Honor Magic6 Pro Review – Innovative, capable and tough flagship performer

The new Honor Magic6 Pro is the successor to their prior Magic5 Pro released last year and is arguably their most sophisticated smartphone to date not just from a technological standpoint but from a materials standpoint as well as it is arguably one of the toughest flagship phones to date that can shrug off all but the worst impacts to its display without a scratch.

We previously unboxed the phone and after taking it for a whirl around the block, here’s our Honor Magic6 Pro review where we share if their latest uber phone is worth your money.

Honor Magic6 Pro review – Specifications and Benchmarks

In terms of specifications, our Honor Magic6 Pro review sample is armed for bear with the flagship-grade Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor which is currently the most powerful chipset currently in the market short of the custom model issued to Samsung.

This is paired with a generous 12GB LPDDR5X RAM augmented by 8GB of RAM Turbo virtual RAM assigned off the onboard 512GB of fast UFS 4.0 storage. The usage of the current fastest grade of RAM and storage are pleasant surprises indeed and shows that they didn’t cut corners in their latest flagship phone.

Much like other flagships for 2024, the Magic6 Pro runs the latest Android 14 with their own MagicOS 8.0 overlaying it which has a number of AI-centric features this time around to enhance day to day functionality.

Of greater concern is that this time around, Honor has assured that the Honor Magic6 Pro will enjoy 4 years of OS updates and 5 years of security updates, putting them ahead of the competition save for a few with equal or longer update policies like Samsung.

This time around MagicOS has a few interesting AI-powered tricks though not all features are activated just yet. Fortunately, the more practical features are on hand such as Magic Portal where I could drag and drop content be it a line of text or an image into another app by holding down on the content and then slowly dragging it to the right edge to reveal a list of compatible apps that could interpret that content.

For a writer or content creator, this could come in handy for taking down notes and scrapbooking interesting ideas. Another interesting feature on hand is their Magic Text feature that is able to extract text from an image though your mileage will vary depending on the clarity of the text.

Some more sophisticated features were announced but don’t seem to be enabled just yet such as the ability to generate videos from images and text input but there is no official date as yet when they’ll appear. 

Prior features such as their Game Manager that optimises performance settings when gaming are present and correct. MagicOS also retains the weird quirk of being unable to modify or disable RAM Turbo so you’re permanently assigned 8GB of virtual RAM off the 512GB of storage. AI-powered features aside, our Honor Magic6 Pro review sample features the following specifications:

Price	RM4,499
Display	6.8-inch LTPO Quad Curved Floating Display, 2,800 x 1,280 pixels, 5,000 nits peak HDR brightness, 100% DCI-P3, 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision certification, 4,320Hz PWM dimming, NanoCrystal Shield
Processor	Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
OS	Android 14 w/ MagicOS 8
Memory	12GB RAM + 8GB RAM Turbo / 512GB storage
Cameras	180MP Tele-Falcon Camera w/ 2.5X optical zoom, 100x digital zoom + 50MP Falcon Main Camera F/1.4-F/2.0 + 50MP Ultra Wide Camera [rear] / 50MP F/2.0 [front]
Battery	5,600mAh Silicon-Carbide Battery with E1 Power Enhanced Chip w/ 80W wired + 66W wireless
Size/Weight	162.5 x 75.8 x 8.9mm / 225g (PU)

While these features will vary from market to market, our Honor Magic6 Pro review sample is indicative of units intended for Malaysia. When subjected to synthetic benchmarks, it managed to score the following:

3D Mark Solar Bay	8,691
3D Mark Unlimited	8,593
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme	4,831
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Ultd	4,358
3D Mark Wild Life	Maxed Out
3D Mark Wild Life Unlimited	19,375
Geekbench 6 Single Core	1,355
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	5,283
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	13,751
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	16,200
PC Mark Work 3.0	15,994
PC Mark Battery Life	14 hours 8 minutes

The combination of fast LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage in tandem with the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset mean that our Honor Magic6 Pro review unit is able to crunch through the benchmarks like a hot knife through butter with performance worthy of a flagship phone across single core, multi core and with ray tracing workloads in 3D Mark Solar Bay. 

There’s little it can’t do and the phone tackled demanding tasks like 4K video editing in CapCut and playing Call of Duty Warzone Mobile and Genshin Impact on High graphics settings without issue.

The new Magic AI features need a learning curve to master and several need to be toggled in the settings to be activated so it’s something you’ll likely have to spend a good afternoon on to sort through.

