HONOR 200 Pro : Complete Review

What’s It Like To Use?

The HONOR 90 felt like a leap, but this time the HONOR 200 Pro is even more massive, starting with the debut of the all-new Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, which Qualcomm had introduced recently as a high-end SoC that’s just below the flagship 8 Gen 3, making it a powerhouse choice in the midrange phone category.

The design language is only similar to the HONOR 90 by shape, but in terms of finish, it feels more refined and looks more premium on the HONOR 200 Pro. My white unit has a matte finish but a subtle reflection of natural pearl that really grabs the eye despite being a color as subdued as white is.

The design change continues to the camera module itself, being a massive oval taking about a 1/3 of the phone’s real estate. It houses a triple camera setup that I’ll cover more about below.

6.78 OLED Display With Magic Goodness

The HONOR 200 Pro comes in a 6.78-inch display size with the choice of panel being OLED and a 120Hz refresh rate. Its color depth is 10-bit and comes with support for HDR10. It’s a brilliant screen that reproduces excellent colors and visuals, from Netflix to YouTube HDR content. As usual with most HONOR smartphones, there’s 3840Hz PWM dimming for better low-light viewing thanks to more aggressive anti-flicker capabilities that the company has been working on for years, since the HONOR 4 Pro. With auto-brightness enabled, even viewing content under harsh sunlight proved an easy feat for the 200 Pro, considering that it can reach up to 4000 nits of theoretical max brightness! This quality of this panel and what its capabilities are akin to what we usually see on flagships, and HONOR really didn’t skimp on this part.

Shape-wise it is curved, and while that makes the screen seem fuller, there’s also a pill-shaped cutout to house the selfie camera and depth sensor. It’s no huge intrusion because that cutout also serves the function of being a dynamic island, known as Magic Capsule, as seen on the Magic 6 Pro which headlined MagicOS 8.0.

It’s basically a top-placement mini area where certain minimized apps would jump into while you’re looking at something else on the big screen. I appreciate being able to keep one background task minified on my screen while I have to pay attention to something else, and be able to bounce back to it with just one tap, rather than conventionally swipping up from the bottom to access multi-tasking.

That is but one of many interesting features the HONOR 200 Pro has up its sleeves.

For starters, Magic Portal is going to be your best friend. You can select Text or Images without needing to tap copy/paste/download by just tap-holding the media itself and dragging it onto the side of your screen to directly share to social media, email or messaging apps, which does factually save you time. It can be enabled/disabled in the settings.

Next up is Blur Private Info. You are able to directly redact text on screenshots, which I imagine is currently done quite crudely using editor apps and just using a brush to directly brush color over it, making it look more messy and unprofessional. Blur Private Info immediately scans through the image for text, and when it’s done doing so, you can directly tap on the text you want to redact/cover and a box is automatically placed on top of it as an effective cover. These are but a taste of what HONOR MagicOS can currently do, and it proved to be useful and not just a cheap gimmick to lure you into the system. Still, it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing UI out there and I still hope that one day we’ll get to see that change.

On a final note, I am happy to report that since this is indeed the first Pro Number series that has entered in Malaysia with even a pair of loud stereo speakers this time around, making it a good jump from the HONOR 90 even.

Performance

Under the hood is the new 4nm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, designated to be an premium mid-range chip. Storage and memory are top-shelf however, with 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage, which that alone makes it a competitive offering. On the daily, the HONOR 200 Pro is smooth and efficient, handling anything we can throw at it for days on end. Gaming is also relatively smooth for the most part, with most throttles starting after an average of 25 minutes. Granted a phone like this is not a dedicated gaming phone and it is relatively thin as well, so based on those facts it is within expectations of a mid-range phone.

Battery life is also a highlight of the HONOR 200 Pro. It also uses the same silicon-carbon battery unit as the Magic 6 Pro, with a capacity of 5200 mAh. With that being said, a light user that swings between multiple social media apps, messaging and music playback can easily last over 2 days, whereas heavier users such as content creators using both video and camera, as well as daily pick-up gamers is guaranteed a full day’s use till late at night. E-sports athletes who constantly game here would probably squeeze till the evening though they might not be the target market for this smartphone. A full charge takes about 40-ish minutes or so with the provided 100W charger in-box. Wireless charging is also in the mix, hitting up to 66W but that figure is only compatible with HONOR’s own wireless charger which is fair enough.

