Honor Magic 8 Pro Review

Design

• Very similar look to last year
• Super durable build
• New AI Button added

If there’s one area where things haven’t really changed all that much on the Honor Magic 8 Pro, it’s the design.

The camera module on the back is definitely larger than it was before, but it’s still centre-facing, and even the colour options this year (Black, Sunrise Gold and Sky Cyan) are eerily familiar to the same three found on the Magic 7 Pro.

Admittedly, this isn’t anything new for Honor as the brand tends to focus its efforts elsewhere, but at a time when its flagship is going up against the far more stylish iPhone 17 Pro, Apple definitely has the upper hand here.

Even though the 8 Pro has a sizeable stature, it is slightly thinner than its predecessor at 8.4mm (down from 8.8mm), and it’s even lighter at 213g (down from 223g). In fact, I was quite surprised by how evenly the weight is distributed across the entire chassis, as I never felt any concern that the phone would fall out of my hand, dragged down by its own camera bump.

Although the overall design might have a more functional than stylish aesthetic, the Honor Magic 8 Pro leaves you wanting for nothing when it comes to pure durability.

Not only does it carry a combined IP68, IP69 and IP69K rating for dust and water resistance, but I also saw a representative from Honor deliver an untold amount of punishment to one unfortunate Magic 8 Pro model during a briefing. I can still hear the sounds of the staple gun trying its best to make a mark on the phone’s display, but I didn’t see it make a lick of difference.

I can’t say that I’ve ever subjected any phone in my possession to quite the same level of abuse, but it was reassuring to know that if I did drop my review unit, a cracked screen would be an unlikely result.

In terms of physical inputs, there’s one more button than last year: the AI Button, to be exact. This Camera Control-style push button sits a few ticks below the power button on the right-hand side.

This can be used to trigger one of a handful of apps/modes, and the input itself feels rather tactile, but its presence means the phone can feel a bit right-side-heavy when it comes to physical button placement.

I prefer having the volume slider on the left-hand side, but I recognise that won’t be the case for everyone, and it’s arguably more of a muscle-memory issue after years of using the iPhone.

Screen

• Slightly smaller 6.7-inch display
• Much brighter peak of 6000nits
• Very easy to use outdoors

Unless something catastrophic had taken place, I knew that the display would be the one area where I could instantly count on Honor to deliver an unparalleled experience.

I say this because the Honor 400 has one of the nicest displays I’ve ever used on a smartphone, and that costs about a third of this device, so I was eager to see what a heftier price tag might provide. Thankfully, I was not disappointed.

The 6.71-inch display (slightly smaller than last year’s 6.8-inch variant) is a joy to use. With vibrant colours and contrast thanks to the OLED panel, not to mention the LTPO 120Hz refresh rate, everything just looks great on the Magic 8 Pro. On top of my go-to shows, I’ve been using the phone to finally go back and give Star Wars Visions a look, and the two make for a great pairing.

Providing an animated (and colourful) spin on the Star Wars universe, Visions seeps style at every corner, and the Magic 8 Pro’s display is enchanting enough that I really found myself zoning out and enjoying the episodes at hand, which is never a guarantee when watching something on a smartphone. It’s why I usually prefer a tablet or a TV for anything that isn’t YouTube.

The big change this time around is that the display can now reach a mind-boggling 6000nits of peak brightness, which feels absurd as I’ve only just gotten used to the 5000nits ceiling of the Honor Magic V5.

The benefit, of course, is that when using the phone outdoors, there are no issues whatsoever. When stepping outside for a lunchtime walk, I found it easy to quickly jump between podcasts or various playlists without having to squint against the sunlight, which is always appreciated.

As has been the case for a few years now, Honor goes all in with modes to minimise the negative effects of staring at a phone all day, and that’s still the case with the Magic 8 Pro.

On top of 4320Hz PWM dimming, which minimises the flickering that goes unnoticed by the naked eye but can still have an effect, there are also options you can toggle, such as Circadian Night Display – a mode that downplays harsher colours as you settle in for the night.

As ever, these modes are difficult to quantify in terms of their effectiveness, but I do find the screen a bit easier on the eyes when I’m lying in bed (even though I know that’s the worst time to use a smartphone).

