Our Verdict
The Honor Magic6 Pro is a flagship phone well equipped for 2024, with stellar cameras, a vivid display, and plenty of performance power. MagicOS might be a little unoriginal, and having to buy a charging plug capable of 80W is annoying, but otherwise, this is easily one of the best phones of the year.
- Incredible cameras
- Top tier performance
- Stylish design options
- Vivid display
- Great battery life
- No charger plug for 80W charging
- Fingerprint sensor can be tricky
- MagicOS a little unoriginal
It’s already been a big year for flagship phones, with the arrival of new high-end devices from Samsung, Xiaomi, and more massive smartphone brands. Now, we’ve got another one on our hands, the Honor Magic6 Pro. Not to be outdone by its competitors, the Magic6 Pro has plenty to offer, including snazzy AI features, an incredible camera setup, and top-tier performance thanks to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset.
Still, all that looks good on paper, but how does the Honor Magic6 Pro shape up in day-to-day use, or, more importantly for a site like this, how does it handle mobile gaming? In this review, we delve into all the most important elements of the phone, from the performance to the design and everything in between. How does it fair compared to the devices on our list of the best 5G phones? There’s only one way to find out. Let’s get into it.
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Price and availability
As with Xiaomi, the big problem with Honor phones for our readers in the US is that they’re not officially on sale in the region. Still, if you really want one, you can find sellers on eBay, with listings varying from $900-1,400. If you’re reading this from the UK, you can pick one up for around £1,099, depending on which retailer you use. There are two different colorways to choose from, Epi Green and Black, but we’ll get into them in greater detail a bit later on.
Specs
Features
Like other Android brands, Honor utilizes its own Android OS skin, MagicOS, wherever possible. The latest version is MagicOS 8.0, and while it’s not necessarily a bad OS, it lacks a little in the originality department. It feels a bit too much like iOS for my liking. Still, it gets the job done, and I had no real issues with the software while testing the phone.
The Magic6 Pro wouldn’t be a smartphone in 2024 without some AI features. Much of the generative AI tools on this phone relate to its cameras, such as its AI motion capture sensors, but there’s also Magic Portal, which intelligently suggests what to do with text and images. For instance, if you receive a message with an address in it, Magic Portal suggests it’s time to hop on Google Maps and find your way there. It’s not quite Circle to Search, but it’s pretty useful. This handset is also capable of AI eye-tracking, but it’s a feature we haven’t seen as Honor is yet to roll it out worldwide.
The Magic6 Pro features all the security tools you’d expect from a modern flagship. However, I keep having problems with fingerprint recognition. This is a bit of a recurring theme as I had some of the same troubles in our Porsche Edition Honor Magic V2 RSR review, but it’s very temperamental on both devices. It doesn’t seem to register unless I plant my thumb in an extremely specific location. The facial recognition is fantastic, so I use that instead, but that safety feature is also a little less secure, so I’d prefer to use fingerprint recognition where possible. I’m unsure whether Honor could address this in an update, but I’d certainly appreciate it.
Design
The Honor Magic6 Pro is a slick-looking bit of kit. It’s bigger and heavier than your average smartphone, weighing around 229g, but it’s hardly a behemoth. If anything, the size and weight add to the premium feel. You don’t feel undersold here at all, plus, and it’s a big plus, the phone is comfortable in the hand. I might be a little biased here as I have larger hands than most, but those extra centimeters go a long way in making the display easier to engage with.
The material on the back of the phone depends on which colorway you opt for. I’ve got the Epi Green version, which feels very luxurious with its shiny metal sides and vegan leather back. The alternative option, the plain ol’ Black, looks just as elegant but doesn’t stand out from the smartphone crowd quite as much as the one I’m using. Either way, while there are only two options, Honor has something for the crowd who like a borderline garish design and those who want something a bit more understated. I’ll stick with garish, thank you very much.
Still, I have to say that the design of the Magic6 Pro is a little divisive. I showed my review unit off to the team at Pocket Tactics, and not everyone was a fan of the massive camera bump on the back or the Epi Green colorway. We’ve included plenty of pictures in this review so you can get a better look, but it’s worth checking out the alternative Black colorway if the lime green is putting you off. If it’s the camera bump putting you off, I can’t help you there.
I can’t get through this section without mentioning that this phone has an IP68 dust and waterproof rating. That is a big deal. While you expect it from a flagship, not all brands deliver on this front, but it’s pivotal. If you’re spending this much money on a phone, you want to know that it’s as durable as possible without looking like a rugged phone. The Magic6 Pro has you covered in that regard.
Display
The Honor Magic6 Pro boasts a wonderful 6.8-inch LTPO OLED screen, making anything you use it for, whether it be gaming or video content, shine. With minute bezels and a curved edge display, there’s plenty of screen space, and a dynamic refresh rate of up to 120Hz makes anything that takes up that screen space gloriously vivid and high definition. It’s a fantastic display, and if Honor wants to take on the big dogs like Apple and Samsung, this screen is worthy of the competition.
A vibrant display is all well and good, but it’s nothing to write home about if looking at it for more than fifteen minutes is a fast track to a brightness-induced headache. Fortunately, the Magic6 Pro has you covered here, with 4320Hz PWM dimming kicking in on low-brightness mode to offer your retinas a reprieve. It’s not a game changer, but it’s useful when using the phone at night.
Whatever you do, be sure not to turn the brightness up to the limit in a dimly lit scenario. The 5,000 nits peak is incredibly bright. It might be unnecessarily bright, but we can’t blame Honor for the industry-wide trend of trying to offer the brightest and most colorful screen. Fortunately, there is an automatic brightness feature, and it’s one of the better ones I’ve used, with the Magic6 Pro capable of dialing down or boosting the lights depending on the situation.
