After a successful Magic 5 Pro, Honor returns to the forefront with its new flagship smartphone: the Magic 6 Pro. Discover our test.
Back in 2023. Honor unveils the Honor Magic 5 Pro. Its high-end smartphone, with great performance and excellent photography capabilities. Crowned with the title of “best smartphone of the year” awarded by several specialists, the Magic 5 Pro receives excellent marks from all the editorial staff.
“How to do better?” is certainly the question that the company had to ask itself for its new Honor Magic 6 Pro. We were able to test the smartphone for several weeks in order to answer this famous question: has Honor managed to perpetuate the magic?
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A copied but fragile design
The Honor Magic 6 Pro features a 6.8-inch screen with curved edges, which is no change from the Magic 5 Pro. Unlike its predecessor, the Honor Magic 6 Pro has a back with matte reflections, very pleasant to the touch, but which seems not very durable to us, since several scratches appeared on our test model after a few days. On the back of the smartphone we find the slightly revisited photo block, in the middle of which the various sensors of the phone. This (very) imposing block is quite well arranged since it allows the Magic 6 Pro to be used even when the phone is placed flat on a table (as long as you do not press the upper part of the phone too strongly). ‘screen). It’s a shame unfortunately that its weight is felt a lot, especially when you operate the phone with one hand.
The volume and power buttons are located on the right edge of the Magic 6 Pro. If we would have appreciated having an integrated fingerprint sensor, they react very well to handling and fall perfectly under the thumb.
The front of the Magic 6 Pro is perhaps what is most interesting in its design since we find a selfie sensor placed in the center of the upper edge of the phone and housed in a small pill which clearly reflects like the “Dynamic Island” of the latest iPhones. Called “Magic Capsule” it allows the user to interact with several applications such as Spotify or a timer. If you already know “Dynamic Island”, nothing will surprise you here: Honor copies a function very popular with iOS users and the latter integrates perfectly into the manufacturer’s ecosystem.
On a daily basis, handling the Honor Magic 6 Pro is pleasant. Its matte finished back and curved edges have a lot to do with it. The smartphone, however, remains quite massive and complicated to use with one hand. Its weight of 225 grams, however, remains well distributed throughout the device.
Such a bright, responsive screen
Honor is used to offering high specifications for its high-end smartphones. The Honor Magic 6 Pro screen proves it: 6.8-inch OLED panel with a refresh rate that can vary up to 120 Hz for great fluidity when browsing or playing video games. Viewing content is de facto very pleasant on the screen of the Honor Magic 6 Pro.
In terms of brightness, we are served: the screen of the Honor Magic 6 Pro displays a maximum brightness of up to 5000 nits. This represents almost double the (excellent) screen of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra that we were able to test a few weeks ago. Therefore, you will have no trouble viewing videos, photos or any other content on the Magic 6 Pro. Whether it’s bright sunshine or, on the contrary, you’re in complete ambient darkness, you will have no trouble using the smartphone and distinguishing each element on the screen.
However, we will ask ourselves a small question about the maximum brightness of this screen. Every year, more and more manufacturers announce new brightness records for their smartphone screens. A good resolution on paper, but in reality, the maximum brightness of the Magic 6 Pro could tend to sting our eyes at times and we cannot recommend enough that you activate automatic management in the phone’s settings.
Performances you want, here they are
Obviously the Honor Magic 6 Pro is equipped with the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. Obviously this is one of the most powerful chips currently on the smartphone market. Obviously, the Magic 6 Pro runs your most resource-intensive applications and games with disconcerting ease.
We notably tested the Honor Magic 6 Pro with games like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Asphalt 9. Unsurprisingly, the smartphone is capable of supporting the graphics of the three games at maximum quality. More surprising: we didn’t notice any heating of the device which would cause us to worry about the components or make us let go of the phone from our hands. The Honor Magic 6 Pro therefore stands out as an excellent smartphone for demanding gamers.
Regarding new software features, Honor has focused on several AI-based features. Unfortunately these are not available at the launch of the phone, which is why we were not able to try them.
Excellent photo capabilities as long as you don’t zoom too much
The Honor Magic 6 Pro is equipped with three photo sensors on the back: a 50 Mpx main lens, a 50 Mpx ultra wide angle and a telephoto lens that can zoom optically up to 2.5x and digitally up to in x100.
