Huawei Pura 80 Pro Review – Beautiful Design With Powerful Cameras Tested

Huawei’s latest flagship phone makes for a stunning first impression with its deep glossy red finish that looks striking to the eye along with its immense camera bump on the rear, but is it more than just good looks? Here’s our Huawei Pura 80 Pro review where we share if this rather unique phone is worth your money.

Huawei Pura 80 Pro review – Build and Design

The middle child of the Pura 80 series surpassed only by the Pura 80 Ultra that has more powerful rear telephoto cameras and the more affordable Pura 80 that will launch later in Malaysia, the Pura 80 Pro blends the most essential features of the Ultra model for RM2,000 less.

When compared to its immediate predecessor the Pura 70 Pro, our Pura 80 Pro review sample is slightly thinner, wider and longer by 0.1mm and lighter by 1g though this isn’t apparent when held.

This time around, Huawei has opted for a unique looking Glazed Red flagship as the signature colour for the phone which works out to a deep crimson red gloss finish. While it is visually striking and attractive, the high gloss finish also makes it a fingerprint magnet that easily collects smudges and fingerprints. You can also acquire it in a more conventional shade of Glazed Black of Glazed White. 

Aesthetically speaking, it doesn’t differ all too much either from the higher end Pura 80 Ultra with the Ultra model differentiated with its own distinctive Prestige Gold finish as well as a Golden Black colourway that has the cameras finished in contrasting gold over a glossy black finish. 

Colour aside, the Pura 80 Pro has an IP68/IP69 dust and water resistance rating which means that it is able to shrug off immersion in up to two metres of fresh water for up to 30 minutes.

Overall, Huawei has retained the attractive, proven aesthetics of the prior Pura 70 Pro and the backplate of our Pura 80 Pro review sample comes with a similarly large, triangle-shaped camera housing dominating the upper quadrant.

The rest of the backplate is otherwise finished in the aforementioned Glazed Red finish. On the bright side, the large camera housing is broad enough that it manages to mitigate the phone wobbling when placed camera-side down on a table.

The edges of the phone are gently curved and the corners are also rounded for better ergonomics. The base of the phone has a USB-C port, a SIM card tray and a grille for one of the two speakers on the phone.

The left and top are otherwise unremarkable but the right side features a power button and volume rocker. Up front, you get a quad-curved 6.8-inch LTPO OLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a vibrant 3,000 nits peak brightness and edges that gently curve into the frame. 

Up top, you get a punch hole for a single 13MP selfie camera as well as a tiny slit that acts as the earpiece and also for the second speaker.

Interestingly, Huawei has pre-applied a screen protector which adds a measure of protection to the display which is rather quaint seeing as the display itself is protected by Huawei’s own scratch and drop-resistant 2nd Gen Kunlun Glass. 

Overall build quality is excellent with a premium feel and heft to the design that shows that Huawei still has it where it counts. The phone also comes with a free casing, a hefty 100W wired charger along with a USB-C cable and the obligatory SIM eject pin and warranty guide paperwork.

Huawei Pura 80 Pro Review – Performance and Benchmarks

The Huawei Pura 80 Pro makes the best of the technologies accessible to the brand and runs on a HiSilicon Kirin 9020 processor built on a 7nm process.

While specifics are scarce, a look at the chip in CPU-Z revealed a triple cluster architecture with a pair of 2.5GHz cores for intensive tasks, a quartet of 1.6GHz cores for low intensity duties and six 2.15GHz cores for handling most of the grunt work.

