Honor Magic7 Pro Review – Tough yet powerful camera flagship with AI Deepfake feature and more tested

Ahead of its early January 2025 launch in Malaysia, we had a first look at the new Honor Magic7 Pro flagship phone, one of the first Snapdragon 8 Elite powered devices in the market that is the successor to last year’s Magic6 Pro. 

On top of the obligatory improvements in performance, the new Honor Magic7 Pro comes chock full with practical AI features including an innovative AI Deepfake detection feature as well as a selection of expanded AI features from its predecessor like its signature Magic Portal 2.0 and AI Translate.

After taking it out for a whirl, here’s our Honor Magic7 Pro review where we share if their first flagship phone for 2025 is in the running as one of the best flagship phones for 2025.

Honor Magic7 Pro Review – Build and Design

We previously did a quick once-over of the Honor Magic7 Pro and its extensive arsenal of AI capabilities in our previous Honor Magic7 Pro first look feature. This time around, we’re taking a closer look at its build, design and performance.

When compared to its immediate predecessor the Honor Magic6 Pro, the Magic7 Pro is slightly longer, slightly wider and slightly thinner while also being lighter by 2g at 223g while featuring improved durability and and improved IP69 dust and water resistance rating. What this means is that the phone is able to withstand directed jets of water without issue. This is on top of complete dust resistance and the ability to survive in up to 1.5 metres of water for up to 30 minutes at a time.

In addition to improved resistance to jets of water as well as dust and water resistance, our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample retains the same Honor NanoCrystal Shield laminate on the front display as the Magic6 Pro. For the uninitiated, NanoCrystal Shield laminate is 10 times more drop resistant than conventional glass and has the vaunted SGS Five Star Overall Glass Drop Resistance Ability Certification across multiple scenarios, meaning that it has an excellent chance of surviving a drop to the ground from waist height and resisting scratches and nicks. 

In terms of design, our Honor Magic7 Pro review unit bears aesthetics similar to its predecessor including a similarly sized 6.8-inch LTPO OLED front display up front with a pill-shaped punch hole for a webcam and 3D ToF sensor that even allows for facial recognition unlocking in the dark. 

The chassis also features gently rounded corners akin to the prior Magic6 Pro but notably differs with a new array of colourways as well as packing a redesigned camera housing that has all-black glass protecting the triple camera array. 

The right side hosts a power button and volume rocker while the left is otherwise unremarkable. The top has grilles for a speaker that match another speaker in the base of the phone to form a stereo pair. Also present in the base of the phone is a USB-C port and a dual nanoSIM card tray.

Closer inspection reveals a number of subtle touches that lend the Magic7 Pro a more premium touch and feel that include beveled edges while the display has subtle curves on each edge that subtly curve inwards  to offer maximum screen real estate. Our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample for Malaysia also has a number of goodies including a free casing, a USB-C cable as well as an 100W fast charger which represents exceptional value seeing as many phones ditch these accessories these days. 

Honor Magic7 Pro Review – Performance and Benchmarks

As their latest flagship phone, the Magic7 Pro has Honor’s most powerful hardware running under the hood with the notable upgrade being its processor which is the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset running Android 15 and their MagicOS 9.0.

Our review sample came paired with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage with the ability to assign 12GB RAM Turbo virtual RAM off the onboard storage. Another variant also exists with a 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage. Befitting a flagship phone, the Honor Magic7 Pro supports 5G connectivity, fast WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 along with NFC.

Unlike other implementations in competing phones, this 12GB of virtual RAM is permanently activated and you can’t disable it nor can you increase or decrease the amount of assigned virtual RAM.

This can be a pickle if you’re running short of storage but seeing the sheer amount of space available on even the base model at 512GB, this is an unlikely scenario. Like its predecessor, the Honor Magic7 Pro has four years of OS updates and five years of security updates, meaning that the phone will get updates all the way to Android 19 and remain secure until 2030. Here’s how our Honor Magic7 Pro review unit stacks up on paper:

