Ever since being spun-off from Huawei, Honor had been releasing a slew of flagship tier smartphones under the Magic series. Their latest flagship, the Honor Magic5 Pro packs a lot in terms of hardware: a brighter display, new camera system, the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 mobile platform, and a large battery.
Honor Magic5 Pro Specifications
| Model | Honor Magic5 Pro |
| Dimensions | 162.9 x 76.7 x 8.8 mm |
| Weight | 219g |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 |
| RAM | 12GB + 7GB (Honor RAM Turbo) |
| Storage | 512GB |
| Display | 6.81″ LTPO OLED 1312 x 2848 pixels 120Hz, HDR10+ 1800 nits (peak) |
| Camera (Front) | 12 MP, f/2.4 |
| Camera (Rear) | Main Camera: 50MP, f/1.6, 1/1.12″, PDAF, Laser AF, OIS Ultrawide Camera: 50 MP, f/2.0, AF Telephoto Camera: 50 MP, f/3.0, PDAF, OIS, 3.5x optical zoom |
| Operating System | MagicOS 7.1, Android 13 |
| Battery and Charging | 5,100 mAh 66W fast charging 50W wireless charging |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct Bluetooth 5.2 NFC IR Blaster GPS |
| Biometrics | On-screen fingerprint reader Face unlock |
What’s In The Box?
- Honor Magic5 Pro smartphone
- 66W fast charger
- USB Type-C cable
- Silicone case
- SIM tray remover
- Documentation
Design
The Honor Magic5 Pro is available in two colours for the Malaysian market: Meadow Green and Black.
The design of the Honor Magic5 Pro is a divisive one. First lets address the pronounced camera hump. On top of the outward bowing hump, there is a layer of glass that sits on top, covering the camera lenses and flash light.
While the design of the camera array is not a dealbreaker for me, the seam between the phone back and the glass is prone to trapping lint and pet hair if you don’t have silicone case installed.
At the front, you are greeted by a curved display with rounded off corners. The selfie camera is placed at the top left corner of the screen.
The lock button and volume rockers are placed on the right. At the bottom lies the SIM tray, USB Type-C port, and speaker grille. There is another speaker grille above the ear piece, giving the Magic5 Pro stereo audio. Right beside the top speaker grille is the IR blaster, allowing you to control other home appliances via a remote app.
Display
The Honor Magic5 Pro comes with a 6.81-inch display with a peculiar resolution of 1312 x 2848 pixels. While the resolution is not as high as QHD displays found on the OnePlus and Samsung Galaxy S23, it is still plenty sharp.
The curved display does a great job at handling mis-presses
You get up to 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, which works well to barely notice any stuttering. So there is no need to change the refresh rate in the settings.
Colours are more towards the neutral side, which is great in my opinion as colours appear more true to life.
My only gripe with the display is the placement of the selfie camera. It interferes with mini-maps and other on-screen elements in mobile game titles, but most games allow you to adjust the offset border of the UI elements.
User Experience
Like the Honor X9a, you get to choose between gesture or traditional navigation button controls on the Honor Magic5 Pro during the first boot up. The gesture controls could take a while to get used to, but once you get the hang of it, navigation is quite easy.
The device uses MagicOS 7.1, which is a reskin of Android 13. It offers a surprisingly polished user experience, while also providing some levels of customisation with themes and Always-On Display.
Performance
As with other smartphones equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, the Honor Magic5 Pro feels snappy and responsive. It has 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of storage, which are more than sufficient for even heavy tasks.
On Geekbench 6, it’s score is in line with other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 smartphones, 1,482 on single core, and 4,479 on multi-core. The GPU is no slouch either, netting 8,569 points in OpenCL.
The Honor Magic5 Pro is also great for gaming, capable of getting more than 57 fps in Genshin Impact.
Camera
Honor Magic5 Pro’s Falcon Camera System allow users to capture sharp and in-focus images no matter the situation. I tested the continuous autofocus on the main camera and yielded excellent results.
The 50MP main camera pixel-bins to 12.5MP by default. Images look sharp and colours tones look natural as well. Contrast ratio is not over the top, and I didn’t notice any over-sharpening. Shooting at 50MP captures more detail, however it can look a tad noisy when bumping up the ISO.
The ultra-wide and telephoto cameras are no slouch either. The ultra-wide has autofocus, though it can be slower than the PDAF system found on the main camera. The telephoto has PDAF and can capture excellent images under good lighting conditions.
For night mode, the images are still in focus and have great colour reproduction. However finer details were lost as a result of image processing.
Video
The Honor Magic5 Pro supports up to 4K60 video shooting at 21:9 aspect ratio. The OIS and accurate continuous autofocus makes for a great video shooting experience.
Audio
As mentioned earlier, the Honor Magic5 Pro comes with stereo speakers. At moderate volumes, it sounds warm with decent bass response. It also has surprisingly good audio separation between the left and right channels. Cranking the volume up will start to introduce some muddiness and sibilance.
Battery Life
On a mixed use cycle that consists of gaming, taking photos, music and video streaming, the Honor Magic5 Pro easily lasts the whole day with about 20% to spare. If you are more conservative with your battery use, you can squeeze out two days worth of battery life.
To complement the large battery, Honor has included a 66W fast charger, which can fully charge the phone in less than an hour.
Our Verdict
The Honor Magic5 Pro is a well-rounded flagship smartphone equipped with great specs. It also has impressive battery life and a very capable camera.
However, the Magic5 Pro is competing in an increasingly crowded flagship smartphone space. Aside from vivo, other flagship smartphones are equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, offering similar levels of CPU and GPU performance across the board. Coincidentally, all our 2023 flagship smartphone review samples are in similar shades of green. I guess green is the new black this year.
All in all, the Honor Magic5 Pro is a solid flagship smartphone. If future Honor phones can follow this trajectory, it could give other brands a run for their money.
For more information, please visit the official Honor website.
