Honor Magic6 Pro review: Apple and Samsung may tremble

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As with the launch of the Magic V2, Honor is taking advantage of a major international trade fair to unveil the Magic6 Pro , his new smartphone star. A year after a very convincing Magic5 Pro, the Chinese manufacturer is back at the MWC in Barcelona.

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Last September, the European director explained the brand's ambitions on the Old Continent. He explained Honor's desire to focus on innovation and positioning to win back the market. While its goals are bold, Honor's return is successful. Its growth is impressive, as evidenced by the sales figures for 2023.

After the technical demonstration of the Magic V2, the company's executives are now counting on the Magic6 Pro to come and worry the flagship models of Samsung and Apple. To achieve this, Honor has integrated the best of available technologies, paid particular attention to photography and developed an innovative battery. All in a smartphone with a design that is still as unique as ever.

Does the recipe work ? To find out, we used the Magic6 Pro daily for several weeks before its release. Discover our full test.

Our test of the Magic6 Pro was carried out on a model with unfinished software. We will update it if the final version has an impact on our opinion.

The Magic6 Pro will be available from March 14, 2024 at a price of 1,300 euros in a single 12/512 GB version and two colors: Black and Epi Green (our test model). Honor therefore opts for an ultra-premium price that positions the Magic6 Pro against the flagship models from Samsung and Apple (iPhone 15 Pro Max and Galaxy S24 Ultra).

For the launch (from February 25 to March 26, 2024) Honor is offering a Pad 9, its latest tablet worth 400 euros. Enough to better pass the pill.

Honor had already demonstrated its taste for fashion at the IFA in Berlin by presenting the Magic V Purse, a folding smartphone concept that can be carry like a handbag. The Magic6 Pro inherits this sensitivity to leather goods: our test model Epi Green takes up the relief prints of the big luxury brands. In an effort to respect for animal welfare, the design team opted for a covering in “vegan leather”.

Honor combines this touch fashionto its technological origins. Like its predecessor, the Magic6 Pro proudly displays its photographic module in an imperfect circle. Small brushed undulations adorn this silver-colored module containing the three optics, including the enormous 180 MP periscopic telephoto lens.

Like its direct competitors, the Magic6 Pro is a heavy and bulky phone which will not please everyone the world. Although the vegan leather coating allows for a good grip, we strongly recommend that you use it with two hands. It would be a shame to lose an investment of around 1,300 euros due to clumsiness.

In case fate should be against you, Honor has everything planned to limit the damage. Like all ultra-premium smartphones, The Magic6 Pro is IP68 certified: it therefore resists immersion up to 1.5 m for 30 minutes. That's for water and dust.

On the front, Honor integrates the NanoCrystal Shield screen protection, a patented technology developed in-house. The brand promises the “highest level of resistance in the industry”, ahead of the Honor Magic6 Lite (you know the phone you can hammer nails with?).

NanoCrystal Shield can withstand drops of 1.6 m when Apple's Ceramic Shield is limited to 1.2 m and Corning's Gorilla Victus 2 to 0.8 m. For obvious reasons, we haven't pushed our testing to the point of verifying these numbers, so we'll have to take Honor's word for it.

The Magic6 Pro's screen is not only ultra-resistant, it is also sublime. Honor remains one of the rare manufacturers to still offer a screen diving on the edges. This reinforces the premium aspect of the device as well as the feeling of immersion in multimedia uses.

The manufacturer is also one of the last to offer 3D facial recognition housed in a small pill at the top of the screen. Like Apple with Dynamic Island, The Chinese have developed software features that exploit this small imperfection (we will come back to this).

The Magic6 Pro's display is based on a 6.8'' LTPO AMOLED panel with a refresh rate of 1 to 120 Hz. In a few figures, it can reach a maximum brightness (in HDR peak) of 5,000 nits (1,600 nits in daily use), displays 1.07 billion colors and covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color space. Add to that Dolby Vision and HDR Vivid compatibility as well as Full Care Display 3.0 certification by TÜV Rheinland (eye protection).