Camera
Now, onto the reason I wanted to try out the Magic6 Pro in the first place: the camera. I’ve heard so many good things about what Honor has to offer here, and even from just a quick look at MWC 2024, I knew I had to test it out myself. In this area, the brand and device are worthy of all the plaudits. The camera setup on this thing is just fantastic.
The full camera setup consists of a 50 MP wide primary, plus 180 MP periscope telephoto and 50 MP ultrawide lenses on the back, with a 50 MP selfie camera on the front. While the camera can zoom up to 100x, it gets a bit dicey in terms of quality above 10x. Still, the 10x zoom quality is wildly impressive, offering shots as clear as a mid-ranger or the last generation of flagship phones from much further away. It’s the full package, and using my fluffy camera model, the image below displays just how much detail the Magic6 Pro can capture.
It’s difficult to pick a fault with the camera. It handles video as well as still images, and its low-light photos are better quality than some smartphones that herald themselves on their ability in poor lighting. If I had to pick something out, I’d say that the AI enhancement is sometimes a little obvious, especially if you’re utilizing the zoom function. Still, I’d rather have something obviously edited than fuzzy and unusable.
Performance
As you might expect from a fancy flagship phone in 2024, this thing can handle basically anything you throw at it. Whether it be your day-to-day tasks like messaging and browsing the internet or something more demanding like playing games or recording videos, the Magic6 Pro is ready and waiting.
To properly test out the gaming performance of this handset, I did what I always do and booted up Honkai Star Rail, an already demanding game, on the highest graphical settings. How did the Magic6 Pro handle this? No problem, barely an inconvenience. The animations are smooth at 60 FPS, even at double time, and there’s no lag or stuttering. It’s scarily capable and a testament to why gaming phones are not quite as popular as they used to be. Who needs a gaming-specific phone when a flagship like this can do it all with better cameras and a sleeker design?
Oh, and it doesn’t get hot. Yes, you heard that right. This thing just doesn’t get hot. Or at least it didn’t in our testing. Even after an hour of Honkai Star Rail, plus a bit of Asphalt 9 and Diablo Immortal, at the highest settings, the back panel didn’t even feel remotely warm. It’s worth reiterating how much of a big deal that is. When I first sat down with the Magic6 Pro, I didn’t think it would be a solid pick for our list of the best gaming phones, but after a couple of weeks with the device, I’m seriously considering it. If you combine the stellar performance and heat dissipation with the 12GB of RAM and ample 256GB of storage, that’s the lowest available capacity, by the way, it’s clear that Honor is offering a true powerhouse here.
Battery
With a 5,600mAh battery, 80W wired charging, and 66W wireless charging, the Magic6 Pro is akin to the Bee Gees in that it is always staying alive. Seriously, the battery power here is something to behold. It can manage a full day of relentless use or two days, if not maybe a little more, of occasional use with no issues whatsoever. While the 5,600mAh battery is just 500mAh larger than the handset’s predecessor, it feels much more reliable, and those are the kind of generational upgrades we’re always looking out for.
While offering fast charging speeds is great, this handset only comes with a charging cable, and no wall plug means you either have to own a plug capable of 80W charging or buy one separately. I only have a 20W plug, so charging is nowhere near as fast as it could be if Honor bundled the plug with the device. Again, the brand isn’t really to blame for this trend, that’s Apple, but I’d prefer it if the device came with all the equipment necessary to charge it at the fastest possible rate.
With that caveat out of the way, let’s get into the charging speeds. With all the right equipment, this device can reportedly charge from 0-100% in less than an hour. Without the right equipment, it takes longer, but it still isn’t slow, just closer to two hours for the full charge or one hour for 50% with a standard 20W plug. If, like me, you stick your phone on to charge overnight, you won’t miss the extra charging potential, but it could be a dealbreaker for some who don’t want to have to fork out for a separate 80W wall plug.
Should you buy the Honor Magic6 Pro?
If you’re looking for a flagship phone with fantastic cameras, incredible performance, and one of the best displays on the market, there’s little reason for us not to recommend the Honor Magic6 Pro. It’s a worthy opponent for the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus and Xiaomi 14 and is easily one of the best smartphones of 2024 so far. We know that’s a lot of hyping this phone up, but it really is that good.
There are, of course, caveats. MagicOS still has a bit of catching up to do with some of the other Android operating systems, the fingerprint sensor could be more accurate and receptive, and the fact you can’t charge at maximum speeds without picking up a separate accessory is pretty irritating. However, outside of the missing wall plug, Honor can address the fingerprint sensor issue and MagicOS’ shortcomings in future updates, so it’s hardly enough to put me off the phone for good.
Alternatives
If we haven’t sold you on the Honor Magic6 Pro, check out our suggestions for alternatives below.
Xiaomi 14
During my time at MWC 2024, the only smartphone that impressed me quite as much as the Honor Magic6 Pro was the Xiaomi 14 series. The base model, the Xiaomi 14, is in a similar price range to the Honor device, and both offer fantastic battery life, incredible cameras, and elegant designs. It’s difficult to divide the two, though the Xiaomi 14 might be a little more understated in terms of how it looks and a little more complicated when it comes to smartphone photography.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus
Another obvious alternative to the Honor Magic6 Pro is one of its biggest rivals, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus. While it’s hard to separate the two, Samsung’s OS is a little more streamlined than Honor’s, while the Honor phone is slightly better at handling performance-intensive tasks. This decision comes down to your subjective opinions on both phones. If your budget isn’t an issue, it’s also worth checking out our Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review, with our thoughts on Samsung’s premier flagship.