notice is that the phone is quite thick. Actually, it’s very thick, and that’s mainly due to the triple rear camera system. We’ll talk about it more later, but you should have an idea of how capable it is just based on the design.
The back panel itself looks nice in this Meadow Green colorway. Although it may not look like it, the panel is made of frosted glass. It feels really nice to the touch too with its finish. Heck, it’s even curved too.
Not to mention it’s very smudge resistant, making it ideal if you have sweaty hands. The metal frame also feels great to the touch, but it does have a chrome-like finish, making it easy to leave fingerprints.
On the right side of the Honor Magic5 Pro, you’ll find the power button and the volume. While at the bottom, there’s the USB-C port, sim-card slot, and a loudspeaker. At the top, there’s the other loudspeaker, microphone, and an IR sensor. The buttons are easily accessible with one hand as well.
Overall, the phone feels great, but it is quite heavy – 219g according to Honor. Then you also have the thickness of the phone, which is very thick in comparison to other flagship phones. But it’s not too thick that it would feel uncomfortable inside your pockets. Still, it does take a while to get used to the rather thick design, especially if you’re used to slimmer smartphones.
Display & Multimedia
As for the display, you get a nice 6.81-inch curved OLED screen. It looks great out of the box, with really nice colors and very deep blacks. They’re quite accurate too, making it ideal for those editing photos and videos on the go. Not to mention the backlight is really bright; easy to use even under the hot summer days.
If you want it to be more saturated, there is a vivid option in color mode and you can even adjust the temperature to your liking. As for me, I’d keep it in normal mode.
Aside from the colors you also have a really bright backlight, making it easy to use even under direct sunlight. In addition, the display has a maximum of 120Hz refresh rate. Perfect for watching videos, playing games, or even just going through the menus and social media.
The loudspeaker is great, but they do lack a bit of bass for me. On the plus side, they are very loud if you need them to be. This makes it great when watching videos with friends or gaming alone without using earphones.
Cameras
One of the strong points of the Honor Magic5 Pro is the triple rear camera system, which is amazing. The main camera module uses a 50MP 1 over 1.12-inch sensor with a wide f1.6 aperture. It’s joined by a 50MP periscope telephoto lens and another 50MP ultrawide lens. This means no matter what subject you’re shooting, the phone has you covered.
More importantly, the quality of the camera shows in the photos you take. Even if you zoom in to 10X, the photos are still sharp. For reference, when you zoom in with other smartphones you can barely make out details. There’s even a 100X zoom in photo mode if you’re taking photos of something very far away. Do note that the photo isn’t as sharp in 100X zoom mode, but still some details remain.
You don’t even have to use manual mode to take great photos with the Honor Magic5 Pro. Set it on automatic mode, and you’re good to go. Perfect if you need to suddenly
Like the photos, the videos are great. The Magic5 Pro can shoot at a maximum of 4K@60FPS, and there’s even a log mode if you want to color grade the footage later on. With the help of OIS+EIS, you don’t need a tripod or gimbal and you can shoot handheld with ease. However, you might want to use a gimbal if you’re recording at 10X zoom.
To give you an idea of how capable the camera of the Honor Magic5 Pro is, you can check out some of our sample photos and videos down below. But if you’re still not impressed, at the time of writing, this phone currently leads the DxOMark camera test.
Performance & Benchmarks
Powering the Honor Magic5 Pro is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, one of the most powerful chips on the market today. There are various RAM options available, up to 16GB at most. As for internal storage, it has a maximum of 512GB. Unfortunately, there is no MicroSD card slot to expand the memory further. This might be an issue if you plan on shooting lots of 4K videos or installing multiple apps.
As a result, it can run almost any game you can think of. Heck, we even ran the Honkai Star Rail on this phone with the settings on high, and we didn’t experience any framerate drops. There’s also a game boost mode to further enhance your gaming experience.
The downside is, the phone does heat up a lot. And once it does heat up, you will experience some lag or even the app crashing. Do note that this could be because we’re running Star Rail on the highest settings. But even when playing other games, we noticed the phone tends to heat up.
As for the benchmark scores, we couldn’t seem to install any of the usual benchmarking apps. One of the reasons is that the unit we have appears to be a developmental unit. We will update this review once we get a unit capable of running our usual benchmark numbers.
OS, Apps, & UI
The Honor Magic5 Pro runs on MagicOS 7.1 which is based on Android 13. If you’re used to Android phones this makes it quite easy to use. Not to mention, the design isn’t over the top; simple and very neat.
Like all other Honor smartphones, it does come pre-installed with some apps that you might not end up using. So, you’ll have to manually delete this in order to which is quite a hassle since there are a number of them. Once you’ve cleaned them up though, you’ll get a nice OS and more.
Battery & Connectivity
As for the battery, the phone packs a 5100mAh unit which does last the entire day with regular use. But if you end up gaming the entire day, the battery does go down quite fast. Thankfully, there is 66W fast charging and even 50W wireless charging.
Like the performance benchmarks, we couldn’t run the usual PCMark battery test on this phone. Using our video loop test, the battery did last 15 hours and 55 minutes, which is decent. However, do note the battery test is done with the screen at 50% brightness, zero volume, and in airplane mode.
Connectivity options include 5G, WiFi-6, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, GPS, and an IR blaster. Users also get two sim card slots.
Conclusion
Overall though, the Honor Magic5 Pro is a great daily phone, whether you’re going to use it to play games or just for the usual everyday use. Not to mention it also comes with a really nice camera capable of even shooting 4K video. However, it does take some time to get used to the weight as well as the shape of the phone itself.
As for the price, the Honor Magic5 Pro retails for PHP 59,990, making it conservatively affordable for a smartphone considering what it is capable of. It undercuts the price of some of its competitors but still offers the performance of a flagship model.
But what do you think of the Honor Magic5 Pro so far? Is it a flagship smartphone you’ll consider as compared to others given its great camera capabilities and affordable price? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
What we liked:
* Really great camera
* Affordable pricing
* Very nice display
What we didn’t like:
* Heavy for a smartphone
* Takes time to get used to the shape of the phone
Honor Magic5 Pro Specs:
6.81-inch OLED display @ 2848×1312 resolution
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
Adreno 740 GPU
12GB LPDDR5 RAM
512GB Internal Storage
Cameras:
50MP Wide Main Camera (f/1.6, OIS)
50MP Ultra Wide Camera (f/2.0)
50MP Periscope Telephoto Camera (f/3.0, 3.5x Optical Zoom, 100x Digital Zoom, OIS)
12MP Front Camera + 3D Depth Camera
Up to 4K@60FPS video recording
5G Dual-Sim
WiFi-6
Bluetooth 5.2
NFC, GPS, GALILEO
IP68
MagicOS 7.1 (Android 13)
USB-C
5100mAh battery, 66W Honor Super Charge, 50W wireless charging
