HONOR Magic4 Pro Review: Great choice in the flagship level!

HONOR Magic4 pro
Honor is still at it
The Honor Magic4 Pro is the flagship for 2022 and brings their own flavor of flagship performance to the arena which shapes up nicely, even down the to tiny details like speakers and bezels.
Design
8
Display
8.5
Performance
9.5
Camera
8
Battery Life
9
Value
9
Good
Great performance
Nice cameras
Superb speakers
Faaaast charging
Ungood
Oversaturated display
Heavy UI skin
8.7

Out of 10


Specs


CPU Qualcomm SM8450 Snapdragon 8 Gen 1
Memory256GB+8GB RAM
Display6.8″ LTPO OLED 120Hz, HDR10+1000 nits Peak Brightness
Camera50 MP, f/1.8, 23mm (wide)
50 MP, f/2.2, 122˚  ultrawide
64 MP, f/2.2, 90mm ( periscope super telephoto zoom)

21MP, f/2,5 24mm (selfie)
ConnectivityBluetooth 5.2, USB Type-C 3.1, WiFi 6
OSAndroid 12, Magic UI 6
Battery4,600 mAh, 100W Fast Charging
100W Wireless Charging
Available ColorsBlack, Cyan, Gold,
Retail Price8GB/256GB – RM 3,999

Design

This here is the Honor Magic4 Pro, Honor’s flagship for the year. Won’t lie to you guys this is my first time using a phone from Huawei’s baby brand and I couldn’t find the app drawer and didn’t enable it until having used this phone for two weeks. Really reminds me of the clown operation we run here at ZTG.

The Magic4 Pro sports a curved display, something very reminiscent of the 2020 era of smartphones which means that it’s got an excellent feel in the hand when holding it. It’s also very futuristic looking when you look towards the sides of the screen which just melts into the side of the phone. The color we have here is cyan which does look like cyan in this picture but in real life, it’s iridescent and has a mirror shine to it. Very premium look feel and weight overall, especially with the thin bezels. If apple did this people would go wild.

6.8″, taller than it is wide.

The Magic4 Pro is leaning towards the larger side of smartphones but it gets the 6.8 ” mostly from height. So it’s just taller than usual and remains slim on the sides which makes it easy to grip well.

The selfie camera is a pill-shaped array because it has a 3D depth sensor in addition to the selfie camera. Not ideal placement as eyes will look slanted if you take straight-up selfies, but at least it’s still hole punch which is a pretty trendy look, considering the iPhone 14 leaks indicate that iPhone 14 is also hole punch and pill-shaped later this year.

Speakers are stellar performers here, with excellent loudness and frequency response. Proper high-end audio, unlike some phones that charge u RM4000+ and still have Happy Meal toy speakers. Speakers are top and bottom firing and do equal work in terms of loudness which is surprising.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.

Feels like we’ve been riding on the SD 8 Gen1 wave for a long time now and time feels kind of slow, but for now this is still the top Android chipset before we spot more carring the Plus version.

Best-in-class chipset means best-in-class performance? Absolutely yes. Nothing quite manages to choke up the phone, not even Genshin Impact on max settings at 60fps. You still see the occasional frame drop but it’s to be expected as cooling is not as overcompensated as the gaming phones out there running the same chipset, and the game is still playable nonetheless. No bones to pick in this department.

4,600 mAh with 100W fast charging

This phone is a mega juicer with a battery and charging combo. The idle battery drain is nice and durable and the phone comfortable lasts me 1.5 days if I’m busy working but less than a day if I’m watching a lot of videos and scrolling social media all day.

Not a deal breaker at all though, as the fast charging really juices up the phone from 0-100% in half an hour give or take. This is THE experience that everyone should expect when paying almost RM4000 upfront for a phone in this category. No lag when using it, understanding that it will drain fast but charge much faster.


Camera System time.

The Honor Magic4 Pro is equipped with a 50MP main, 50MP ultrawide and a 64MP persiscope telephoto. The periscope is rated at 90mm which I feel is much more fun and producers nicer portraits but it will come at the cost of many people not being used to stand so far back to use it.

The main sensor is great, a little underexposed as usual but the white balance leans towards cool without sever color shifts, the contrast and dynamic range is nice too. Full marks here and on par with other flagships we’ve used this year.

Ultrawide performs great here too, white balance is now dead-on, nice and neutral. The pixel binning from the high rest sensor really shows here and it produces really sharp ultrawide pics unlike most of the low native MP ultrawides out there. Love it.

The 90mm periscope telephoto is bragged about at the back of the phone boasting the 100x zoom and it’s very useable and on par with the sharpness of other flagships that also use the same technology. Definitely nice to have when you need that extra reach. Color, contrast and sharpness on its own is very average though, it’s kind of like a mid range to entry level phone quality but just really useable when you zoom in alot. 10x was great and 100x was passable.


Selfie Time

Nice natural colors out of the Honor, I think it brightens up the skin tone colors a bit automatically, fantastic selfie camera here.


Everything is done right!

The Honor Magic4 Pro holds it’s own very well, competing in the flagship category by bringing excellent cameras, battery life and performance to the table in a familiar, nice one-hand holdable package. Media consumption on this phone will also be great, with arguably one of the best dual stereo speakers in a phone.Only downside is the UI skin that is pretty heavy but that’s a non-issue for most people.

For RM3,999 the Honor Magic4 Pro is a solid option that can fight the likes of the RM 5,000 phones that don’t seem to punch their belt line.

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