Best Honor phones 2023: Honor smartphones reviewed

The Magic 4 Pro is a full-featured flagship, with top specs in almost every way.

That means a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, 120Hz LTPO OLED display and blazingly fast charging: 100W wired And

wireless. The camera is also engaged, with a triple lens setup including a powerful 64Mp periscope lens.

Still, it’s not a perfect phone. There’s no IP rating, unlike some similarly priced competitors, and minor flaws frustrate, like unreliable performance with unofficial chargers. Compared to other flagships, Honor’s commitment to just two years of software updates can’t quite compete either.

It’s the most impressive phone Honor makes, and with solid specs and a competitive price, it’s well worth considering.

The Magic Vs is Honor’s second-generation foldable, but it’s a much more polished effort than the first – and, unlike that phone, it’s on sale in countries around the world.

Priced lower than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, it’s affordable by foldable standards. The hardware is still slick, closing flatter than its Korean rival and packing a more powerful main camera.

You’ll have to live without waterproofing or wireless charging though, and the Honor software doesn’t make the most of the form factor, not even using Android’s built-in foldable features. Hopefully this will improve over time, making it a true competitor to the Z Fold line.

The Honor 70 is an accomplished midrange phone, a confident step forward for the company after its escape from Huawei. With Google services and apps, a thoughtful and attractive design, solid performance and good battery life, it’s one of the best phones in this price range in the UK and Europe – sorry American friends.

It faces fierce competition from Pixel 6a, Nothing Phone (1) and OnePlus Nord 2T, all of which are a bit cheaper and sometimes have a hardware edge. Crucially, all three also run on better software, with better long-term support promised as well.

But with a 120Hz screen and a very good main camera, the Honor 70 is still a solid choice.

The Magic 5 Lite is an affordable mid-range that mostly excels in looks, with a sleek, slender design that could belong in a phone at least twice its price.

Brilliant battery life also helps the phone stand out, although it’s let down a bit by an older chipset (the same one found in the older Magic 4 Lite, below), a slow charging (no charger in the box) and a camera that’s good but not great.

Still, if you want a phone that looks and feels like a flagship for a fraction of the price, you could do a lot worse.

The Honor 50 was the company’s first phone to get a global release since independence, and also the first to get Google support. It was a great buy at launch, and it’s even better now that its price has dropped significantly.

Design and display are the main selling points here – the Honor 50 looks and feels great, and it’s both thin (7.8mm) and light (175g). The 120Hz curved OLED display is also one of the best you’ll find in any phone at this price.

The 108Mp rear camera is quite powerful, although the other rear lenses are a bit disappointing. The selfie camera is still good, and at 32Mp it’s one of the higher resolution front cameras.

The Honor Magic 4 Lite 5G – also known as X9 5G in some markets – is an impressive 5G device when it comes to performance.

There’s a lot to like. Battery life is good, the screen is huge, and it offers solid performance alongside its 5G connectivity.

It’s a shame the huge screen is LCD rather than OLED, but at this price trade-offs have to come somewhere, and that’s the trade-off made for a 120Hz refresh rate. Inconsistent cameras hold it back a bit further, as is the choice to ship the phone with the now old Android 11, but overall it’s still a cheap and capable mid-range.

The Honor 50 Lite is a bit cheaper than the regular Honor 50. If you can afford the upgrade, it’s worth it, but otherwise the 50 Lite isn’t a bad option.

The large 6.67-inch screen is welcome at this price (even though it only has a 60Hz refresh rate), and you also get a decent 64MP main rear camera and very fast charging of 66 W – really impressive at this price.

There’s no 5G support, and the design doesn’t live up to its sibling, but for the price it really isn’t too shabby.