Honor Magic V5

Introduction

The Honor Magic V5 isn’t just a great phone, it’s a big win for raising the bar yet again amongst the evergrowing crowd of book-style foldables.

If you’ve ever been tempted to hop aboard the foldable bandwagon, whether that be book-style, flip phone or even tri-fold, I honestly don’t think that there’s been a better time to upgrade.

Between Samsung finally giving fans the updates they’ve wanted in the Galaxy Z Flip 7 and the Galaxy Z Fold 7, not to mention amazing foldables from OnePlus, Motorola and more, there’s a solid library of choice to pick from.

With that context, the Honor Magic V5 certainly had its work cut out in order to stand as a viable alternative to the rest of the competition, but after using the phone for several weeks, I can easily say that this is the book-style foldable that I would recommend first above all others.

Design

• Just 8.8mm thick
• Feels sturdy, despite the slim frame
• IP58/IP59 certified

The first thing that genuinely shocked me was the size of the Magic V5. Having spent a good amount of time using the incredible albeit very chunky OnePlus Open, holding the V5 in my hand felt like some kind of technical wizardry that my brain wasn’t quite ready for.

At just 8.8mm thick when closed, and weighing only 217g in total, picking the V5 up off a table feels near identical to doing the same with a traditional candybar style phone. Until using this device, I had just assumed that the trade-off with foldable phones was that you had to deal with them threatening to burst out of almost every pocket because of their size, but that’s just simply not the case here. I will say that it is diminished ever so slightly by the quite protruding camera module, but it never overtook my admiration for what’s been achieved.

Arguably more impressive is the fact that, despite its slim build, the Magic V5 is still a durable phone. In the entire time that I’ve been using it, the phone has managed to avoid picking up any scratches or signs of use – I even took it down to Brighton beach at one point, knowing full well that sand can be disastrous for foldables, but there’s no sign of wear and tear beyond a bit of dust collecting around the edges of the inner screen, and some fingerprints on the outer display. The phone is IP58/IP59 certified, so if it does come into contact with some water, so long as it’s not complete submersion, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

The phone also has no issues with staying open at a 90-degree angle (or just slightly wider) when used like a laptop for apps such as YouTube or a handful of games. I have had this issue with other foldables in the past, where they refused to stay in the position that I unfolded them to, but that’s not the case here.

There are four colour options available: Black (like the review unit), Dawn Gold, Reddish Brown and Ivory White. Strangely enough, the Ivory White model is the only one that boasts the 8.8mm frame, as the other three models are just slightly bigger at 9mm, but that’s such a minimal amount that it doesn’t really make a difference. I will say that the Black option is a bit dull and without any major visual flare, so if I were you, I’d opt for one of the other colourways for something a bit more exciting.

Screens

• The outer display is much the same as before
• There’s now a parity in brigtness between the two screens
• Very easy to read outdoors

If there’s been one consistent theme in the world of foldables, it’s an effort to make the outer displays just as much fun to use as their inner alternatives. Just take a look back at the original Galaxy Fold – it feels strange now to think that that massively compromised outer display, with its super thick bezels, was ever acceptable, but the continuous push to innovate has led us here, to the point where the V5’s outer display replicates the experience of using a normal phone brilliantly.

At 6.43-inches, the outer display is just the right size to use with one hand and comfortably reach all parts of the screen with your thumb, which certainly can’t be said for the devices that get closer to 6.8-inches. It’s a great display but admittedly one that hasn’t changed all too much to the one that’s available on the Honor Magic V3 – instead, it’s the inner display that’s received the bulk of the changes this time around.

Now, the outer and inner displays finally have brightness parity at 5000 nits (the inner previously topped out at 1800 nits), which just makes for a much better experience overall. On that aforementioned trip to the beach, I ended up taking a ton of pictures with the use of both displays and I found it very easy to see what I was doing and jump between various camera modes, even though the sun was out in full force.

That inner display is also ever-so slightly larger at 7.95-inches as opposed to 7.92 on the Magic V5, and even though that’s a minimal amount, it is one of the best internal displays I’ve ever used on a folding phone. It’s just the right size for a bit of multitasking and typing on the go (which I’ve been doing plenty of on various train journeys over the course of this review), and the lightweight nature of the phone makes using that larger display over long periods of time a comfortable experience overall. The inner crease is also barely visible, even when looking at the phone from a sideways angle, so it never got in the way of my enjoyment.

Cameras

• The telephoto and ultrawide have been given a major boost
• All three rear-facing cameras perform brilliantly
• Autofocus can sometimes be a bit hit or miss

Given that Honor was keen to highlight just how slim the Magic V5 is compared to the competition, I fully expected that the camera array would end up being the one area that suffered in the attempt to keep the thickness of the phone down.

It’s not an uncommon precedent given that, until recently, the one area where Galaxy Z Fold phones paled in comparison to their more affordable Galaxy S Ultra sibling was in the camera department, but I’m glad to report that the Magic V5 suffers from no such issue.

Even just to read the specs for these cameras, you know that the Magic V5 means business. On the back you’ve got a triple-camera array, featuring a 50MP main sensor, a 64MP periscope telephoto and a 50MP ultra-wide lens.

That main sensor is more or less the same as what the Magic V3 had, but it’s the telephoto and the ultra-wide that have had a major upgrade (previously 50MP and 40MP respectively), paving the way for a more robust camera experience overall wherein the Magic V5 rarely failed to keep up.

During that trip to Brighton, I was glad to have the Magic V5 to hand as it paired perfectly with the fact that the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

With all that natural light available, colours came across beautifully in all the shots from that day, whether it be walking around the luscious green fields near the University of Sussex, or perusing one of the many independent bookstores that you can find down The Lanes.

