Honor 200 Pro Review – Powerful Portrait Photography Phone for Malaysia Tested

Recently launched in Malaysia alongside its more affordable sibling the Honor 200, the Honor 200 Pro is an interesting design that straddles the line between a flagship and a midrange phone with a highly specialised rear camera array capturing superior portraiture compared to the competition.

We managed to get a sample earlier for testing ahead of its official Malaysia launch where it yielded rather unusual results. Here’s our Honor 200 Pro review where we share if this portrait-centric phone is worth your money.

Honor 200 Pro Review – Performance and Benchmarks

In terms of hardware, our Honor 200 Pro review sample comes with the new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset built on a 4nm process with a 1+4+3 processor configuration running under the hood that’s a step faster than the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor that was released late last year. While both are built on a 4nm process, the newer Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor is clocked slightly faster across all its cores.  

Paired with the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset is 12GB of fast LPDDR5X RAM accompanied by 12GB of Honor RAM Turbo virtual RAM assigned off the onboard 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. Honor hasn’t skimped on the quality of the RAM and the onboard storage with both having the read/write speeds expected of flagship-grade phones. 

Oddly enough, this additional virtual RAM cannot be modified or disabled which may be an issue later down the road if you’re drastically short on space. Running under the hood, our Honor 200 Pro review unit runs the latest Android 14 with their own MagicOS 8.0 which now has a series of Magic AI features that make navigating it a bit easier and more intuitive.

Among the new Magic AI features is what Honor refers to as Magic Portal that lets users intelligently transfer text and images by dragging and dropping them to and from selected apps. Another useful feature is their AI Air Gestures that let you navigate apps and the menus with hand gestures; granted it’s not a radically new feature but it is effective and comes in handy in dire circumstances when your fingers are otherwise grimy and unavailable.

Here’s how our Honor 200 Pro review unit stacks up on paper:

Price	RM2,699
Display	6.78-inch 1.5K OLED Quad-Curved Floating Display (2,700  1,224 pixels), 19.85:9 aspect ratio
Processor	Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 + Honor C1+RF Chip
OS	Android 14 + Magic OS 8.0
Memory	12GB LPDDR5X RAM + 12GB RAM Turbo virtual RAM / 512GB UFS 4.0 storage
Camera	50MP F/1.9 w/ OIS H9000 sensor + 50MP Telephoto F/2.4 w/ OIS + 12MP F/2.2 Ultra wide and macro [rear] / 50MP F/2.1 [front]
Battery	5,200mAh Silicon Carbon battery w/ 100W wired + 66W wireless charging
Size/Weight	163.3 x 75.2 x 8.2mm / 199g

Overall performance for our Honor 200 Pro is fairly indicative of an upper midrange smartphone circa 2024. Here’s how it stacks up in synthetic benchmarks:

3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	1,072
3D Mark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited	1,035
3D Mark Solar Bay	4,933
3D Mark Solar Bay Unlimited	4,664
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme	2,828
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited	2,748
Geekbench 6 Single Core	1,937
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	4,904
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	8,640
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	9,899
PCMark Work 3.0	16,613
PCMark Battery Life	12 hours 11 mins

As far as performance benchmarks go, our Honor 200 Pro and its Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset with its surfeit of RAM is able to tackle the latest benchmarks including the new 3D Mark Steel Nomad Light that is intended for high-end phones and the 3D Mark Solar Bay benchmark that features ray tracing graphics as part of its testing protocol.

When compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 from last year, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 is able to give a good accounting of itself with better single and multicore performance, a better PC Mark Work performance score and generally better graphics performance though it’s still outclassed by the current top of the line Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset.

There’s plenty of pixel crunching power and in day to day use, our Honor 200 Pro review unit held up well with smooth performance and easy multitasking across the board without significant bottlenecks or overheating even in intensive tasks like gaming. 

Across the gruelling gauntlet that is Computex 2024, the phone did not disappoint and was able to tackle everything expected of it. Web browsing and swapping between multiple open tabs was not an issue, editing videos on CapCut and generally getting articles written on Google Docs and Microsoft Office were a smooth affair. The phone also has full access to the Google Play store with all of its apps. 

Closer inspection of the OLED display reveals that it not only has a 120hz refresh rate but has 10-bit colour depth, supports HDR10 content, has 3,840 PWM dimming and a TUV Rheinland Full Care Display 3.0 certification to ensure that it is easier on the eyes especially when viewing at night and for those who are especially sensitive to the flickering effect in smartphone displays.

Colour rendition in tested content is excellent and our Honor 200 Pro review unit’s OLED display holds up well with excellent clarity even under direct sunlight conditions on account of its 4,000 nits peak brightness. Reading and web browsing in dim light is also a more pleasant affair as well.

