Honor Magic 8 Pro review: a stunning zoom snapper, but left behind in other areas

Introduction

To be in the running for the the best phone title these days means getting up increasingly early. Most of 2026’s existing big hitters actually started doing the rounds late last year, so while Honor is setting out its stall before Samsung can debut new Galaxy flagships, the Magic 8 Pro still has its work cut out.

Fitting the latest Snapdragon silicon, going all-in on AI, and having an even stronger photography focus than the outgoing Honor Magic 7 Pro should turn some heads. So will the supermodel good looks and class-leading durability.

The £1099 asking price in the UK (Honor still doesn’t sell smartphones in North America) almost bumps it into the ‘ultra’ bracket, though. Can the Magic 8 Pro outperform the rivals that got here a few months ago?

Design & build: subtle evolution

Fair play to Honor for sticking with the same giant circular camera island as the outgoing Magic 7 Pro. While that phone was almost a face in the crowd, the Magic 8 Pro stands out a little more now because rivals have largely mixed up their styling. It doesn’t stick rigidly to 2026’s flagship phone styling trends, with front and rear glass that’s ever-so-slightly curved at the edges. The screen isn’t dogged by light reflections as a result, but it did make the handset feel a bit comfier to hold than fully-flat alternatives like the Oppo Find X9 Pro.

Being smaller than its predecessor in all three dimensions helps here, as does being 10g lighter. This is still a pretty hefty phone, but one that’s easier to wield one-handed than a Pixel 10 Pro XL or iPhone 17 Pro Max. It’s officially tougher than both those rivals, with IP68, IP69 and IP69K resistance ratings (though I can’t say my tech really ever encounters high pressure water jets) and Honor’s own Nanocrystal Shield glass that can reportedly survive drops from 2m. My review sample has so far gone unscathed.

I’m a fan of my review unit’s Sky Cyan colour. It shifts from almost silver to baby blue depending on how the light hits the frosted glass, which does a great job of fending off fingerprints. Sunrise Gold is the other highlight, or there’s a more basic black if you’d rather stay incognito. The camera island’s knurled edge is the only real design flourish, with Honor even simplifying the power button compared to last year. A shame the CE information is still slapped on the back, though, as it spoils the otherwise minimal look.

The big new addition for 2026 is the pressure-sensitive AI key on the phone’s right side, which acts as a camera app shortcut, shutter button and zoom dial. Like every phone I’ve tried with a button like this, it sits too far up to reach naturally for landscape photos. It can’t change shooting modes or swap between lenses like Apple’s Camera Control, but it does double as a way to wake Honor’s AI Memories app. It’s a hub that summarises and stores screenshots, a bit like the ones seen on recent Oppo/OnePlus, Motorola and Nothing phones, but so far it hasn’t proved particularly insightful.

Honor remains one of just a couple of Android brands with secure facial recognition. I love being able to authenticate banking apps with a glance, though that’s not to say the ultrasonic under-display fingerprint sensor is in any way sluggish to detect digits. I’m less enthused about the pill-shaped selfie camera cutout, which is very Apple-esque.

The integrated IR blaster occasionally proved handy, so Honor gets a thumbs up for keeping it on board – they’re a real rarity on phones sold outside of China.

Screen & sound: shine on

There was never any doubt Honor would slap a flagship-grade display inside the Magic 8 Pro, but I didn’t expect it to have shrunk in size. You’re getting a 6.71in OLED here, down from 6.8in in the old phone, though I’m not complaining; the 2808×1256 resolution is so imperceptibly lower you’d never notice without a microscope, and it’s not so much of a palm-stretcher anymore.

The LTPO panel can dip as low as 1Hz for maximum power saving when showing static content – handy if, like me, you use the always-on display mode – and cranks right the way up to 120Hz for delightfully smooth scrolling and rapid motion in games. It reacts fast enough to movement that I never felt the need to force it to 120Hz 24/7.

Honor’s claimed 6000 nits peak would make the Magic 8 Pro the brightest smartphone I’ve ever tested, if only for a small portion of the screen and when displaying HDR content. That’s 1000 nits higher than last year’s effort. Real-world shine isn’t nearly so strong, but it comfortably matches the best smartphones for outdoor visibility. Dolby Vision footage has real wow factor, with dramatic highlights and deep areas of shadow.

Of course contrast is impeccable, given it’s an OLED, and black levels are as deep as it gets. I can’t fault the viewing angles, either. Colours are authentic in the Normal preset, but Vivid dials things up a notch without taking photos and videos too far from lifelike territory.