The chipset also features Maleoon 920 graphics. As with other Huawei devices sold outside of China, our Huawei Pura 80 Pro review sample lacks 5G capability and is capped at 4G LTE connectivity here in Malaysia though it does have Bluetooth 5.4 and fast WiFi 7 connectivity along with an NFC reader on the backplate. Here’s how it stacks up on paper:

Price	RM4,599
Display	6.8-inch LTPO OLED, 2848 x 1,276 pixels resolution, 1-120hz refresh rate, 1,440Hz PWM dimming, 300Hz touch sample rate, 100% DCI-P3
Processor	Kirin 9020 octacore
OS	EMUI 15 w/ Huawei AppGallery
Memory	12GB RAM / 512GB storage
Camera	50MP f/1.6 – F/4.0 Ultra Lighting Camera w/ OIS + 40MP f/2.2 Ultra wide angle camera, 48MP f/2.1 ultra lighting macro telephoto camera w/ 4x optical zoom + 100x digital zoom [rear] / 13MP f/2.0 [front]
Battery	5,170mAh w/ 100W SuperCharge wired fast charging + 80W Huawei SuperCharge wireless charging
Size/Weight	163 x 76.1 x 8.3mm /219g

Paired with the Kirin 9020 is 12GB RAM along with 512GB of onboard storage with EMUI 15 running under the hood and apps available via the Huawei AppGallery.

Unfortunately, EMUI still doesn’t offer the ability to assign any virtual RAM off onboard storage which is a rather quaint feature to leave out though it does reduce wear and tear on the storage over time. When subjected to synthetic benchmarks our Huawei Pura 80 Pro review unit scored the following:

3D Mark Steel Nomad Light	451
3D Mark Steel Nomad Unlimited	456
3D Mark WIld Life Extreme	1,704
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited	1,604
Geekbench 6 Single Core	1,263
Geekbench 6 Multi Core	3,610
Geekbench 6 OpenCL	N/A
Geekbench 6 Vulkan	4,332
Geekbench AI CPU (quanticised)	1,444
Geekbench AI GPU (quanticised)	306

Unfortunately, there’s not enough data points to infer where the Kirin 9020 would stand in comparison with Dimensity’s or Qualcomm’s chipsets. Many benchmarks simply won’t run at all and some exhibited rather bizarre behaviour.

PCMark did run but the benchmarks simply stalled while in Geekbench 6 the OpenCL benchmark was unable to run though the Vulkan GPU test was instead able to finish its test run through to completion.

On the other hand, 3D Mark’s Solar Bay benchmark which uses the Vulkan 1.1 graphics API wasn’t able to run at all which implies a lack of hardware ray tracing support. To be fair, ray tracing is still a fairly rare requirement for Android games and most Android games currently on the Google Play store don’t need it to run.

As with prior versions of EMUI, EMUI 15 sources apps off the Huawei AppGallery and is heavily optimised such that virtual extended RAM isn’t necessary. In addition to its own library of apps on the AppGallery, users can also avail themselves to Google apps on the phone. 

When tested, our Huawei Pura 80 Pro was able to download and run all the usual Google apps including YouTube, Gmail and the like without issue though it required the installation of the Gbox app that emulates an Android phone environment to run which the phone did discreetly in the background. 

The vast majority of apps including Whatsapp, Shopee, Lazada and grab ran without issue on the phone and it was able to comfortably handle games like Delta Force, Call of Duty, Genshin Impact and Diablo Immortal without issue on default settings on the Kirin 9020 chipset.

While it manages to handle heat well for the most part for apps and even for intensive gaming, it does get rather warm with heavy use of the camera, with the heat radiating outwards from the camera housing. 

While Huawei has made the process of finding and installing the most common apps much smoother and more seamless, there’s still the occasional app that can’t be found on the Huawei AppGallery which needs you to find and sideload it from APKPure or other Android app repositories.

This introduces a whole potential range of security risks but the Huawei AppGallery does have its own AppCheck security monitoring tool that also monitors installed applications for malicious behaviour. By and large, the vast majority of apps you’ll need for shopping, banking and the like are accessible and run without issue on the Pura 80 Pro.

The 6.8-inch LTPO OLED on our Huawei Pura 80 Pro review unit did not disappoint with vibrant colour rendition and pin-sharp detail when reading text and watching movies onscreen while offering excellent clarity under daylight conditions and is among the best we’ve seen thus far. The stereo speakers flanking the OLED panel also offer good detail and volume for casual music listening and gaming.