Price	RM4,599 (12GB RAM/512GB storage), RM5,199 (16GB RAM/1TB storage)
Display	6.8-inch LTPO Quad-Curved OLED, 2,800 x 1,280 pixels, 100% DCI-P3, HDR, 120Hz smart refresh, 5,000 nits peak brightness, 453 ppi, Dolby Vision, TÜV Rheinland flicker-free certified, 4,320Hz PWM Dimming
Processor	Snapdragon 8 Elite
OS	Android 15 with MagicOS 9.0
Memory	12GB RAM + 12GB RAM Turbo virtual RAM/ 512GB storage (review sample) or 16GB RAM/ 1TB storage
Camera	200MP F/2.6 Ultra Telephoto camera w/ 3x optical zoom, 6x seamless zoom, 100x digital zoom + 50MP F/1.4-F/2.0 adjustable aperture w.OIS, Super Dynamic Falcon Main Camera, 50MP F/2.0 wide camera [rear] / 50MP + 3D ToF camera
Battery	5,850mAh 3rd Generation Silicon-Carbon Battery w/ 100W wired charging, 80W wireless, reverse wireless
Size/Weight	162.7 x 77.1 x 8.8mm / 223g

When subjected to benchmarks, our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample scored the following benchmarks:

3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	2,463
3D Mark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited	2,040
3D Mark Solar Bay	11,732
3D Mark Solar Bay Unlimited	11,682
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme	6,265
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited	5,591
Geekbench 6 Single Core	2,998
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	6,150
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	17,645
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	23,204
PCMark Work 3.0	21,023
PCMark Work 3.0 Battery Life	15 hours 13 mins

With Qualcomm’s most powerful chipset currently in the market running under the hood, our Honor Magic7 Pro review did not disappoint with some of the best single, multicore and graphics benchmarks on test with a performance envelope that is on par with other Snapdragon 8 Elite equipped phones that we’ve previously field tested.

Overall performance for our Honor Magic7 Pro review unit is excellent and the phone can tackle everything thrown at it from video editing to gaming without breaking a sweat while outpacing last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor by a comfortable margin.

In the 3D Mark Steel Nomad Light Stress Test which runs a gauntlet of continuous benchmarks, our Honor Magic7 Pro offered had higher loops scores, peaking at 2,489 points and bottoming out at 1,530 while having a lower 61.5% stability score and temperatures between 36°C-48°C which shows strong peak performance but somewhat aggressive throttling to play things safe. 

In practical tests, our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample performed like a champ and was able to smoothly handle Genshin Impact on high settings, tackle extended 4K video editing on CapCut as well as heavy browsing with multiple opened tabs swapped in quick succession.

The 6.8-inch LTPO OLED display has an impressive 120Hz refresh rate, up to 5,000 nits peak brightness in selected scenarios and has 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut. Colours are vibrant and details are crisp with excellent brightness even under daylight. 

Where the display edges out on the competition is its emphasis on being eye-safe with a quoted 4,320Hz PWM dimming and an array of certifications vouching for it being easy on the eyes including TÜV Rheinland Full Care Display 4.0, TÜV Rheinland Circular Polarization and TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free certification. 

The display even has a unique AI Defocus Eyecare setting that helps to relieve and defocus the eyes by slightly changing the colours on the edges to maintain clear vision. According to Honor, this helps to mitigate shortsightedness though this is a feature that isn’t able to be tested easily outside of a lab.

In keeping with its flagship status, our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample has top-shelf stereo speakers with a larger sound cavity within for better sound, spatial audio support for compatible content as well as SGS certification for audio performance and spatial audio. Acoustic performance is among the best on test with good detail and volume for movies, music and gaming alike while vocals were crisp and clear.

Battery life was excellent as well with our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample and its ample 5,850mAh silicon carbon battery scoring a solid 15 hours and 13 minutes in the battery life test and averaging a full day and a half of normal usage with light movie watching, phone calls and some light gaming.

The bundled 100W charger also offers an extremely nippy top up with a charge from dead zero requiring about 43 minutes and the phone also has fast 80W wireless charging support too.

Honor Magic7 Pro Review – AI improvements

Beyond the hardware updates and performance, Honor has added an array of AI-powered features to the phone that are unique to Honor devices. Naturally, our Honor Magic7 Pro review unit has increasingly ubiquitous Google Gemini Assistant as the default voice assistant and Circle to Search with Google to find stuff that you circle onscreen with expanded functionality that now lets you circle to post and even share content to others. 

The Honor Magic7 Pro also retains their AI Eraser that helps delete photobombers in captured photos and their AI Translate that can translate transcribed texts and allow for two-way live translation be it in person or via text messages. One particular key point here is that the AI Translate feature supports native Bahasa Malaysia and can even tackle Cantonese too.