You’re locked out of some of the more advanced colour temperature sliders when using any of Honor’s eye comfort features, of which there are plenty. The motion sickness relief and 4320Hz dimming are the standouts, while the eye strain defocus setting tweaks text and colours at the edge of the screen to make content seem further away than it actually is, giving your retinas some relief.

The stereo speaker setup compliments the screen nicely, with decent volume on tap and a fine tonal balance. Honor has been very competitive on this front for a few years now, and the Magic 8 Pro doesn’t let the side down.

Cameras: ready for my close-up

Honor hasn’t ripped up the rear camera rulebook for this year’s Magic flagship, with just a few tweaks to the formula established by the outgoing Magic 7 Pro. You’re still getting a 50MP lead lens, huge 200MP zoom, and a 50MP ultrawide with macro-friendly autofocus abilities, all backed by the firm’s AI-assisted image processing algorithms.

Now though, the main snapper has a fixed f/1.6 aperture rather than a variable one, and its lens is a slightly wider 23mm. The telephoto also gets true 85mm magnification, rather than the Magic 7’s odd sensor cropping setup. That should give it a major lead over the OnePlus 15 and its 50MP zoom, particularly in low light.

Daylight performance can be outstanding at times, with the wide-angle delivering impressive amounts of detail and lots of dynamic range, courtesy of Honor’s HDR processing. They’re comfortably up there with the best mainstream cameraphones.

Colours can be slightly warmer than reality, but in a way that’ll probably please the majority of users. Most of my snaps could’ve gone straight to Instagram without any editing. The returning Natural, Vibrant and Authentic colour modes let you quickly dial things down if you like.

I would’ve liked to see better consistency across all three lenses, with the ultrawide in particular not always able to match the other two for contrast or colour balance. This was true last year, and any improvements are only iterative. It can still squeeze in a huge amount of a given scene, though, and doesn’t skimp on details.

Macro snaps are handled well, whether using the automatic mode to shift into the ultrawide when you get especially close to a subject, or going manual with the telephoto. There’s lots of natural bokeh on display, while keeping the subject sharp.

The Portrait mode’s edge detection was largely successful too, only getting caught out by the thinnest of stray hairs. Honor’s collab with French portrait specialist studio Harcourt returns, but I spent more time using the Magic Color film presets. They’re a bit like film simulations on a Fujifilm camera, mimicking the look of analogue film. They can transform a shot with next to no effort, and are just a few taps away from the main camera UI.

The telephoto lens instantly impressed me with how stable it was when zoomed in. Some algorithmic heavy lifting using the 5-axis optical image stabilisation makes it much easier to get extreme magnification while handheld, at which point the phone captures strikingly detailed shots. Colours are well judged, and dynamic range is maintained too.

Look closely and you can see how Honor’s underlying image processing is working hard to keep everything looking crisp. The way it gives you sharp object edges but smoothed-out textures can feel a little unnatural at times, even before you pinch in enough to trigger the AI Zoom. On the Magic 7 Pro this would controversially inject objects that weren’t really there in reality, but Honor seems to have improved the model now, so results appear more true-to-life. It doesn’t always get it right – this is still a phone sensor, even if it does have a huge pixel count, with text being a particular challenge – but can make the difference between a usable snap at 30-60x magnification.

Low-light shots reveal unreal amounts of surface detail and an ability to capture extreme darkness alongside bright highlights from artificial lights. Cityscapes look astonishingly good across all three lenses, though it’s easily the telephoto that puts in the best performance – and the overly bright scenes aren’t always true-to-life, if that’s what you’re after.

Fast moving subjects are more of a challenge, but not impossible. I used the motion-sensing capture mode to freeze Formula One cars in place, without introducing a load of unwanted image noise.

That said, I did notice the white balance get thrown off by certain light sources, and the image processing quirks that could be mild during the day are more obvious here. Any gradation visible on the Las Vegas Sphere has been smoothed away, while halos can be seen around more distant buildings.

Consistency is the issue here: some snaps came out brilliantly but others struggled with the conditions. Rivals can be relied on to be at their best more often. The differences may be minor, but could be the reason big photography fans head elsewhere.

Honor hasn’t forgotten to stuff a load of AI-accelerated image editing tools in the Magic 8 Pro, either. It can upscale, cut out subjects, erase background distractions, and algorithmically expand tightly cropped images. You’ll eventually be able to do it all using your voice, but right now it’s a handy set of tools if you’d rather not head into Photoshop.

