Honor Magic8 Pro review: So good that you’ll be annoyed you can’t get it

It's nice to know that when you give advice or constructive feedback, someone is listening. So seeing the Honor Magic8 Pro fix problems that I've noted with earlier models in its family feels really good.

With its latest phone, Honor has retained the Magic series' signature aggressive pricing, high-specced cameras, big display and top-tier performance and storage. But now the battery life is better than ever, and the Magic8 Pro gets seven years of full updates guaranteed from launch, plus one of the most generous collections of software features available on any Android phone.

It's just a shame that Honor still doesn't feel like stepping into the U.S. market, which would benefit immensely from another Android flagship player like this. But on the plus side, there's never been a better time to try to import one yourself or bug Honor's leadership to reconsider.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Specs

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Price and availability

The Magic8 Pro costs £1,099, just like the previous generation did. That's cheap for a phone that competes with other big Pro or Ultra models, which tend to cost at least £100 more than that.

The big problem is that Honor still doesn't sell its phones through U.S. carriers and retailers, although the determined can ship one in via various international outlets. Just remember to check that the Magic8 Pro's supported mobile bands will work with your chosen carrier, or you may struggle to find good cell reception.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Design and display

A curved screen with a big circular camera block on the back has been the signature of Honor's Magic series devices for several years, and the Magic8 Pro doesn't mess with that formula too much. That said, the display, while still "micro-curved," is much closer to the flat panels that basically all other phones have adopted over the past few years.

The color choices this time around are Sunrise Gold, Black and finally Sky Cyan — the color I have been testing. It's an extremely subtle blue, which I do like the look of. But I like my phone colors punchier — I have an orange iPhone after all — so it feels like Honor's hiding its light under a bushel for no good reason.

Adding more personality to the Magic8 Pro is the double front camera cutout, which it needs since this is one of the rare Android phones to support fully secure facial recognition unlocking. It's hard to say how much like Apple's Face ID it is, but in terms of speed and viewing angles, Honor seems to be on par with my iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Joining a recent trend in Chinese phones, the Magic8 Pro is certified three times for dust/water resistance. The IP68, IP69 and IP69K ratings translate to a dust-tight phone that can handle being submerged in water or shot with cold or hot water jets.

According to the specs, the Magic8 Pro's 6.7-inch OLED screen is capable of producing up to 6,000 nits of brightness with HDR content, or a more pedestrian 1,800 nits under normal circumstances. We haven't been able to do our battery of display tests on the Magic8 Pro, but what I can tell you is that while it's bright, Honor's phone is not as bright as the Pixel 10 Pro XL, which we have measured as the brightest phone we've ever tested.

In terms of color, the Magic8 Pro seems similarly vivid to the Pixel, even if it's not as bright. But that can vary thanks to Honor's usual treasure trove of eye comfort tech. The Magic8 Pro features up to 4320Hz PWM Dimming — a must-have for users who suffer from smartphone-induced headaches — as well as "Circular Polarized" light to make the display more comfortable to look at. You also have the ability to defocus the display to reduce eye strain.

More common options like motion sickness assistance or color and brightness adjustment to best match the time of day and current lighting are all present too, although the total benefit is hard to prove given the limited time I spent with the phone and how I don't particularly suffer with any of the issues these features are designed to help.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Cameras

The Magic8 Pro's rear camera block contains 50MP main, 50MP ultrawide, and 200MP telephoto lenses, with a 50MP selfie cam found in the front notch. It's got the necessary flagship phone specs, but let's see if it's got flagship performance.

Versus the iPhone 17 Pro Max, the Honor Magic8 Pro has done far better at lighting this beach scene. I do like the warmth of the iPhone's image and what that does to the light rays, but it's a less pleasing image overall.

That applies to the 2x version of this image too. The rays are sharp in both shots but the color difference is still in the Honor's favor.

At night, the Honor cranks up the colors, which are in plentiful supply in this image of the elven castle at Alnwick's Lilidorei attraction. It's reasonable to say the Pixel 10 Pro XL still wins this comparison though, as the dark sections of the image actually look dark while the lit areas are still vivid.