The paired stereo speakers prove to be effective and hold up well for listening through a Spotify playlist or a Netflix show or two without distortion even at maximum volume with a fair amount of volume and detail.

In terms of overall endurance, the Honor 200 Pro offers above average endurance with about 12 hours and 11 minutes in benchmarks and fairly decent all day performance with data, constant web browsing and a few minutes of phone calls as well as a few YouTube videos and games lasting through a work day.

Fortunately, the phone supports fast 100W wired charging and it was able to top itself up from dead zero in about 50 minutes. On the performance front, the Honor 200 Pro is a solid device with few shortcomings and solid performance.

Honor 200 Pro Review – Cameras

By and large, the current trend in many midrange smartphone cameras is to emulate or at least have as many features as possible from a flagship phone in their feature set. In the case of the Honor 200 Pro, it does so to some degree but aims to be a more specialised design optimised for capturing portraiture.

At a glance, our Honor 200 Pro review sample has much of the hardware that its pricier Honor Magic6 Pro compatriot has including an identical 50MP F/1.9 main camera that has optical image stabilisation as well as the same H9000 1/1.3-inch image sensor.

This is accompanied by a 50MP F/2.4 telephoto camera with 2.5x optical zoom that uses the Sony IMX 856 sensor as well as OIS like the main camera as well as a 12MP F/2.2 ultra wide and macro camera. Combined this setup allows for ultrawide angle shots, lossless shots out to 2.5X zoom and 50x digital zoomed in stills as well as 4K@60fps video at up to 10x digital zoom.

Up front, you get a single 50MP F/2.1 camera for selfies and up to 4K@60fps video matching the rear cameras.

What makes the Honor 200 Pro and its base Honor 200 sibling special is that they are currently the sole beneficiaries in Honor’s entire current smartphone line-up of a collaboration with Paris-based Studio Harcourt. The fruits of that collaboration is a special Portrait mode with three modes that closely emulate Studio Harcourt’s aesthetic look and style. 

On offer are three special filters – Harcourt Vibrant, Harcourt Colour and Harcourt Mono. Harcourt Vibrant adds higher saturation to the image while manipulating the bokeh, dynamic range and detail while Harcourt Colour is similar but makes the colours more lifelike though more muted than what you’d see with the naked eye for a stylistic look. In Harcourt Mono, you get the Studio’s signature moody and gorgeous black and white portraiture.

@hitechcentury We test Portrait mode on the new HONOR 200 Pro! Codesigned with Studio Harcourt, Portrait mode offers 3 filters that recreatr Studio Harcourt’s unique aesthetic look – check out these amazing test shots! #honor200pro #studioharcourt #fyp #smartphone #honor #malaysia #techtok #sembanggadget @honormalaysia ♬ snowfall – Øneheart & reidenshi

In daytime and brightly lit conditions, our Honor 200 Pro review sample and its primary cameras yielded excellent, detailed shots with excellent colour rendition and good dynamic range. It locks onto faces particularly fast and is able to capture lossless shots all the way to 2.5X though 50x digital zoom is a long shot and isn’t particularly useful. 

 

It also acquits itself well in dim light on account of the quality H9000 sensor too and is able to salvage good detail from the shadows and manages to offer deft white balance while keeping noise under control.

Where the Honor 200 Pro stands out, even above other flagships is its Harcourt portrait modes which were able to offer some of the best portrait shots we’ve seen on test with faces in sharp focus, beautifully defocused backgrounds and a pleasing dynamic range with just the right touch of shadows especially in solo portraiture.

Needless to say, these filters work best in brightly lit scenarios to yield the best results. Oddly, they only work with the rear camera array and aren’t activated if you use the front camera. Lack of Harcourt portrait mode aside, the front selfie cameras deliver competent selfies and detailed footage for video calls.

In terms of video quality, our Honor 200 Pro acquits itself in a competent fashion with the combined OIS and EIS stabilisation yielding judder free footage even when walking at a stately pace and 4K videos were detailed with good dynamic range under daylight and dimly lit conditions.

 

Should you buy the Honor 200 Pro?

The Honor 200 Pro is a solid all-rounder midrange phone with specifications that verge on becoming a full-fledged flagship with an excellent OLED display, great overall performance and good cameras with the added specialisation of being one of the best portrait-specialised phones currently in the market. 

If you need a solid sub-RM3,000 phone or just love capturing portraits, this comes highly recommended.

Honor 200 Pro review unit courtesy of Honor Malaysia. To purchase and for more details please visit https://www.honor.com/my/phones/honor-200-pro/buy/