Honor Magic7 Pro Review: Portrait Perfection!

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80%

80%

The Good

1. Beautiful Harcourt Portraits
2. Durable
3. Super fast charging

The Not So Good

1. Shots may look processed (due to AI)
2. AI 'Star' effect cannot be turned off

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I’ve just returned from Slovenia, where Honor launched its latest flagship – the Magic7 Pro, and its far cheaper sibling, the Magic7 Lite.

I gave the Magic6 Pro high praise last year for its admirable feature set and great camera performance. This is a trend I’ve seen consistently from Honor over the last couple of years; their devices are attractive, do everything right, pack the latest silicon, and in the Magic V3’s case, appear to defy the laws of physics.

However, we’ve reached a point of smartphone saturation, in the best possible way. It is, in my opinion, nigh-on impossible to buy a crap smartphone in 2025 – particularly if you head down the Android route. That means each manufacturer needs a differentiator of some kind, and I don’t envy them one bit, for this reason.

The good news is that the Magic7 Pro has one, but it doesn’t start with A or end with I. But that’s not a bad thing, either.

Specs and pricing

The Magic7 Pro is running the Snapdragon 8 Elite – Qualcomm’s latest and greatest mobile chipset. Joining it is just one configuration that includes 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.

The display is a 6.8-inch AMOLED unit with a peak brightness of 5,000 nits and the whole package is both IP68 and IP69 certified (the latter is for protection against high-pressure jets of water). It’s also reassuring to know that the Magic7 Pro is covered with Honor’s NanoCrystal Shield for ‘enhanced durability’.

Powering everything is MagicOS 9.0 and a 5,270mAh battery that’s capable of 100W supercharging (which takes 35 minutes to reach full) and 80W wireless charging (45 minutes will deliver a full charge in that instance).

You can preorder the Magic7 Pro today for £1,099.99 and, if you’re early enough, grab a free MagicPad 2, which is nice. The Magic7 Lite costs just £399.99 and is also available for pre-order.

Design

There are three colours to choose from with the Magic7 Pro: Lunar Shadow Grey, Breeze Blue, and Black. It’s a great-looking phone, too – Honor has always done a good job when it comes to making its phones look unique and premium.

The Magic7 Pro also feels great in the hand, and the display is, as we have come to expect from anything Android-related, superb. It certainly handled the blindingly bright snowy Slovenian days perfectly.

Special mention, however, should go to the Magic7 Lite, which Honor is pitching as one of the most unbreakable phones on the market – even more so than its flagship big brother. This is due to the same durable build quality applied to the back of the device, compared to the Magic7 Pro’s premium approach – and high-rated drop protection.

Honor put this to the test during the Slovenia trip by dropping it from a quad bike onto a gravel path and then running over it with said quad bike. The screen was unmarked and the body only sustained mild cosmetic damage. Impressive. It should also be noted that the Lite has a huge 6,600mAh battery, which is currently the industry’s largest. Of the two devices, the Lite might, once again, be the sleeper here.

Performance

As noted earlier, the Magic7 Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite and is the second device I’ve tested and written about this year with that chip (the first one was my OnePlus 13 review). OnePlus and Honor said exactly the same thing – as did Snapdragon itself at its annual Hawaii summit last year – this is the biggest upgrade of Qualcomm’s mobile platform to date.

The result is a 45% increase in CPU performance and a 40% increase in GPU performance. Oh, and a much faster AI architecture, as one might expect in 2025. Unless you’re really into your smartphone benchmarking (I’m not), all you need to know is that this chip is super fast, super capable, and deserving of flagship status.

MagicOS 9.0 remains a great take on Android. Like all recent Android iterations, it feels smooth, and while the usual bloatware comes pre-installed, you can remove it pretty quickly to leave yourself with a clean user experience.

There’s a boatload of AI stuff included, too. At the time of writing, I haven’t been able to test all of it due to device availability and the fact that the devices we were given in Slovenia were still awaiting an update or two. But it’s there because of course it is – AI on smartphones is now a given and it would be shocking if the Magic7 Pro didn’t have it. Only Apple lags behind in this regard.

Special mention should go to the fact that MagicOS 9.0 now offers deepfake detection when you’re watching videos, but I do wonder how widely that’ll be put to use. I’d need more time with it beyond the Honor demos at the press event to offer my full thoughts.

Camera

The Honor Magic7 Pro features a 50MP main camera, a 50MP ultra-wide camera, and a 200MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom. All have optical image stabilisation and all are bolstered with the usual array of AI trickery behind the scenes.

The selfie camera is also a 50MP unit with 3D depth capabilities, but no optical image stabilisation.

As you might expect, Honor focused intently on its AI image engine, which is clearly the main driver of what this smartphone can do, photography-wise. Indeed, when I asked one of the Honor execs what the phone’s differentiating factor for the camera was in 2025, he replied with “AI”. Several times.

He has a point. There isn’t a modern Android camera system out there at the moment which doesn’t rely significantly on AI to produce the best possible images in all situations. Making it a differentiator is tricky, though.

This is what you need to know about the Magic7 Pro’s photographic capabilities. It takes great shots over all of the optical focal lengths. They look processed, but that’s par for the course, and they are pleasing to my eye.

It also takes great night shots with minimal effort, and we were blessed with a stunning location to test that out at Lake Bled in Slovenia.

It’s a fast shooter, too; you can rely on the Magic7 Pro to capture fast-moving objects pretty consistently. I rarely encountered a subject or situation where it didn’t grab the right frame.

The ‘star’ effect you’re seeing on the sun in certain shots is AI-generated and can’t be turned off. I wish you could turn it off. It looks pretty cool in certain scenarios but does grate after a while, which is why I think Honor should implement it as a switchable feature in the future (I should also note that it only appears on the 1x focal length).

Honor’s AI Super Zoom feature works in certain situations. Just like all AI-enhanced digital zooming, it can often look way too processed to be usable, and the jury is still out on how often users will want to reach for that kind of focal length – or what they will do with the results. Regardless, I was able to pick out some nice mountain detail from afar on a few occasions.

I quite like the Light Painting feature, which enables you to grab silky smooth water feature shots, although, again, it takes some practice, and you do need the right conditions.

However, where the Magic7 Pro shines, and indeed the area in which I think it does beat most of the competition, is the Harcourt Portrait mode, which has been brought over from the Honor 200 series and the Magic V3. It produces utterly lovely portraits – every time.

Whether it’s a person or a duck, the Harcourt Portraits that come out of the Honor Magic7 Pro are almost flawless and result in photos that you will actually want to show people and, more importantly, maybe even have printed and become something you look at, post-shooting.

Video performance is great, too. There’s little to no Android-esque jerkiness when panning and the resulting footage is sharp, clean, and nearly up there with what the iPhone is capable of. I just wish, once again, we could turn that starry AI sun off.

Conclusion

The Magic7 Pro is a superb phone and yet another great start to the year for Honor. Buy this phone, and you will not be disappointed. It’s fast, looks great, and the camera is a lot of fun to use.

It’s infused with AI because of course it is. I’ve made my feelings on this clear; I’m confident that most smartphone users simply don’t care as much about those features as the manufacturers who are currently embroiled in the AI arms race. I have absolutely no issue with that stuff being there, I just know that it isn’t being used as deeply as Honor and its contemporaries might hope.

Predictably, the standout feature of the Magic7 Pro is something people will use regularly. The Harcourt Portrait mode is brilliant and is the one thing I can remember enjoying the most during my time in Slovenia. That counts for a lot, trust me, and I’m all for smartphone brands focusing on really smashing out the simple stuff. Boy, do we need that in 2025.