HONOR’s former flagship, the HONOR Magic4 Pro, made some waves when it launched in the Philippines as part of the brand’s triumphant return to the local scene. At the time, we mentioned quite a lot of good things about it, though not without its drawbacks.
Fast forward to 2023, and several brands have already launched their new flagships, packing more powerful and efficient processors, better cameras, and charging speeds that are becoming even faster and faster. In this regard, how does the HONOR Magic4 Pro fare? moreover, is it still worth getting today? or should you just wait for the brand’s next flagship? if they even decide to bring it here? Let’s find out.
Design and Build Quality
Design-wise, the HONOR Magic4 Pro is more or less what you’d expect from a 2022 flagship. That means a curved display and rear panel, a huge camera module at the back, and of course, a glossy finish that makes it look more premium, but at the cost of becoming a fingerprint magnet.
Unlike that smartphone which seems to have been the inspiration for the look, this phone sticks to physical buttons. As with many other flagships these days, it misses out on the headphone jack, but it comes with a dongle.
Moving to its display, you get a 6.81-inch LTPO OLED screen with FHD+ resolution plus an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. Compared to more current flagships like the Galaxy S23 series or the OnePlus 11, the display specifications on the HONOR Magic4 Pro may seem a bit outdated in some areas, but it’s still an excellent display for media consumption and gaming, thanks to those punchy colors.
Performance
HONOR Magic4 Pro is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, along with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. While better chips have come out since its release, it’s still a pretty solid processing package that should handle almost anything you’ll throw at it.
Throw in Genshin Impact, and it’ll run at the highest preset at 60fps without major issues, Asphalt 9 in its hiqh-quality preset, and Diablo Immortal very close to its highest settings. This is what you get, at least if you’re going to game on this for short periods of time.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is known for running hot, so HONOR made sure to equip its flagship with what they claim is Superconductive hexagonal graphene, a VC liquid cooling system, and AI-augmented heat dissipation.
Were these enough? scoring only 46.5% stability on PCMark’s Wild Life stress test, it’s possible that there’s a lot of throttling going on when the device is subjected to heavy load for an extended period of time. It shouldn’t be a problem with normal day-to-day use or short bursts of gaming, but if you plan to game on this device for long hours, it’s probably not the best choice.
Camera
HONOR Magic4 Pro has a 50MP wide-angle main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide unit, and a 64MP periscope telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom, up to 100x digital zoom, and OIS.
Our samples show plenty of details, though colors tend to lean towards a cooler tone by default. Night shots are also great, though for this device, it means boosting the exposure, even for dark areas, which means it’s less faithful to what the eyes can see. Not that it’s a bad thing.
The HONOR Magic4 Pro is able to retain a respectable level of detail when zoomed in at 100X. Enough for you to be able to clearly distinguish objects.
While there’s not toggle to activate any stabilization from the camera app, it still does a good job when reducing shake on videos. You can shoot in 4K HDR10+, and even use several LUTs.
Software
HONOR Magic4 Pro runs MagicUI 6 on top of Android 12, which to be honest looks like its parent brand (well.. former)’s Android skin, with a Blue theme.
However, the big difference is that this has Google Mobile Services and can access the full suite of Google apps without having to do anything fancy or installing additional apps. That alone is a big win. There are a handful of pre-installed apps which makes things look a bit cluttered. Most of which, you can uninstall.
Battery
HONOR Magic4 Pro packs a 4,600mAh battery which for my use case, which involves a lot of social media updates, YouTube videos, Spotify Email, eCommerce, and photography is decent, lasting a whole day of light to moderate use.
Using its 100W SUPERCHARGE charging brick, zero from full took less than an hour, which is impressive.
HONOR Magic4 Pro Verdict
While it still packs a proper punch in terms of performance, cameras, and battery life, and yes, it still looks great, the HONOR Magic4 Pro has unfortunately been surpassed by many other devices that offer a better package overall, that is taking into consideration its PHP 52,990 price tag. If you can get it for much less than that, it becomes a better deal.
Of course, it’s a different story as to whether you should look for another device today if you have it. I’d say not necessarily. It’s still a great smartphone overall. Ask yourself if you’re willing to pay a hefty price tag for that difference in performance, imaging, and possibly battery life?
Emman has been writing technical and feature articles since 2010. Prior to this, he became one of the instructors at Asia Pacific College in 2008, and eventually landed a job as Business Analyst and Technical Writer at Integrated Open Source Solutions for almost 3 years.
