HONOR Magic5 Pro First Look – Is their powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Falcon Camera packing flagship phone worth the hype

Since parting ways from their parent organisation, HONOR has been carving an impressive swath in the smartphone industry and came up with several notable hits last year including their flagship offering the Magic4 Pro. 

At Mobile World Congress 2023, they unveiled its successor, the new Magic5 Pro that has already been lauded by DxOMark as one of the best smartphone cameras in the market. We managed to get our hands on a review sample fresh from its debut in Barcelona and have given it a quick test especially of its new evocatively named Falcon Capture camera array. Here’s our HONOR Magic5 Pro first look where we share our initial findings of their latest flagship camphone! You can also check out our full review of the HONOR Magic5 Pro here.

HONOR Magic5 Pro First Look – Build and Design

Intended as the successor to last year’s Magic4 Pro, the new HONOR Magic5 Pro, broadly speaking, has an improved and brighter OLED display, retains the overall form factor of its predecessor and upgrades the processor to the latest generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, bumps up storage and RAM options to higher base minimums in Malaysia and to the fastest read/write standards currently available. It also packs a larger battery and enhances camera quality with better overall performance.

Out of the box, our HONOR Magic5 Pro first look sample comes with a surprisingly comprehensive array of extras that are vanishingly rare in this day and age. Not only do you get the phone itself, you also get a soft TPU casing form fitted to the exact dimensions of the phone itself, a USB-C charging cable and best of all – a 66W fast charger.

Better yet, the front display has a pre-applied screen protector too. Combined, these offer substantial cost savings in money and time. Rather than having to go hunt around and pay additional cash for a separate charger, casing and screen protector, you get everything you need out of the box.

Available in either a shade of black or a rather unique metallic aquamarine finish dubbed as Meadow Green, the HONOR Magic5 Pro does not skimp on materials or its design with every inch of its design befitting the expected standards of a premium flagship phone including full access to the Google Play store and its cornucopia of applications on top of running the latest Android 13. 

Our  HONOR Magic5 Pro first look sample comes in the aforementioned shade of Meadow Green with the backplate being smooth to the touch to the point of it being slippery while being remarkably resistant to fingerprints. Befitting a premium phone, the HONOR Magic5 Pro has an IP68 dust and water resistance rating which means it can survive in up to 1.5 metres of fresh water for up to 30 minutes at a time.

The rear triple camera array features a triple camera setup aesthetically akin to its predecessor the Magic4 Pro while also featuring a different camera housing design. Gone are the concentric black circles with our HONOR Magic5 Pro first look sample featuring a new triangular setup in a distinctive looking raised circular housing. 

The base of the phone hosts a dual nano SIM card slot, a USB-C port for 66W fast wired charging and docking duties and a grille for one of the two stereo speakers. The left side of the phone has an antenna band but is otherwise unremarkable while the right hosts the customary power button and volume rocker. Up top, the phone hosts a small set of grilles for a speaker that forms a stereo pair with the other one located at the base of the phone.

HONOR Magic5 Pro First Look – Cameras

Dubbed the Falcon Capture camera, our HONOR Magic5 Pro’s triple camera setup mimics its predecessor somewhat with improvements all around. Rather than the conventional doctrine of a powerful primary camera with smaller secondary and telephoto cameras, the Magic5 Pro places equal emphasis on all with an equally powerful primary, ultrawide and telephoto camera.

Assuming you hold it portrait style, the top camera is a 50MP F/3.0 telephoto camera stabilised with OIS with 3.5x optical zoom as well as up to 10x lossless hybrid zoom in tandem with its large sensor with the option for up to 100x digital zoom. 

Plonked next to the telephoto camera is a 3D ToF laser focusing system to more accurately assess object distance for better foreground and background separation as well as facial recognition to unlock the phone. 

Just below the 3D ToF laser focusing system is a 50MP F/2.0 ultra wide angle camera with a 122-degree field of view and also the ability for 2.5cm macro stills. The last 50MP primary  F/1.6 camera handles most of the grunt work and has OIS and a large 1/1.12 inch sensor. Combined, this setup is capable of 12MP snaps as well as smooth 4K@60fps video. 

Up front located in a pill-shaped punch hole, you get a 12MP selfie camera with a 3D depth camera riding shotgun that can support snaps and up to 4K videos. This makes for a solid front and rear setup and an impromptu whirl around the block of a variety of subjects in day or night yields fast and accurate autofocus times and excellent shots with crisp details in daylight. We’ll share more detailed findings after we’ve put it through its paces.

HONOR Magic5 Pro First Look – Display and Specifications

Up front, our HONOR Magic5 Pro first look sample hosts an impressive 6.81-inch LTPO OLED display which has a respectable FHD+ (1,312 x 2,848 pixels) resolution, a smooth dynamic 120Hz refresh rate and which is rated for 1,800 nits peak brightness. Unlike competing designs, every edge including the top and bottom of the OLED display are curved, lending the design a unique elegance about it. 

Near the upper left corner, the display hosts a small cutout for a 12MP selfie camera with a ToF 3D camera riding shotgun for biometrics and depth sensing data while the lower quadrant of the display has an in-display fingerprint reader as an alternative option for unlocking the phone. At first blush, the display looks vibrant and luscious with excellent clarity under sunlight especially for gaming and movies.

Under the hood, our HONOR Magic5 Pro first look sample has impressive specifications that allow it to go toe to toe with other flagships. You get the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor running Android 13 with their own MagicUI 7.1 overlay paired with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and a generous 512GB UFS 4.0 storage. Fast WiFi 6 comes as standard along with Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity.

Perhaps the only downgrade here is that the HONOR Magic5 Pro uses 66W wired charging versus the Magic4 Pro’s faster 100W charging but as it stands, 66W is pretty nippy as charging speeds go so it’s not that big of a tradeoff. The phone also has wireless charging and reverse wireless charging options to juice other gear too.

In terms of overall build and design, the HONOR Magic5 Pro does not disappoint with aesthetics and materials befitting a flagship phone. There’s still no official word on how much the HONOR Magic5 Pro will cost in Malaysia ahead of its official launch but we’ll keep you posted! In the meantime you can check out their official Magic5 Pro website at https://www.hihonor.com/my/phones/honor-magic5-pro/