Cameras

• Three rear-facing cameras
• Outstanding low-light performance
• Great detail when zooming in

Although Honor’s cameras have felt more reliable than most, I can’t say that my experience with them has ever felt class-leading. That changes with the Honor Magic Pro 8. On the surface, you’ve got a list of impressive specs with a 50MP wide sensor, a 50MP ultrawide and a beefy 200MP 3.7x telephoto lens on the back, along with a 50MP on the front.

What intrigued me most, however, was all of the talk from Honor’s representatives in the run-up to launch about the phone’s so-called SuperNight Camera (the moniker given to the 200MP telephoto). I was sceptical, but after having put it to the test, this is easily the best night-time photography I’ve encountered on a smartphone.

Whether in walking down dimly lit suburban streets or the roaring hubbub of Central London, the Magic 8 Pro was able to extract incredible amounts of colour in every shot. You can see as much in the scenes where it’s been raining as the reflections in puddles really stand out with a palpable sense of vibrancy.

While less of a technological marvel, the phone’s cameras also bring the heat in the daytime. You can see as much from the pictures I captured down a local canal, which had frozen over in the midst of a cold snap.

There’s a wonderful tint of blue to the ice that just makes each image that bit more visually arresting, and even as the sun started to go down later in the day, the phone captured an impressive amount of dynamic range, keeping everything in focus.

The same applies to the ultrawide camera, which had no issues whatsoever in picking up the same facets as the main sensor.

Even though the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra still rules the roost as the king of zoom, the Magic 8 Pro isn’t all that far behind.

For example, the 10x zoom, despite being a digital crop, can still deliver phenomenal detail when needed. When walking around town, a nearby skyscraper loomed in the distance, but with the 10x activated, I could get a decent look at the contents of the balconies on the top floors.

You can go even further and make use of Honor’s AI Super Zoom, which uses artificial intelligence to craft a better version of an image taken at 100x. The feature was a big part of the 7 Pro’s marketing campaign, but just like how TR’s Mobile Editor Lewis Painter said in his review for the phone, it leaves plenty to be desired, so I don’t recommend using it unless you absolutely need to.

Flip the phone around, and it’s a different story with the front-facing camera, as I found myself drawn to using it more frequently than usual. In terms of offering up pictures I’d actually be happy to upload to social media, the front-facing camera easily passed the test, with plenty of detail and just the right amount of colour correction to add some much-needed colour to my pale complexion during these winter months.

I did notice, however, that the front camera struggled a bit with dimly lit environments, so it doesn’t have quite the same night-time prowess as the rear-facing snappers.

Performance

• All-new Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset
• Strong day-to-day performance
• Doesn’t break a sweat with gaming

Even though it’s not the first phone to come to market with the powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset (that honour goes to the OnePlus 15), Qualcomm’s flagship chip is still new enough that its presence on the Honor Magic 8 Pro is sure to turn some heads, particularly ahead of the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s debut.

It is a bit strange to talk about smartphone performance nowadays because it genuinely feels as though we reached the ideal level of grunt for most users some time ago. Speak to anyone currently using a phone with the Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, and I doubt you’ll hear tales decrying the everyday performance. Rarely did I feel that there was any room for improvement, but now the Elite Gen 5 has convinced me otherwise.

When performing everyday actions like responding to emails in Outlook, reading an article in the Chrome browser or just mindlessly scrolling through social media, everything just feels a bit faster and more efficient than before. It’s not a night-and-day difference, but it is tangible, and I can’t say that I’ve used another smartphone that feels quite so ready for anything I wanted to throw at it.

Where the leap in technology really shines, however, is in the realm of gaming. Call of Duty Mobile is always my go-to testbed, and while I’ve seen countless variations of performance over the years, I can safely say that I’ve never seen the game run quite so well as what I witnessed on the Honor Magic 8 Pro, even trumping the next-level performance I encountered in last year’s Redmagic 10S Pro

I also saw no signs of stuttering when jumping over to the far more graphically demanding Honkai Star Rail. Battles ran like butter, and the whole affair was only elevated due to how bright the screen is. If you are the type of person who prefers playing a game to booting up the Kindle app on your commute, then you’ll appreciate the raw horsepower at play.