The LTPO OLED display used in our Honor Magic6 Pro review unit is impressive not just from a visual standpoint but also on how durable it is as the display itself is bonded with a layer of silicon carbide that makes it ten times tougher than normal glass; something that Honor liberally demonstrates with repeated drops, stabbing the display with knives, scalpels and more. 

@hitechcentury The new Honor Magic6 Pro is coming soon to Malaysia and to demonstrate how tough it ans its NanoCrystal Shield protected display is, they did thesr insane tests. See what they did to the phone and if it survives unscathed! #malaysia #hitechcentury #fyp #sembanggadget #tech #honormagic6pro #mwc24 #discoverthemagic #honormwc2024 #droptest ♬ Aesthetic – Tollan Kim

Of note is that the textured faux leather of the Epi Green colourway that appears on our Honor Magic6 Pro review sample made for a comfortable grip for day to day usage though the finish itself seems prone to staining when another journalist demonstrated his identical review unit as it was almost a shade darker due to heavy exposure to sweat and sunlight though the display remained pristine.

Visually speaking, the LTPO 120Hz AMOLED display only maxes out at 2,800 x 1,280 pixels but this is more than sufficient for general usage as the human eye is hard pressed to define sharper detail beyond this level of resolution.

Colours are vibrant and the display is bright enough to see in daylight while serving up crisp text,  good dynamic range and smooth animations onscreen for gaming, movies and web browsing alike. Accompanying it are stereo speakers that offer good volume and a fair bit of detail but are otherwise unremarkable.

In terms of endurance, our Honor Magic6 Pro review unit comfortably offers a full day and a half or so of general usage involving phone calls, gaming, social media browsing and a combination of data or WiFi usage off its 5,600mAh silicon carbide battery.  In PCMark, the phone managed a respectable 14 hours and 8 minutes and while it’s not record breaking as flagship phones go circa 2024, it’s nonetheless a solid figure.

Honor Magic6 Pro Review – Cameras

The Honor Magic6 Pro is has a significantly improved rear triple camera array with a vastly ungunned telephoto camera array which features a 180MP F/2.6 sensor with a periscope-style 2.5X telephoto zoom with up to 5X lossless zoom by cropping from the huge sensor and up to 100x digital zoom along with optical image stabilisation (OIS) for steadier shots.

That’s not all as the main 50MP sensor also has the ability to swap between F/1.4 to F/2.0 apertures that are also stabilised with OIS too. The ultra wide angle camera on the other hand is identical to its predecessor with a 50MP sensor so there’s no surprises there.

Up front, the selfie camera has been bumped up to a huge 50MP F/2.0 sensor with autofocus from its predecessor’s more modest 12MP F/2.4 sensor along with a TOF 3D sensor riding shotgun. For videos, both front and rear cameras max out at a more practical 4K with the rear capable of 60fps and the front at 30fps.

The rear camera also benefits from several AI-powered tricks such as a Magic Take mode that can automatically capture shots when something exciting happens that is typically too fast to track like slam dunks basketball matches and AI Motion Sensing to keep fast-moving subjects in focus.

When subjected to the usual array of photographic scenarios, our Honor Magic6 Pro review unit did not disappoint with excellent detail, well saturated colours and superb dynamic range on the main cameras in auto mode with great shots in daylight and if you keep shots to under lossless 5X zoom, you’ll yield equally excellent low light shots too.

Shots beyond this remain legible and it is able to yield surprising performance especially when I managed to zoom in at 100x and catch sight of a tourist on the KLCC tower bridge but it occasionally exhibits some softness.

In low light settings, the phone was capable of salvaging great detail from the shadows and yielding very shareworthy shots. On occasion, the ultra wide angle camera yields slightly different colour rendition which is obvious in vibrant scenes though this can likely be cleaned up with an update. Mugshots with the selfie camera are equally pleasing to look at as well.

Videos on the rear camera at 4K@60fps are smooth, vibrant affairs brimming with details and hues with the front camera offering serviceable footage as well. The cameras here are an otherwise solid setup that can tackle all but the most demanding scenarios.

Should you buy the Honor Magic6 Pro?

Honor has outdone themselves this year with their eponymous Honor Magic6 Pro. Their latest flagship phone blends superb hardware with an equally good four years of OS updates along with exceptional camera performance as well as an impressively tough NanoCrystal Shield display.

There’s still a few odd quirks with the firmware but this is otherwise an excellent flagship phone that is worthy of consideration.

Honor Magic6 Pro review sample courtesy of Honor Malaysia. For more details and to purchase, please visit https://www.hihonor.com/my/phones/honor-magic6-pro/buy/