Oddly, the PCMark benchmark wasn’t able to run but the phone was able to offer about 9 hours and 43 minutes of screen-on time running a looped 1080p video. Under practical use conditions, our Huawei Pura 80 Pro review sample and its 5,170mAh battery was comfortably able to run through a full day of use.

Huawei Pura 80 Pro Review – Cameras

On the imaging front, the Huawei Pura 80 Pro comes with an impressive triple camera array that consists of a 50MP Ultra Lighting camera with a large 1-inch sensor and a changeable aperture that can go from f/1.6 to f/4.0 along with optical image stabilisation (OIS).

This is paired with a 40MP f/2.2 ultra wide angle camera as well as a 48MP f/2.1 Ultra Lighting Macro Telephoto camera with OIS that is capable of 4x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom for stills.

Riding shotgun to the rear camera array is what Huawei refers to as a Spectral Channels Ultra Chroma Camera that doesn’t output images but adds additional colour information to the main camera for more accurate colour rendition.

Combined, this camera setup is also capable of capturing up to 4K@60fps video with up to 20x digital zoom. Up front, the phone has a single 13MP f/2.0 camera with autofocus for selfies that can also snag 4K@60fps video.

Compared to the Pura 80 Ultra, the Pro trades away some telephoto performance to keep costs down with tUltra combining two telephoto focal lengths into one sensor (9.4x and 3.7x), giving it greater range and versatility. The Pro, however, still delivers strong results at up to 4x zoom.

Of note with the Huawei Pura 80 Pro this time around is the ability to leverage a new AI Retouch mode to edit photos. Like many competing offerings, you get the ability to selectively delete parts of an image like unwanted passerby and the like as well as a Best Expression mode that picks the best mugshots out of a burst of shots and merges them all into a single shot so everyone is smiling with their eyes open.

It’s a handy set of AI editing tools though some patience is needed as the AI can occasionally get heavy handed and enthusiastically remove more than what is intended in an image but it’s otherwise a solid offering.

Huawei’s expertise in computational photography combined with the large 1-inch Ultra Lighting camera sensor on the main 50MP camera allow it to offer excellent results for snaps in both daylight and low light conditions at up to 4X zoom, with lifelike hues, good dynamic range and well saturated colours. 

Stills at 10x zoom still offer plenty of detail but keeping shots to below 4X zoom ensures the best results.The rear cameras are also capable of 100x zoom and work best on large, well defined objects like architecture and scenery in daylight conditions though it’s still pretty capable in dim light.

Where the phone is particularly impressive is its Super Macro mode which has a whopping 40x macro, allowing for intricate details such as this shot of an ant the size of a pin tip. The front selfie camera is among the better ones tested with good skin tone and detail.

For videos, the rear cameras offer solid video quality with the OIS keeping things stable at a gentle walk and retaining good detail and colour rendition with a selectable Steady mode that offers better stabilisation while capping video resolution to 2.7K@60fps. 

Should you buy the Huawei Pura 80 Pro?

On its own merits, the Huawei Pura 80 Pro is a beautifully designed flagship with a powerful camera array that delivers excellent results straight out of the box, along with a superb OLED display and solid battery life.

That said, there are a few quibbles though, chief among them the lack of 5G support along with a slightly roundabout process to install apps not available on the AppGallery. However, getting essential Google apps running is now relatively seamless.

To be fair, there’s quite a bit of value on offer as the phone comes with a generous amount of storage for what you pay for. At RM4,599, you’re getting 512GB of storage which is more than what you’d pay for from other flagships. You also get a free casing and 100W charger too thrown in for good measure which considerably sweetens the pot.

If you are seeking a phone with excellent cameras and a smooth user experience outside the usual contenders, the Pura 80 Pro is a worthy choice. For a more premium experience with superior telephoto performance, the Pura 80 Ultra is well worth considering.

Huawei Pura 80 Pro review sample courtesy of Huawei Malaysia. For more entails and to purchase please visit https://consumer.huawei.com/my/phones/pura80-pro/specs/