Introduction
The HONOR 200 arrives as the latest addition to HONOR‘s premium mid-range lineup, aiming to redefine the smartphone experience with a focus on AI-powered capabilities, impressive camera performance, and a sleek design. As the smartphone market becomes increasingly competitive, HONOR seeks to carve out its niche by offering a device that balances style, functionality, and innovation. This review will delve into the key aspects of the HONOR 200, examining how it measures up to its promises and where it stands in the current smartphone landscape.
Design and Build Quality
HONOR has placed significant thought into the aesthetic appeal of the HONOR 200. It’s Simple but still captivating. At only 7.7mm thin, the device feels great to hold with one hand.
The rear camera design pays homage to the patio windows of Casa Milà, showcasing a harmonious fusion of organic geometric outlines with naturalism. The sides are flat, making it easier to hold the device, and matte, which means it’s not a smudge magnet like a lot of other devices these days.
Available in four colors – Coral Pink, Moonlight White, Emerald Green, and Black – the HONOR 200 offers users a chance to express their style. The Black variant that we have has a textured rear panel that reacts to light with a glittery effect, creating a visually captivating appearance. As expected, there’s no headphone jack, but you get a dual speaker setup.
While the curved display edges contribute to a more premium look, they may make the device more susceptible to accidental touches.
Performance
The HONOR 200 is powered by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 Mobile Platform. While it’s not as powerful as the Pro’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, it still packs more than enough punch to deliver smooth performance across various tasks, from everyday app usage to gaming.
You also get 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, providing plenty of space for apps, media, and files. This configuration allows for seamless multitasking and eliminates the need for frequent app reloads or storage management.
As for gaming, you can basically throw a range of games from the lighter ones like Mobile Legends to more resource intensive titles like Asphalt 9, Honkai Star Rail, and even the new game Zenless Zone Zero, and the HONOR 200 will handle them well. Most of what I’ve mentioned will run smooth even with settings cranked up close or at their highest presets.
Camera
The HONOR 200 boasts a 50MP Main Camera that uses a Sony IMX906 sensor and supports OIS, promising excellent light-gathering capabilities and improved performance in challenging lighting conditions. It does do a great job of capturing photos with good levels of detail and sharpness.
The 50MP Telephoto Camera, equipped with a Sony IMX 856 sensor, enables high-quality zoomed portraits. The 2.5X optical zoom is useful for portrait photography, delivering a natural bokeh effect and clear subject separation.
What’s even better is that even at 5x and 10x zoom, photos still look sharp and detailed, more than enough for social media use.
The collaboration with Studio Harcourt for the AI-powered HONOR AI Portrait Engine is a great addition, bringing professional studio-like portrait capabilities to a smartphone. You can choose from three styles, but for some reason, the mode is always on, and there’s no way to turn it off.
Perhaps my only issue with this camera system is how it handles light sources. As the samples below show, the amount of detail in the lightbulbs isn’t as great, especially when you compared to another mid-range smartphone.
Check out these other samples:
Video recording Maxes out at 4K 30fps, which is more than enough for my personal needs, but those who need 60 fps will have to dial down to 1080p.
Audio and Multimedia
The HONOR 200 has a 6.78-inch AMOLED Quad-curved display with a peak brightness of 4000 nits, which ensures excellent visibility even in bright outdoor conditions. The catch is that the content has to be in full screen. The 120Hz refresh rate, on the other hand, contributes to smooth transitions and animations.
HONOR has also incorporated several eye-comfort features, including 3840Hz PWM dimming, AI Circadian Night Display, and even TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Certification. These features work together to provide a comfortable viewing experience, especially during extended use or in low-light conditions.
The device has dual stereo speakers, offering a well-balanced sound with a decent amount of low end, clear vocals, and sparkly treble. Even better, there’s no audible distortion at high volume. However, the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack might disappoint some users who prefer wired audio options.
Software
Running on MagicOS 8.0, based on Android 14, the HONOR 200 introduces several AI-powered features to enhance the user experience. The intent-based interface aims to understand user habits and preferences, offering a more personalized experience over time.
Two standout features are Magic Capsule and Magic Portal. Magic Capsule expands notifications to present users with relevant supplementary information, without having to open the app itself. Say you want to skip the current song on Spotify, just tap the bubble, then do so. Unfortunately, the drawback is that support is only limited to a few apps.
Magic Portal uses AI to interpret user behaviors, and lets you send media and text directly via specific apps easily with just a touch and hold gesture. It allows you to just basically drag and drop content into any app that you wish to send it, say drag your photo so the email app and it’ll be automatically attached, or on to the Messenger app, and so on.
If removing unwanted objects from photos or reimagining your photo to a watercolor painting or an anime style art piece is your thing, the HONOR 200 does not offers those features, at least in its current state.
While MagicOS 8.0 runs snappy and smooth for most of the time, there are a number of things that I think HONOR needs to look at in terms of the overall user experience.
Things like having to go into the settings for the camera apps just to change frame rate and resolution or having the option for changing the default SIM for mobile data in a separate SIM Management section instead of being in the Mobile Data section, which can easily be accessed from the pull-down menu.
Battery and Charging
The HONOR 200 is equipped with a 5200mAh Silicon-carbon Battery, promising all-day battery life even under intensive usage. The use of silicon-carbon material, inspired by the electric vehicle industry, aims to provide reliable performance even in challenging low-temperature conditions.
With my use case, which is a lot of social media updates plus a bit of email, photography, and both video and audio streaming, I can easily get a day to a day and a half before having to recharge. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Charging capabilities are impressive, with 100W Wired HONOR SuperCharge technology allowing a full charge in less than an hour. Unlike the Pro, however, this does not support wireless charging.
HONOR 200: Verdict
For its PHP 24,999 price tag, the HONOR 200 is a compelling option, offering an attractive design, an eye-catching display for gaming and media consumption, powerful performance, very capable cameras, and good battery life – the makings of a good all-around device.
It does need improvement in some areas like the camera’s handling of light sources, and a few things in the user interface. Moreover, the AI features on this are useful, but may not be as compelling or impactful when compared to the competition. Then there’s the zoom range, and the absence of wireless charging.
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.