The Honor Magic7 Pro also has an improved Magic Portal 2.0 that has improved context to share text and images to even more compatible apps with the notable inclusion of being able to send selected text to search on TikTok, FaceBook as well as Google and YouTube search just to name a few. According to Honor, Magic Portal 2.0 will soon add interactivity for Grab, Lazada and Shopee allowing users to drag and drop onto these apps to search for a product or address.

Most important of all is the inclusion of the world’s first AI Deepfake Detection algorithm that automatically detects if a person you’re video calling on Whatsapp, Facebook, WeChat video and other video call apps are using a fake filter or other software to appear as someone else.

The AI Deepfake Detection mode is a brilliant addition though nasty social engineers who solely on audio calls may still be able to impersonate someone you know or a person of authority. In any case, it still adds a measure of security.

Also new is a Magic Avatar which you can customise gender and appearance that acts cute on your phone with pre-animated semi-random sequences depending on what time of day you access the phone. This feature has little practical value but it does let you add a personal, whimsical touch to your phone.

Honor Magic7 Pro Review – Cameras

This time round, the Honor Magic7 Pro has a beefed up rear triple camera array with enhanced AI capabilities including an AI Super Zoom that helps with enhancing telephoto camera zoom image results.

While it still retains a roughly similar triple camera setup as its predecessor, our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample has an improved, 200MP Ultra Telephoto camera has a larger 1/1.4-inch sensor with 3x optical zoom, 6x seamless zoom by sensor cropping and up to 100x digital zoom. You also get a 50MP adjustable aperture camera that can adjust from F/1.4 – F/2.0 on demand that also has optical image stabilisation as well as a 50MP F/2.0 ultra wide angle camera. 

Even with such impressive hardware, Honor is playing it safe and video capture is capped at 4K@60fps. Up front, you get a large 50MP wide angle camera for selfies and up to 4K@60fps video.

On top of the improved telephoto camera, the Honor Magic7 Pro now has a powerful new 30-shot HD Burst Shot mode that comes in handy for capturing action shots, snapping thirty shots in quick succession when you hold the trigger down.

Last year’s AI Motion Sensing Capture that enables users to automatically capture fast moving action shots is also present here which comes in handy for action shots. 

In daylight, the rear cameras offer excellent, crisp detail and lifelike colour rendition with lossless zoom out to 6x. Beyond that zoom distance, it starts using on-device AI Super Zoom to ensure images remain crisp and detailed to snag surprisingly good shots that retain a good amount of detail at up to 30x zoom and shots at up to 100x zoom are still eligible enough to recognise details.

Results in low light are pleasing as well and it is able to eke out good dynamic range and detail in low light urban scenarios out to 6X though extremely dim areas will require night mode.

Where the phone impresses is that it is a surprisingly dab hand at action shots with the provided 30-shot HD Burst Shot mode able to capture well focused stills of fast-moving gymnasts in an event. Videos for our Honor Magic7 Pro proved to be smooth with lifelike colour rendition and detail though it’s best to stick to a maximum of 2.6x zoom as per its selectable zoom settings in the menu.

Of note with our Honor Magic7 Pro review unit is that the phone also includes the array of Studio Harcourt filters that allow for a more artistic, creative touch for snaps.

All said, the Honor Magic7 Pro’s camera setup is immensely capable and is easily able to tackle the needs of most users and even content creators too.

Should you buy the Honor Magic7 Pro?

The Honor Magic7 Pro comes with a flagship-grade processor, a superb eyesafe LTPO OLED display, superb battery life and an immensely capable rear camera array. Where it gains the edge over the competition is its exceptionally durable chassis that mitigates potential mishaps like drops and nicks.

In terms of pricing, our Honor Magic7 Pro review sample with 12GB RAM/512GB storage retails for RM4,599 which represents excellent value seeing its capabilities as well as its free bundled charger. If you need even more storage, the 16GB RAM/ 1TB variant for RM5,199 is also available for slightly more.

Of note with the Honor Magic7 Pro that no other competing phone currently has at the moment is its unique AI Deepfake detection algorithm which adds a measure of security for video calls. Its other AI capabilities such as Google Gemini, live translation capabilities and more are icing on the cake. Perhaps the only quibble is that it does not have the longest OS and security update support in the market and 4 years and 5 years respectively compared to the leading competition but what they offer is still plenty. 

Honor Magic7 Pro review sample courtesy of Honor Malaysia. For more details please visit https://www.honor.com/my/