Software

• MagicOS 10 definitely has a nicer aesthetic
• Still not quite as seamless as OnePlus or Samsung’s UI
• Honor’s big push on AI feels disappointing

At this point, it’s no secret that Honor has struggled historically in creating an Android overlay that can compete with far more refined options from the likes of Samsung and OnePlus, and while I don’t think that those rankings have changed with the Magic 8 Pro, I can say that MagicOS is a great deal better now that it’s ever been in the past.

Specifically, it’s MagicOS 10 that launches on the Honor Magic 8 Pro, and you can probably tell from a single glance that it borrows more than a few cues from Apple’s Liquid Glass design language.

The icons on the control panel are now translucent, and hints of colour beyond the use of white are quite scarce. I can’t really argue that the whole thing isn’t derivative of what we’ve seen on iOS 26, but as someone who uses an iPhone as their main device, it has helped a great deal with smoothing the wrinkles that come with moving from iOS to Android.

It’s also a smart tweak, but I appreciate that for once, the phone didn’t bombard me with Honor’s own-brand apps on the first page of the homescreen. The whole practice gives me the ick, and I would rather be encouraged to discover them at my own pace, so the fact that they’re moved to page two here is appreciated.

What is a bit more in your face is the Honor AI suite of features, and while there are more things to play around with on the Magic 8 Pro, it’s still a fairly mixed bag. To give Honor its due, I do enjoy using the AI-powered article summary when I’m in a rush, and the AI-infused photo editor can be fun on occasion, but otherwise, the rest of it leaves me perplexed.

AI Memories just seems like a dull app to collect screenshots without any obvious benefit, while the new AI Settings Agent is a solid idea in theory, letting you converse with an AI to quickly change settings on your phone like the volume level or turning on Wi-Fi, but the Agent app has to be on screen for any of this to take place. You can’t be scrolling through Facebook and suddenly converse with the AI Agent, which feels like a strange way of designing the whole thing.

It also doesn’t help that with this being an Android phone, you have quick access to Google Gemini from the get-go, and that’s leaps and bounds ahead of what any other smartphone manufacturer is able to accomplish right now.

I would much rather see Honor remain steadfast in focusing its efforts on tangible upgrades, such as new display tech or expanding the amount of battery capacity that can be squeezed into a phone.

To make accessing its AI easier, Honor has introduced a dedicated AI Button on the phone, but because of how I feel about the onboard AI features, I’ve been primarily using it to open the camera app and then switch between focal lengths by gliding my finger across it. For these moments, the extra button has been quite handy, and given that it can currently be assigned up to three AI shortcuts, I would like to see it expanded to open other apps in the future.

Battery

• Larger 6270mAh cell
• Charging speeds are the same as before
• You can get up to two days of use

Given that the Honor Magic V5 is one of the slimmest foldables around and was able to get me through two days of use at a time, I had fairly lofty expectations for what the company could achieve with both the advancements of silicon carbon technology and the more traditional candybar-style chassis. Thankfully, Honor didn’t let me down.

There’s a larger 6270mAh battery onboard which, I’ll admit, despite being bigger than most is still less than what you can currently find on the OnePlus 15 and the Oppo Find X9 Pro. Those phones boast cells of 7300mAh and 7500mAh capacity respectively.

Even so, the Honor Magic 8 Pro carries enough juice to get most people through two days of use, so long as they’re not going overboard with apps.

As an example, I took the phone away from a charging point at about 7am and listened to about four hours’ worth of podcasts, delved into a combined one hour and 35 minutes of Instagram and Facebook, responded to plenty of WhatsApp messages and squeezed in about 15 minutes of YouTube towards the end of the day.

By about 11:30pm, there was still 62% battery left in the tank, so I certainly had no feelings of anxiety about landing in the red.

Charging is unchanged over the 7 Pro, but that’s no bad thing given that 100W charging and 80W wireless charging are still leaps ahead of what most of the competition has available (it makes the 45W charging of the S25 Ultra seem paltry).

When using a non-Honor 65W adapter, I was able to get from 0% to 50% in just 26 minutes, and a full charge only took about 70 minutes in total. When you’ve only got a limited amount of time in the morning to keep your phone topped up, I can’t envision anyone having any issues with the speed of the Magic 8 Pro – but you’ll need a SuperCharge-branded brick to get those top speeds.

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Should you buy it?