Software experience: glassy-eyed

Honor’s custom Android skin has always had a few Apple ‘homages’ – the Dynamic Island-like Magic Capsule has surrounded the pill-shaped selfie camera cutout for a few generations now, for example. But MagicOS 10 is a blatant attempt to ape iOS 26’s liquid glass look. From the lock screen PIN entry to the quick settings menu and home screen widgets, there’s no shortage of transparency effects. It’s all surface level, though. None of Honor’s preloaded apps (of which there are plenty, with alternatives to Google’s Notes, Calendar, gallery and files apps) get the same treatment.

There are a few nice touches, like being able to stack widgets for a cleaner homescreen that doesn’t sacrifice functionality. Magic Portal, a pull-out sidebar that makes dragging and dropping text or images between apps, speeds up multitasking pretty well. Naturally Gemini is on board for voice assistance.

Honor’s own artificial intelligence ambitions have evolved a bit from last year’s audio transcription and text summaries. Holding down the dedicated AI Key gives you a choice of Google’s Circle to Search or AI Memories, a screenshot storage toolbox similar to the ones I’ve seen on recent Nothing, OnePlus and Motorola models. It can analyse and summaries web pages too, though I’d often find it would just regurgitate the EU cookies notification on some sites. There’s definitely more work to be done here.

In better news Honor has really stepped up its long-term software commitments in 2025, promising seven years of new Android versions and seven years of security patches for its flagships. That puts the Magic 8 Pro on par with Google and Samsung, currently the front runners for shoppers looking to eke out the longest time possible between phone upgrades. The firm isn’t always first with new Android releases, but knowing they’ll be on the way eventually is very welcome indeed.

Performance & battery life: snap to it

With rivals having now set the early bar for Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 performance, the Magic 8 Pro arrives with something to prove. Honor has paired Qualcomm’s latest chipset with either 12 or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, depending on where you are in the world; expect a 12/512GB configuration to be the norm in the UK and Western Europe.

It’s a potent combo, unsurprisingly, scoring very well in synthetic tests even using the phone’s default performance mode. The Poco F8 Ultra – which costs considerably less for the same chipset – scored higher in some benchmarks, but not by a lot, and the Honor came out on top in others. It easily bests the Dimensity 9500 in the Oppo Find X9 Pro and there’s a decent jump from the outgoing Magic 7 Pro too.

In real-world use, this is a flagship phone, so delivers exactly the sort of speedy input response, app load times and general zippiness you’d expect. Split-screen multitasking was never an issue for me either. Gaming performance was equally top-tier, scoring highly in 3DMark and running newer, graphically intensive games like Red Dead Redemption pretty much flawlessly. Sure, it warms up quickly here, but I didn’t think it got stupidly hot after 20 minutes of play.

It’s a shame, then, that the Magic 8 Pro underwhelms on the battery front. Hard to believe we’re now in a world where a 6270mAh battery is almost underwhelming, but here we are. This is a big step back from what Oppo and OnePlus have managed to bring to Europe and North America this year, and especially annoying when Honor sells a version in China with a more competitive 7200mAh cell.

This is comfortably an all-day phone, even when gaming or using the cameras a whole bunch, which puts it ahead of Samsung and Google – but I couldn’t stretch the Honor out to the business end of a second day like I could with the Find X9 Pro or OnePlus 15.

The firm does pull things back with and wireless charging speeds that are particularly nippy, even if you’ve got to supply your own 100W-ready USB adapter or 80W wireless charging coil. The former is good for a complete refuel in under 40 minutes.

Honor Magic 8 Pro verdict

Honor has basically taken everything that made the Magic 7 Pro such a compelling flagship and turned it all up another notch. The brighter screen, bigger battery, dedicated AI/camera key and improved zoom lens are all highlights. Secure facial recognition continues to set the firm’s phones out from the Android competition (Google Pixel aside) and there’s no denying performance is absolutely blistering.

So why does the Magic 8 Pro get a lower score? Simply put, the 2026 competition is fierce. Gigantic battery capacities are becoming the norm, and rivals are doing their own thing with software rather than just rehashing Apple’s latest design trends. Serious snappers are also now starting to demand lens add-ons and camera grips, however gimmicky, to go with their new handset.

While it can usually take fantastic photos at all zoom levels, Honor hasn’t fully addressed the inconsistent colour balance between lenses or the over-processed, AI-like smoothing that makes some shots look just a bit artificial. That means an Oppo Find X9 Pro remains my top pick for smartphone snappers, while the more affordable OnePlus 15 is the better all-rounder.

Honor Magic 8 Pro technical specifications