Fully Loaded Camera Setup

The HONOR 200 Pro boasts a versatile triple camera system on the rear, prioritizing portrait photography according to Honor. Stabilisation is taken care of via a dual gyro-EIS+OIS system, varying across lenses.

Here’s a breakdown of the three lenses:

Main Sensor:

• This is the star of the show, sharing the same sensor as the flagship Honor Magic 6 Pro. It’s a large 1/1.3″ sensor,known as the H9000
• Pixel size is 1.2µm, which combines with the 4-in-1 pixel binning technology to deliver good low-light performance by increasing light sensitivity.
• Optical image stabilization (OIS) is present to counteract camera shake and ensure sharper photos, especially in low-light situations.

Telephoto Lens:

• This lens offers up to 2.5x optical zoom bringing distant subjects closer without significant quality loss.
• The sensor is a Sony IMX 856, making it the first midranger in Malaysia to have this sensor.
• It has a focal length equivalent to roughly 68mm and an aperture of f/2.4, which means it might struggle a bit in low-light scenarios compared to the main sensor.

Ultrawide Lens:

• This 12MP ultrawide sensor offers a wider field of view for capturing expansive landscapes or fitting more people into group photos.
• It stands out from some competitors by having autofocus, which allows for a macro mode to capture close-up shots with good detail.

Front Facing Cameras:

• The selfie system is seemingly similar on paper as the HONOR 90, packing a 50MP sensor with a f/2.4 aperture.
• It is now supported by an additional 2MP depth sensor for better portrait blurs.
• As for video, you are able to capture up to 4K footage, including the wider 21:9 aspect ratio.

Harcourt Portrait Mode

I decided to give portrait mode a dedicated space as I know it is the HONOR 200 Pro’s best selling point. In development with Studio Harcourt, France, the HONOR 200 Pro boasts an impressive portrait mode that allows up to 3x focal length for shots that are up close, while the fun part is being able to pick between 3 calibrated filters :

• Harcourt Vibrant
• Harcourt Color
• Harcourt Classic

Harcourt Vibrant and Color

Vibrant and Color are the two colored filters in Portrait mode, each with their own distinct personalities. For one, Harcourt Vibrant is the more vivid option, delivering shots that pack plenty of color and saturation into the mix, and plays that down with some contrast to even things out. Detail is sharp when it recognizes faces and bodies, while bringing extreme focus to them, which means it might borderline look like we were photoshopped in but I guess that’s just how computational approach works here when it comes to post-processing.

I prefer the stylings of Harcourt Color, which is more to Harcourt’s signature tungsten lighting approach, giving a subtle but felt warm veil that is very prominent on skin and bright environments (refer to the trees in the above image).

Harcourt Classic

Harcourt Classic is by far my favorite of the 3. It simply aces it all, from colors, image quality, depth and contrast. Detail is sharp, and even when it’s not, that’s the point of black and white photos. The post processing is executed so well, so much so that I can even compare it to using a mirrorless camera. You can literally how all shades of black, white and grey is given enough depth to really complete the image, and it definitely isn’t just some simple black and white filter. You can literally create so much portrait art with this, and if you aren’t a smartphone photographer specialising in portraiture per say, but this phone will make you one.

Conclusion

There are many ways to look at this. First and foremost, I would conclude that the HONOR 200 Pro is a capable all-rounder that’s heavily marketed for its photography aspect. To some degree that’s true, considering that it’s the Portrait mode being the superstar while regular mode is being put on the bench. Granted, it does take decent regular shots, but they can’t outshine its own portrait mode yet alone the current competition in the mid-range segment.

See also

NewsSmartphone

·July 22, 2019

ASUS ROG Phone II: Snapdragon 855 Plus, 120Hz, Big Battery

It has top-shelf specs sans the chip, with quality memory, battery and screen components that are attractive enough to even entire HONOR 90 owners to upgrade. I mean, c’mon, there’s stereo speakers as well, and combined with everything else, it might very well be an even better value proposition over the HONOR Magic 6 Pro.

The price is RM 2699, and there are other 512GB phones around at that price too, but the HONOR 200 Pro has everything it needs to fight for the under RM 3000 crown.