Reading these lines, you can guess that the Magic6 Pro's screen is a marvel. Comfortable for everyday use and productivity, it shows its full potential in gaming and video with stunning image quality, even in less favorable lighting conditions (in direct sunlight for example).

Honor spared no expense when designing the Magic6 Pro's front and rear cameras. Take a look at:

a wide-angle “Super Dynamic Falcon H9000” (variable aperture f/1.4 – f/2) with 50 MP CMOS sensor (1/1.3''); OIS
an ultra wide-angle ( 122° – f/2) with 50 MP sensor; HD macro mode at 2.5 cm
a periscopic telephoto lens (f/2.6); 2.5x optical zoom; 100x digital zoom; 180 MP CMOS sensor Ultra-wide (1/1.49’’); OIS
a 50 MP sensor; ToF sensor; wide-angle lens (90°, f/2); 3D facial recognition

The manufacturer opts for a periscopic telephoto lens with a 2.5x optical zoom “only” when competitors are capable of reaching 5x. The engineers preferred to combine a 180 MP sensor to play on the cropping while maintaining a high level of detail. An industry first, and it works!

In all conditions (including low light) shots up to 10x magnification are simply excellent.Beyond that, digital noise becomes noticeable. Up to 50x zoom, the results are surprising in good light conditions. When it drops, we will preferably stop at 10x zoom. We thought the telephoto lens of the Galaxy S24 Ultra was unbeatable, the Magic6 Pro makes us reconsider our judgment.

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The main module produces high-quality photographs with excellent sharpness. The contrasts are reminiscent of the signature of Huawei phones (Honor has recovered a good part of the imaging team from its former parent company), with great precision in the management of highlights. . Here again, it has nothing to envy the market references.

The Magic6 Pro will also convince photo enthusiasts & #8217;action (sports, children, animals). Thanks to its algorithm Honor Motion Sensing AI 2.0, the Magic6 Pro is capable of capturing 30 frames per second to get the best possible shot. In practice, motion blur does not completely disappear, but is much rarer.

The portrait mode of the new high-end d&amp ;#8217;Honor also excels with a bokeh of great finesse and precise clipping. The dual-aperture lens (f/1.4 or f/2) has a lot to do with it. The Magic6 Pro produces portraits that are almost as convincing in low light as they are in broad daylight.

Often overlooked by manufacturers, l' ultra wide angle is just as attractive.Its designers have managed to limit the distortion of the edges of the image and the level of detail remains impressive in low light. The macro mode, managed by the ultra wide-angle, is simply one of the best we have ever tested.

Gifted in photo, The Magic6 Pro loses a bit of its brilliance in video capture. It can go up to 4K at 60fps with very clean results. But it is It's clear that Honor hasn't made this a priority: no 8K or 4K at 120fps on the program (unlike the Galaxy S24 Ultra) or new creative features. At Honor we are mainly interested in photography, video will come (perhaps) later.

Like all ultra-premium smartphones released in 2024 (except iPhones), the Honor Magic6 Pro integrates the Snapdragon 8 Gen chip 3, the latest from Qualcomm labs. It comes with 12GB of LPPDR5X RAM (with the option to upgrade 8GB of ROM to 20GB) and 512GB of UFS storage 4.0.

Armed to the teeth, the Magic6 Pro logically displays high-flying performances. Enough to compete with the market references ? Yes and even beyond that, for certain uses such as photo editing or video editing.

But It is especially in gaming that the Magic6 Pro shows the extent of its talent. Thanks to the integration of an XXL cooling chamber (5 052 mm2 for 0.38 mm thickness) as well as software optimization to the smallest details, it is more stable than its competitors. We can therefore chain long gaming sessions without fear of overheating or a drop in performance. The Magic6 Pro could almost be among the ranking of the best smartphones gaming.

Confident in its ability to ensure a high level of performance over time, Honor promises that the Magic6 Pro will retain all this power for 5 years. See you in 2029 ?