The ultrawide camera of the Magic8 Pro is particularly wide, and also produces bright shots. We can see that clearly in this shot of a decorative sign post that the Honor's shot is wider and brighter than what the OnePlus 15 captured, as evidenced by the car that can only be seen in the Honor image, and the brighter branches behind the sign.

Honor claims its telephoto camera has the largest 200MP sensor on any production phone available. However, its 3.7x zoom is a little below par for current flagship phones.

As we see in the above shot along the beach against the Pixel 10 Pro XL, the Honor doesn't reach nearly as far. The Magic8 Pro's brightness is helpful, though, as you can see more of the marks in the sand, even if the brighter areas suffer as a result.

Stepping up to 10x zoom, things are a little different. The Magic8 Pro has more dramatic-looking HDR, while the Pixel treats the image more gently, although its take on the scene is softer-looking as a result.

Honor's image brightness is again on show in this zoom comparison with the OnePlus 15, which uses a similar 3.5x zoom for its telephoto camera. The supports of this long-gone pier are hard to make out in the OnePlus shot beyond the outline, while the Honor gives us much more textural detail.

Finishing up with a selfie face-off, I think I have found the Magic8 Pro's weakness. I really don't like how the camera treated the colors of my skin and hair, and its portrait effect is a little weak compared to the Pixel's.

On-board image editing is a big part of Honor's updates to the Magic8 Pro's camera offering. Once you've taken your images, you can try out AI-powered erasing, outpainting, upscaling, cutout tools and more. Perhaps the most unique is the Magic Color feature, which lets you quickly apply color grading templates by using the color of one image to adjust any other, or by using a series of preset or custom options.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Performance

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, assisted by 12GB RAM, drives the Honor Magic8 Pro. That's the same chip we expect most Android flagship phones to run in 2026, although we are seeing more and more 16GB RAM phones arrive to help users make the most of AI features and app multi-tasking.

This combo proved more than capable of running Destiny Rising at max graphics at 60fps, or high settings at 90fps, during my gaming testing. But let's check the formal benchmark figures for further clarity on this phone's performance.

And what do the numbers reveal? That the Magic8 Pro, despite using the same chipset as the OnePlus 15, is a little behind the OnePlus 15 on the Geekbench and 3DMark CPU and graphics benchmarks. However, it's a long way ahead of the Pixel 10 Pro XL, which runs on a Tensor G5 chipset not known for its performance muscle.

Honor doesn't give you a choice with storage on the Magic8 Pro — it's 512GB or nothing. That's quite all right though, since the already below-average price for this phone means you effectively save another £100 to £200 over rival devices which charge extra for this much capacity.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Battery and charging

Battery life on the Magic8 Pro is a little complicated, so let's start with the easy part: charging.

The 100W wired charging on offer powers the Magic8 Pro battery from empty to 39% in 15 minutes, 70% in half-an-hour and 100% after 50 minutes. That's pretty speedy when you consider how large the battery is. Honor also included 80W wireless charging, which we were unable to test ourselves, but should be similarly rapid.

The Magic8 Pro model I tested is the global version, which uses a large 7,100 mAh battery. In my usual 3 hours of YouTube battery test, the phone drained by 11%; to put that number in context, the OnePlus 15 loses 12% on this test and that device has the best phone battery life of any we've tested.

Sadly, this isn't the battery most of you reading this would be able to use. Due to regulations, the Magic8 Pro has a 6,270 mAh battery in Europe, about 12% smaller than the cell in the global model. Without testing this version, I can't say for sure if the excellent results I got from my review unit would be matched by the model actually available for purchase.

Chances are the Honor Magic8 Pro still a long-lasting phone no matter which version you buy, but probably a little less so than you might expect.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Software

Honor has joined the extra button bandwagon with its new AI button, located on the bottom right side. It's effectively a combination of an iPhone's Camera Control and Action button, allowing you to use various shortcuts with a short, long or double-press.