For everyday shots, it’s difficult to be choosy: the quality is there and the details are numerous. The sharpness is good and the colorimetry is often just right to faithfully reproduce the scenes you capture with the camera. In full backlight, however, the dynamic range has some difficulty capturing the ambient light and several parts of our scene darken, such as the low wall and shrubs in the foreground of the second photo.
The ultra wide angle also does very well even if we sometimes lose detail on certain subjects that are more complicated to capture. The colors generally remain very faithful to reality and there is no digital noise to observe.
The Honor Magic 6 Pro also has in-house AI-based technology to capture moving subjects. Whether it was an animal that was a little too lively or a ball thrown in front of our lens, the results were quite satisfactory and our subject relatively sharp.
Portrait mode is also a success. The Honor Magic 6 Pro manages to identify faces well and apply a bokeh (blur) effect to the background of your scene. The smallest details like beard hair or hair are also well defined. You will only see a clear background in your subjects’ glasses.
At night or when light is scarce, the Honor Magic 6 Pro performs quite well. The photos lose a little quality at the level of the smallest details, but the results still remain very correct and completely usable. The other good news is that the night mode, integrated into the phone, is quick to run and takes no more than a second to capture a photo.
The Honor Magic 6 Pro’s telephoto lens is capable of optical zooming up to 2.5x and “lossless” up to x10. Up to this limit, there is little to complain about: the quality remains generally very good despite some loss of detail as we get closer to x10. Beyond and up to x100, the results are much more approximate and certain faces become real abstract paintings.
Finally, let’s salute the macro mode which allows you to capture subjects very close to the smartphone. This mode has very good quality overall and manages to restore details without too much blur as with this piece of sofa.
A good sound experience
We also wanted to address the audio part of the Honor Magic 6 Pro. The Honor smartphone is notably equipped with two speakers located respectively at the top and below of the phone. We were pleasantly surprised by the latter which are capable of delivering relatively powerful sound and just as long as we do not increase the volume too much.
The speakers of the Honor Magic 6 Pro therefore remain a pleasant little surprise and should allow users to enjoy their favorite music without needing to have a paired Bluetooth speaker.
Surprising autonomy for efficient charging
Honor has not skimped on the means for the autonomy of its Honor Magic 6 Pro. The smartphone is equipped with a 5600 mAh battery, which represents a small improvement compared to the already very good Magic 5 Pro and its 5000 mAh battery. Used for several days of testing as our main smartphone, we used the Magic 6 Pro without feeling a lack of autonomy. We notably tested the phone with classic applications like YouTube, Twitch, Genshin Impact, Gmail, X (formally Twitter) and some photographs.
Unplugged at 8 a.m., the Honor Magic 6 Pro was able to last for two days in a row if we didn’t put too much strain on it when playing video games. An excellent score which allows the smartphone to be among the very good students in terms of autonomy.
The Magic 6 Pro is compatible with fast charging up to 80 W and wireless charging up to 66 W. Unfortunately, Honor is one of the manufacturers who no longer offer a charger in the box of their devices. You will therefore need to equip yourself accordingly. Allow a little less than an hour to fully recharge the Magic 6 Pro with a compatible charger.
Perfectly audible communications
Before being an all-purpose tool, the Honor Magic 6 Pro is a phone. Honor’s latest flagship does an excellent job for communications and our various tests were carried out without problems in listening or understanding us and our interlocutors.
Tested in the middle of particularly noisy environments, the Honor Magic 6 Pro had clear and clear communications. The smartphone attenuates unwanted noise well to ensure quality phone calls.
Our conclusion to the Honor Magic 6 Pro test
What a pleasure to test high-end smartphones from Honor. The firm continues to offer a studied and mastered formula. Whether it’s the performance, the screen or the battery life of the Magic 6 Pro, the smartphone is very pleasant to use on a daily basis. The height of happiness: the latter is always lower in price than premium competition like the S24 Ultra.
We regret that the new features based on AI are not available at the launch of the Magic 6 Pro, but also that the photo block is starting to weigh quite heavily in use. We are already looking forward to seeing what the firm will offer next year to overcome this problem.