Honor Magic8 Pro Review – Solid flagship with awesome performance and cameras

One of the latest phones to use Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, the Honor Magic8 Pro not only packs impressive hardware but a top-shelf eye-safe display and, most importantly, a potent rear triple camera array that blends both the sensors and the AI to yield improved low light and telephoto camera performance.

Ahead of the launch, Honor Malaysia issued us a sample for field testing. After putting it through its paces, here’s our Honor Magic8 Pro review where we suss out if their premier flagship phone is worth what you pay for.

Honor Magic8 Pro review – Build and Design

Visually speaking, our Honor Magic8 Pro review sample doesn’t visually differ all that much from its predecessor the Honor Magic7 Pro though it does have several unique upgrades from within and without. 

The Magic series’ aesthetics are retained with a prominent camera housing on the rear with rounded corners and curved edges for better ergonomics. Astute readers will note that the biggest telltale difference from both phones, other than different colourways, is that the new Magic8 Pro has its LED flash located at the six o’clock position on the camera housing; its predecessor had it at the twelve ‘o clock position.

Like the prior model, the Honor Magic8 Pro is built tough with NanoCrystal Shield glass protecting the front display that is rated to offer 10 times the drop resistance for conventional glass and which has an SGS 5 Star for Glass Drop Resistance Ability in Multiple Scenarios certification. The chassis itself also retains an IP68, IP69 and IP69K rating that ensures the phone is waterproof for short dips in fresh water, dustproof and capable of resisting moderately high temperatures. 

This inordinate resistance to mishaps was demonstrated in a preview before its official launch where the phone was hit with nailgun rounds, tossed in a cement mixer, blasted with a plasma gun and was even tossed into a steamer and a container of flour with no ill effects.

The backplate and sides all come in the same colour with our Honor Magic8 Pro review sample in Sunrise Gold coming in a muted silvery gold finish that resists fingerprints nicely.

A charging coil is located in the lower quadrant of the phone for wireless and reverse wireless charging duties with the camera housing prominently taking up the upper half of the backplate. Fortunately, the housing itself is symmetrically designed, allowing it to be placed flat on a table without it wobbling about.

On the base of the phone is a USB-C port, a speaker grille and a SIM card tray while the left side is otherwise unremarkable save for a series of antenna bands. The right side is unusual as it has an extra dedicated smart shortcut button along with the customary power button and volume rocker. By default a long press summons their Circle to Search and AI Memory feature while a double press immediately gains access to the camera.

Up front, you get one of the most impressively appointed displays seen in a flagship phone with a 6.71-inch Honor AI Eye Comfort OLED display with up to 6,000 nits peak brightness for clarity under sunlight conditions, 4,320Hz PWM dimming, 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, a 1-120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision as well as HDR Vivid support.

The Honor Magic8 Pro’s display also integrates a slew of technologies collectively referred to as their Honor Eye Comfort Technology that reduces blue light emissions, reduces eye fatigue and relieves motion sickness when in use in moving vehicles.

Rather than push to sharper resolutions, the phone sticks to a practical 1,256 x 2,808 pixels which is more than enough for most concerns while optimising battery endurance.  

Rather than a completely flat display, Honor has opted for 2.5D curves, with the edges slightly curving downwards to meet the sides of the phone while retaining slim bezels all around. Up top in a pill-shape cutout, you get a single 50MP camera for selfies alongside a TOF 3D sensor for facial recognition.

You also get a fingerprint reader in the lower quadrant of the display. In a tiny slit just above the camera cutout, you get the earpiece that also works as a second speaker to form a stereo pair with the bottom firing one.

Overall, the Honor Magic8 Pro sticks to the proven aesthetics of its predecessor including its impressive durability that’s among the best for flagship phones in the market and solid ergonomics too. It feels suitably premium, has an even heft and weight to make holding it one-handed a comfortable affair.

@hitechcentury We unbox the new Honor Magic 8 Pro in Sunrise Gold and check out what’s in the box! @honormalaysia #honormagic8pro #hitechcentury #fyp #malaysia #techtok ♬ original sound – Hitech Century

They also generously toss in a fast charger, a USB-C cable and a soft TPU casing to protect the phone in the box which makes for exceptional bang for the buck.  

Honor Magic8 Pro review – Performance and Benchmarks

In terms of hardware, our Honor Magic8 Pro review sample is armed to the teeth with the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset with Android 16 and their own Magic OS 10.0 running under the hood. This is paired with 12GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.1 storage.

Like previous incarnations of Magic OS, you can assign 12GB of virtual RAM Turbo off the onboard storage though unlike other competing designs, you can’t allocate a lesser amount of virtual RAM though you can disable the option entirely if you’re short on space. Another variant is also available in Malaysia with 16GB RAM and 1TB of storage for a slightly higher cost.