This level of colour and detail only continued when I got back to London and took a handful of shots around the Southbank as the sun began to set, and then later at the Golden Jubilee bridge when darkness had truly descended.

For both of these occasions, the Magic V5 still held its own, with the zoomed-in shot of a block of flats particularly drawing my attention for its mix of blues and yellows, showing a ton of range even though the sensors had to do plenty of heavy lifting.

Subject photos also look great, regardless of whether or not you’re shooting in portrait mode. The one thing I will say is that the autofocus could be a bit hit and miss.

For instance, I was able to grab a picture of a pigeon taking flight without issue, but grabbing a shot of a very patient dog sometimes favoured the background as the point of interest, so I had to take multiple shots to make sure I had one worth sharing.

There are two front cameras available on either screen, both of which use the same 20MP sensor. Just like with the main cameras, both of these cameras do a respectable job during the day and night, so you can grab a great selfie in a pinch.

Even though you can use the rear-facing cameras to face a selfie, whilst the cover display acts as a viewfinder, I find the experience to be far too cumbersome compared to the ease of using a flip phone for the same purpose.

Performance

• Snapdragon 8 Elite paves the way for top-tier performance
• 12GB RAM and 512GB storage included as standard
• Gaming performance is solid, and works well on the larger display

If you happened to glance at the fact that the Honor Magic V5 packs the wonderfully efficient Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset under the hood, you may have already guessed that performance isn’t going to be an issue.

Just like with all the other Snapdragon 8 Elite phones that I’ve tested, like the Redmagic 10S Pro, the Magic V5 runs brilliantly from day to day with all tasks, including streaming video, responding to emails and most importantly for a phone like this, multitasking.

The experience is only bolstered by the inclusion of 16GB RAM and a massive 512GB of storage, which has saved me from needing to constantly rely on cloud storage for a handful of files.

As I mentioned, multitasking is the key draw of any book-style foldable phone, and when I’ve been making use of the feature to have a Google Doc open on one side and Outlook or Google Chrome open on the other, the process of typing while researching has never felt more seamless on a mobile device. Even when bringing a small WhatsApp pop-up into the mix to respond to messages, I never saw the performance waver.

In the brief pockets of time that I had to indulge in a spot of mobile gaming, I found the experience to be superb, and one that’s further elevated by the larger internal display. Diving into a round of Team Deathmatch in Call of Duty Mobile, all of the textures looked fantastic and the game ran really well, without any signs of lag holding up the proceedings. Playing on the larger display also gave me more insight into the battlefield as I could easily pick up on movement further off in the distance, giving me a slight advantage. 

As an aside, I also want to draw attention to the fingerprint sensor, which is built into the Magic V5’s power button. After giving up on the dreadful under-display fingerprint reader of the Redmagic 10S Pro, having a physical alternative that responds so quickly and without error, just makes me wish that all manufacturers would simply embrace having this unlock method tied to a physical button instead of having it sit under the display.

Software

• MagicOS is still too cumbersome the moment you boot up the phone
• The phone does offer stylus support
• Honor AI is also a mixed bag

At this point, it’s almost a complete homerun for the Magic V5 but, if you’ve ever used an Honor phone in the past then you’ll know that software is unfortunately the company’s Achilles heel.

To Honor’s credit, its MagicOS Android overlay is definitely a lot better than even a few years back when I reviewed the Honor Magic Vs.

There’s a nice amount of customisation available to tweak things to your liking, and I love having quick access to visual tweaks like Honor’s Eye Comfort mode and the dedicated eBook mode which I highly recommend if you enjoy using the Kindle app on your smartphone. The problem is that, right from the jump, Honor is just desperate for you to use its own-brand apps.

From the moment you set the phone up, the homescreen is filled with Honor apps that just make the experience cluttered and end up costing you time as you try to get rid of them to clear up space. It would be so much more efficient to give you the option during the set-up of which Honor apps you would actually like to install. The experience is only compounded further by the glut of AI-infused features.

All labelled under the umbrella of Honor AI, these features range from generative writing to deepfake detection, and while I will say that some of them work better here than they did during my time with the Honor 400 (particularly the AI subtitles), I would much prefer it if Honor could focus its attention on cleaning up the core software experience first.

To my mind, OnePlus’ OxygenOS serves as the better example of how to do things, with constant software refinements and only a small smattering or AI features that actually achieve what they set out to do.

At the very least, the fact that the Magic V5 works with stylus inputs puts it ahead of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 which has opted to do away with S Pen compatibility, which is a big miss when you consider that productivity features are the key allure of a phone like this to begin with.

Battery Life

• Proper two-day battery life
• 66W charging
• 50W wireless charging

Thankfully, any issues I have with the software on the Honor Magic V5 are quickly forgotten about when the battery life is factored in.

This is, by far, some of the best battery life I’ve come across in any phone, let alone a book-style foldable. The phone benefits from a 5820mAh cell which uses silicon carbon to help it fit into such a small chassis, and from my experience, it is perfectly plausible to get up to two-days of use from a single charge here.

On one of the testing days, I was able to get from 9:55 to just after midnight with about 54% left in the tank, and that was after an hour and a half of social media, 30 minutes of web browsing, 30 minutes of messaging, taking plenty of pictures, working on Google docs and even using the phone as a hotspot to connect my iPad. To me, that’s more than what I’d typically use a phone for in a day, but the fact that it still didn’t push the battery below the halfway mark shows just how much is achievable here.

You’ve got plenty of charging options as well, with 66W charging and 50W wireless charging. On the front (and using a 65W charging brick), it only took 30 minutes to get the phone from a dead battery back to 50%, and a total of 70 minutes to reach the full 100%. Given that you can easily get through a day’s worth of use with about half of the full battery, this is a huge win for anytime you’re in a rush and you only have a limited amount of time to charge the phone.

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