The AI button's main use is to offer up relevant AI services depending on what's on the Magic8 Pro screen, so you can activate the feature you need without having to go looking for it. The button is also capacitive, meaning it can also function as a zoom level control in the Camera app, if you prefer that to the on-screen dial.

Speaking of what's on screen, you'll notice that the Android 16-based MagicOS 10 software that runs things on the Magic8 Pro has a transparent interface design that you may find familiar. Fortunately, Honor has learned from Apple's early mistakes with iOS 26 by adding a prominent transparency adjustment slider to let you set things to your liking.

I must admit that I had low expectations for what I saw as a copy-cat interface when I installed the MagicOS 10 update on my review device. But I can't deny that it looks good, and between that and the UI's beautifully smooth animations, which objectively add nothing to the user experience but make navigation feel soft but precise, the Magic8 Pro does feel like a real treat to use.

I don't know what's been happening in the offices of Chinese phone companies over the past year or two, but integration with other operating systems, including Apple's, has become an apparent priority. That goes for the Honor Magic8 Pro too, which can share files with and pair nicely with with Macs, iPhones and Windows machines. You need an app installed on the non-Honor device to make it happen, but this was an unthinkable level of integration until recently.

Honor's finally fallen in line with the Android phone establishment and offers seven years of full Android updates with the Magic8 Pro. Now it matches Google and Samsung's flagship support, lifting a big limitation for Honor's top phones.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: AI features

The Magic8 Pro builds on previous Magic devices' AI tools, with features like Circle to Search, text summaries, writing tools and so on all returning. If you're a fan of Honor's in-house apps, or at least don't like Google's offerings, then you'll be happy to hear there is now Gemini integration for Honor apps as well as Google ones, letting you use Honor's built-in Camera and Clock apps with the chatbot.

Google's offering 3 months of AI Pro for free for Magic8 Pro owners too, giving you access to more Gemini services and 2TB of cloud storage for as long as you're subbed.

Honor's Deepfake Detection system is back and better than ever, too. The system can now work in video conference calls as well as one-on-one chats, capable of flagging multiple faces or voices as potential imitations.

One simple-sounding new feature that I was particularly interested in was the AI-powered automatic blurring of private information in screenshots. I often have to edit personal details out of screenshots when demonstrating things on a phone, so automating this would save me a fair amount of time.

I am happy to report that the blurring does work. But unfortunately, the button to activate the feature only appears when Honor's AI processing decides it should, and that seems to be app-dependent. For instance, I was able to get the tool to blur a profile picture and web links in WhatsApp, but nothing appeared when I took a screenshot of a profile from my contacts book containing multiple phone numbers and email addresses.

Within Honor's dedicated "Honor AI" app, you find three more options. One is AI Memories, which is Honor's answer to Pixel Screenshots or OnePlus' Plus Mind — a place to store screenshots and other scraps of notes and recordings that you can curate and refer to later with AI. It's a use of AI I somewhat like, so I'm happy to see Honor adopting the idea.

There's also a Photos Agent, which I assumed from the name would offer something similar but for image editing. But disappointingly, it's a series of preset enhancements and style-altering options. It's on par with what you get from Samsung or Google, rather than something unique, and certainly stretches the definition of an "agent".

The last one, and my favorite, is the Settings Agent. This lets you make changes to your phone's options with voice or text commands. It's not perfect, as for some queries, it'll just link you to the relevant page in the Settings app rather than adjusting it there and then, but for basic options it's quick and simple. It's just odd that the Honor AI app is the only place to find it, rather than it being baked into the Settings app itself.

Honor Magic8 Pro review: Verdict

The timing of the Magic8 Pro's global launch means the phone-buying public's attention will soon be stolen by the Galaxy S26 series, if Samsung's rumored launch window is anything to go by. But don't let that detract from the quality of the product we have here.

U.S. buyers will likely want to go for the OnePlus 15 or Google Pixel 10 Pro XL if you're after a big and capable Android flagship right now, assuming you don't want to wait and see what Samsung has to offer. But if the Magic8 Pro is an option on the table for you, then you'd be crazy not to consider it.