Beyond the bare hardware, Honor has also what they refer to as the RF Enhanced Chip Honor C1+ RF Enhanced chip that helps to ensure 15% better WiFi performance along with 108% better signal reception. Here’s how it stacks up on paper:

Price	RM4,599 (12GB RAM/ 512GB storage), RM5,199 (16GB RAM, 1TB storage)
Display	6.71-inch Honor AI Eye Comfort LTPO OLED, 1,256 x 2,808 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate, 6,000 nits peak brightness
Processor	Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
OS	Android 16 w/ Magic OS 10
Memory	12GB RAM / 512GB storage (review sample) | 16GB RAM / 1TB (variant)
Cameras	50 MP f/1.6 Ultra Night Main Camera w/ OIS + 200MP f/2.6 Ultra Night Telephoto camera w/ OIS + 50MP f/2.0 ultra wide angle camera  [rear] / Night Engine Stability Engine + Portrait engine / 50MP  f/2.0 ultra clear front camera [front]
Battery	7,100mAh battery w/ 100W wired, 80W wireless, reverse wireless
Size/Weight	161.2 x 75 x 8.3mm / 219g

When subjected to synthetic benchmarks with the full 12GB of virtual RAM, our Honor Magic8 Pro review unit managed to score the following:

3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	2,956
3D Mark Steel Nomad Light Ultd	2,971
3D Mark Solar Bay Extreme	780
3D Mark Solar Bay Extreme Ultd	1,425
3D Mark Solar Bay	13,727
3D Mark Solar Bay Unlimited	14.305
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme	7,318
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Ultd	6,965
Geekbench 6 CPU	3,633
Geekbench 6 GPU	9.567
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	23,936
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	27,542
PCMark Work 3.0	22,772
PC Mark Work 3.0 Battery Life	17 hours 38 mins

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor offered excellent single, multicore and graphics performance comparable to other phones featuring a similar chipset, making it one of the most powerful, fastest phones that money can currently buy at this point in time. 

In the Steel Nomad Light Stress test, our Honor Magic8 Pro was able to successfully complete the gruelling benchmark, yielding a 64% stability test with a 2,724 best loop and 1,742 lowest loop score. To its credit, the phone does run hot in testing with temperatures maxing out at 51°C and it starts throttling a few test cycles in to manage heat but keeps things consistent.

In practical terms, our Honor Magic8 Pro review unit was able to tackle everything thrown at it and was able to tackle Genshin Impact and Call of Duty Mobile on high settings, handle demanding video editing on CapCut and more. 

Where it impresses is its additional AI-powered features, many of which are unique to Honor phones. The biggest marquee feature, its AI Deepfake detection which debuted on last year’s Honor Magic7 Pro, is back and enhanced.

While it originally was able to detect if someone was using a digitally altered deepfake face when making a video call to the user, the phone is now able to detect if they’re using a clone or synthesised voice in a call. Honor Malaysia stated that this ability to detect fake voices will be pushed in a December 2025 update so we weren’t able to test this particular upgrade at the time of writing.

On top of an upgraded AI Deepfake detection feature, the phone also has a new Magic Color mode that offers the unique ability to colour grade an image based on another given image sample. In essence, you can get a given shot, and give it another image sample of what you want to tweak the colours, contrast and other settings.

What this potentially means is that Magic Color can reverse engineer any photo you take to match the colour science and filters of any of the other competing popular camera brands or even the colour palette of a movie you like. 

When tested, we were able to emulate the green patina of the Matrix movies, and even overlay the warm, pastel hues of the Grand Budapest Hotel onto a shot of Kuala Lumpur without having to perform any in-depth colour grading. At present, this is only available for stills for now. Hopefully in the future, they can expand AI Colour to tweak colours for videos.

One particularly unique feature with the Honor Magic8 Pro is a Flicker Detection mode that is able to detect light flickering to detect if a given light fixture be it a lamp, bulb or whatnot is safe for the eyes. It’s a brilliant feature that’s thus far unique to the Honor Magic8 Pro and may likely be pushed down to other Honor phones later on down the line.

Needless to say, you need a display that is capable of displaying a full 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut if you’re looking to colour grade photos with any degree of accuracy and in this regard, the display on our Honor Magic8 Pro review sample shined. 

Colours were gorgeously rich and deep onscreen and the display was bright enough for viewing even under direct sunlight. The LTPO OLED display is the real deal, dialling down to just 1Hz when viewing static content and ramping up to 120Hz when navigating menus and in selected apps. By and large, most apps like YouTube and many games run at 60Hz and only a given few apps support the maximum refresh rate. By and large, the screen was smooth and responsive especially when gaming.

