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In a chat with TechRadar at MWC 2023, Honor CEO George Zhao didn’t hide anything about the Honor Magic 5 Pro (officially spelled Honor Magic5 Pro), which is the company’s latest flagship phone. “This phone is better than other top models if you compare it to them. He said, “No one can compete with us.”
At the time, Zhao’s excitement was easy to write off as just that—a CEO trying to get people interested in his company’s newest product being overly confident. Now that I’ve spent some time reviewing the Magic 5 Pro, though, we can say for sure that Honor’s 2023 top phone can compete with and even beat the best phones on the market in 2023 in some ways.
Honor Magic 5 Pro Specifications
Specification | Details |
---|---|
Brand | Honor |
Model | Magic 5 Pro |
Display | 6.53-inch AMOLED |
Resolution | 2340 x 1080 pixels |
Processor | HiSilicon Kirin 990 |
RAM | 8GB/12GB |
Storage | 256GB/512GB |
Operating System | Android 10 |
Battery | 4500mAh |
Design and Display
If you’ve seen the Honor Magic 4 Pro, you should be able to spot the Magic 5 Pro right away. Like its predecessor, the Magic 5 Pro has a “quad-curved” display on the front with a pill-shaped hole for the selfie camera at the top left. At the top of the simple glass back, there is a circular “eye of the muse” camera array. There are some things that could be made better, though. The big camera setup on the Magic 5 Pro still makes it a little top-heavy, but it’s nothing like the Magic 4 Pro, which felt like it wanted to slide out of my hands, top first, while we were using it.
Even though we don’t like how slippery it makes the phone, the new frosted glass on the back is great at hiding fingerprints. The shiny back is also on other colors than the green one we looked at here. We don’t like how the camera setup makes the back of the phone slightly curve up. We don’t like how the curve is too slight. It gives the design an organic look that makes me feel uneasy. Combine this with the fact that the camera array is the same color as the rest of the back, and it seems like the company is trying to hide the big bump it makes. You can buy this smartphone from its official website
Honor Magic 5 Pro: Cameras
Honor has made a big deal about the camera setup on the Honor Magic 5 Pro, and rightly so. In that back bulge, there are three lenses: a 50MP f/1.6 wide lens, a 50MP f/2.0 ultra-wide lens, and a 50MP f/3.0 periscope telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom.
The main sensor of the Magic 5 Pro is 35% bigger than those of the iPhone 14 Pro Max and Galaxy S23 Ultra. This means, at least on paper, that it can deal with light better than both of those devices, and the phone’s use of computational photography (the ability to take pictures using different lenses at the same time) gives it zoom clarity that’s comparable to that of its high-end competitors.
Performance and Software
The Honor Magic 5 Pro is driven by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, which is the same processor that runs many of the best Android phones in 2023. The phone has 12GB of RAM, which is more than its predecessor, which only had 8GB. The Magic 5 Pro has 512GB of storage, which is twice as much as the Magic 4 Pro, so it can handle any creative or professional jobs that require a lot of power.
Android users will know how to use the phone’s interface, but there are a few small changes in how big folders and swipe gestures work. When you turn on the Magic 5 Pro for the first time, you’ll see the usual mess of apps, but cleaning up and moving things around is a quick and easy process.
Battery and charging
The Honor Magic 5 Pro has a huge 5100mAh battery that can last for more than 12 hours of heavy use. That’s a little more than the S23 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro Max can do. If you don’t use your Magic 5 Pro very often, I’d say it will probably last you about a day and a half before you need to plug it in.
The phone comes with 66W wired charging and 50W wireless charging, which is a little less than the Magic 4 Pro’s 100W wired charging. However, in my tests, I was still able to charge the phone from 0% to 43% in 15 minutes and to 67% in 30 minutes.
Final Words
The Honor Magic 5 Pro is a nice all-in-one package that can compete with some of the most popular smartphones on the market. It costs just £949 and has 512GB of storage, which is a lot more than most other phones. Even though it doesn’t always hit the mark, there’s a lot to like about this.
Honor Magic 5 Pro review: The good and The bad
The Good
- Vivid, eye-friendly display
- Exceptional rear cameras
The Bad
- No US availability
FAQS
Like so many other great phones, the Honor Magic 5 Pro won’t be coming to the US.
The Honor Magic5 Pro runs the latest version of Android 13 and the latest version of MagicUI, which is similar to EMUI. It has everything you need from Google, so you don’t have to think about anything.