Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

The AXOThe AXO

Reviews

Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender

Honor Magic5 Pro Review

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

ModelHonor Magic5 Pro
Dimensions162.9 x 76.7 x 8.8 mm
Weight219g
ProcessorQualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
RAM12GB + 7GB (Honor RAM Turbo)
Storage512GB
Display6.81″ 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 SystemMagicOS 7.1, Android 13
Battery and Charging5,100 mAh
66W fast charging
50W wireless charging
ConnectivityWi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct
Bluetooth 5.2
NFC
IR Blaster
GPS
BiometricsOn-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

Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 13

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.

Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 14

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

Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 15

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.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 16

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.

Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 19

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.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 16

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

Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 29

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.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.
Honor Magic5 Pro Smartphone Review: A Promising Flagship Contender 16
Written By

Part-time gamer, writer, & full time weird coffee person.

Next Read

Smartphones

HONOR today has showcased its strategic vision for the future of smartphones at IFA 2023 with two new foldable smartphones – the HONOR Magic...

Smartphones

HONOR Malaysia proudly debuts a new Coral Purple HONOR Magic5 Pro at RM 3,999 and the LTE-enabled HONOR Pad X9 only at RM 1,099,...

Smartphones

Honor Malaysia has teased a new Merdeka Limited Edition for its award winning Magic5 series – the HONOR Magic5 Pro Coral Purple. Taking in...

Daily News

Honor has just launched the Honor 90 Series of midrange smartphones, featuring 3 distinct models that can be had with a starting price of...

Reviews

Honor has just launched the Honor 90, the company’s latest lifestyle-focused smartphone this evening. While it is not a full-fledged flagship like the Magic...

Smartphones

Honor Malaysia has confirmed the date of the release highly anticipated midrange, the HONOR 90 series, which will take place on July 20th at...

Reviews

Previously, we had reviewed the Honor Magic5 Pro ahead of the official launch, and were impressed by the progress Honor has made since being...

Advertisement
Advertisement