While most flagship phones consider speaker performance an afterthought, Honor has taken pains to improve audio quality this time around and they’ve integrated a large 8cc sound chamber and their own spatial audio algorithms to offer a richer, deeper, more detailed acoustic experience.

Tunes sounded wider, more spacious and our Honor Magic8 Pro review unit was able to crank it up to maximum volume without distortion. There was also noticeably more distinct treble and slightly better bass too which is a feat seeing how slim the phone is. 

In terms of battery life, our Honor Magic8 Pro review unit acquitted itself well and comfortably offered short of two days worth of battery life with normal usage – WiFi, a few minutes worth of calls, social media use and a bit of light gaming and social media. In PCMark’s battery life test, it got a very respectable 17 hours and 38 minutes. 

Honor Magic8 Pro Review – Cameras

We previously field tested the cameras on our Honor Magic8 Pro review sample, especially in regards to low light and telephoto zoom and it did not disappoint.

Beyond the hardware, Honor has included a new Night Engine that improves low light performance in shots, a Stability Engine algorithm that works in tandem with the optical image stabilisation (OIS) hardware to offer up to a quoted 5.5 CIPA level of camera stability which is equivalent to a professional-grade DSLR camera. While it isn’t new, Honor has improved the Portrait Engine this time around with more focal lengths and new stage modes to choose from.

For the uninitiated, the Honor Magic8 Pro hosts a 200MP f/2.6 Ultra Night Telephoto Camera with a 1/1.4-inch sensor and 3.7x optical zoom and the ability to snag up to 100x zoom long with a selectable AI mode for cleaner, steadier shots. This improves on its predecessor significantly which only maxed out at 3x optical zoom while also integrating AI stabilisation to get a CIPA 5.5 stability rating.

 

Paired with this is a 50MP Ultra Night Main Camera that also has OIS and which uses a 1/1.3-inch sensor. Oddly, Honor has ditched the usage of variable f/1.4-f/2.0 aperture and has opted to stick to the fixed f/1.6 aperture for the main camera.

 

Last but not least, the phone has a 50MP ultra-wide angle camera with an f/2.0 aperture and a 90-degree wide angle. Up front, it has a single 50MP f/2.0 selfie camera.

For videos, the rear camera array maxes out at 4K@120fps video for ultra smooth shots while both the front and rear cameras are able to capture 4K@60fps for most scenarios.

The rear triple camera array help up to extended tests, yielding excellent shots in both daytime and low light conditions with lossless shots out to 3.7x zoom that brim with detail, colour and dynamic range. Beyond that, you can get great shots out to 10x.

From beyond that, the phone kicks in an optional AI setting that stabilises and sharpens shots which lets it achieve exceptional results especially when capturing scenery and architecture such as being able to shoot Genting Highlands from the top of Merdeka 118 Tower.

 

Captured video in 4K is among the smoothest on test and offered stable and vibrant footage out to 3.7x zoom in both daytime and low light conditions. While the cameras are capable of up to 15x digital zoom, details understandably start getting a bit soft and grainy. 

Up front, the selfie cameras are excellent, offering good skin tones and colour rendition for stills and video.

@hitechcentury We take the new Honor Magic 8 Pro for a spin and field test its CiPA 5.5 rated camera array with a telephoto zoom test from Heritage Row to KLCC! The AI wasn’t enabled this time which helps in enhancing shots beyond 10x zoom but the results are already quite impressive – more so for the heavy fog and rain around the Twin Towers when we shot it that day. @honormalaysia #honormagic8pro #hitechcentury #malaysia ♬ I’ll Never Let You Go – Official Sound Studio

As flagship cameras go, the Honor Magic8 Pro is among the best on test in 2025 in almost all imaging scenarios expected of a phone with exceptional results in low light and extended zoom shots which makes it a sound choice for content creators. 

Should you buy the Honor Magic8 Pro?

While it isn’t first to the party in 2025, it certainly is one of the best flagship phones that money can currently buy. For what you pay for, which is competitively priced seeing the leading Android incumbents, you get a durable design that hosts a large and vibrant OLED display, the most powerful mobile processor in the market, great battery life and outstanding camera performance especially in low light and telephoto zoom. 

Best of all, it has a number of unique features, chief among them its ability to detect deepfaked videocalls and soon, faked voices too. If you want a flagship Android phone in 2025 that excels in durability, imaging, and AI features, the Magic8 Pro is one of the strongest options available and comes highly recommended.

Honor Magic 8 Pro review unit courtesy of Honor Malaysia. For more details please visit https://www.honor.com/my/shop/new-launch/