« Without mastery, power is nothing » displayed Pirelli on its supports communication. Honor is taking inspiration from the tire specialist by promising ” the longest battery life in the industry”. To achieve this, engineers have integrated a 5,600 mAh (!) 2nd generation silicon-carbon battery, making the Magic6 Pro “the only flagship equipped with a larger battery of 5,600 mAh». The use of silicon-carbon allows the Magic6 Pro to withstand extreme temperatures: down to -20°C according to Honor .

The manufacturer has combined this state-of-the-art battery with its new Honor E1 chip specifically designed to optimize energy consumption and charging. Does this accumulation of technologies allow the Magic6 Pro to become one of the most durable smartphones on the market? ? The answer is yes.

With more than 20 hours of versatile autonomy (figures from 01Lab), the Magic6 Pro has slipped into the top 5 of the most durable smartphones on the market. On a daily basis, it will therefore accompany you for two days in versatile use, half a day less if you abuse the good things, half a day more if you use the energy saving mode.

This excellent autonomy is accompanied by a fast charging system more powerful than that of the previous generation. The Magic6 Pro can accommodate 80W wired charging as well as up to 66W wireless charging. Since the manufacturer does not provide a charger in the box (it There are some Apple inspirations that we could do without), we carried out our tests with a third-party wired charger with a power of 80W.

The Magic6 Pro reaches 100% in 57 minutes and 50% in 22 minutes.Honorable scores (ah ah…) but far from reaching the best in this field. Most of Xiaomi’s high-end models fully recharge in just 30 minutes.

The Magic6 Pro integrates Android 14 and the MagicOS 8 overlay. Honor takes over the Magic5 Pro interface, heritage of “he who must not be named” with its qualities (lots of customization settings, smooth animations) and its defects (too many pre-installed applications and somewhat complex menus).

Among the good ideas, Honor takes up the parallel spaceallowing you to create a second interface in order to separate, for example, your professional and private life. Honor has also announced AI privacy Call 3.0, a feature that allows you to make calls with the utmost discretion.

Like the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the Magic6 Pro is a smartphone boosted by AI. With Magic Portal (developed in partnership with Qualcomm), Honor integrates a conversational AI like ChatGPT with which it is possible to interact anytime, anywhere. The brand even promises to go further than Samsung with a hundred features that transform the daily use of the smartphone.

Unfortunately, since the artificial intelligence features are only available when the product is released next March, we haven’t had the honor (again, ah ah…) of trying them out. We will therefore be sure to update this review.

Magic Capsule, functionality allowing to use the space of the front camera to display interface elements (timer, call, voice recording etc.) is the other big new feature of this Magic6 Pro.

Some will say that Honor is happily pumping the Dynamic Islandfrom Apple. This is not the case. Honor is in fact the first manufacturer to have developed this technology with the Honor V20, a smartphone launched three years before the iPhone 14 Pro.

To be precise, the experience offered is as fluid as on Apple smartphones. The good surprise comes from the developers who have adopted the Magic Capsule. Thus, in addition to Honor applications, third-party applications such as Spotify are supported. The Magic Capsule is to the Magic6 Pro what Dynamic Island is to the iPhone.

Already in great shape last year, Honor confirms its great ambitions with a Magic6 Pro that is successful enough to compete with the market references.

Behind its beautiful case, the Magic6 Pro has everything that is best in 2024: a sublime ultra-resistant screen, high-flying performance and colossal battery life. Above all, it stands out as the benchmark for smartphone photography alongside the historic trio Samsung, Apple, Google.

A feat that the manufacturer charges 1,300 euros. A price that reserves it for a public with comfortable finances. Just to remind those who doubt it that, like Samsung or Apple, Honor sees itself as an ultra-premium brand.

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Teilor Stone

Teilor Stone has been a reporter on the news desk since 2013. Before that she wrote about young adolescence and family dynamics for Styles and was the legal affairs correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining Thesaxon , Teilor Stone worked as a staff writer at the Village Voice and a freelancer for Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, GQ and Mirabella. To get in touch, contact me through my teilor@nizhtimes.com 1-800-268-7116