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The Honor Magic8 Pro brings it's A game when it comes to night photography, durability and battery performance whilst also offering a much cleaner OS experience.
The Good
- Excellent night photography
- Loads of performance headroom
- Super long battery
- High durability
The Not So Good
- Only 3.7x optical zoom
Need-to-knows
- Uses the latest SnapDragon chip
- Great nighttime photography
- Can share wirelessly with iPhones with one tap
- Optical zoom restricted to 3.7x
The smartphone market is awash with Android phones at the moment. In 2025, I reviewed precisely 45,103 of them, and they were all really, really good.
This surely means that for a new Android phone to stand out in 2026, it needs to shout as loudly as possible, bend in ways that look painful, and carry promises of putting the kids to bed for you so you can have a much-needed glass of wine and a hot bath.
Not according to Honor. Because the Magic8 Pro I’ve been testing for the last few weeks is, on the face of it, rather boring – in a good way. It’s a flagship Android phone with the latest and most powerful Snapdragon chip, and it has a camera system with lots of big numbers attached to it.
I’m 45. I’m all for ‘boring in a good way’. Anything for a quiet life, etc.
But is the Magic8 Pro worth your money?
Well, it might be – but it might also have some rather strong competition from rather close quarters.
How I reviewed the Honor Magic8 Pro
Every smartphone review unit that enters Mark Ellis Reviews Towers (there are no towers) gets treated to my secondary SIM card and as much real-world testing as possible.
Related: Honor Magic V5 review
This includes messaging, doom scrolling, taking photos, browsing websites, using Slack, and checking and sending email. Simple stuff.
If you’re new here, I don’t do any kind of deep spec dives or benchmarking, because I don’t know how to and I’d rather eat my own shoes.
At a glance
| Category | Specification |
|---|---|
| Colours | Sunrise Gold, Sky Cyan, Black |
| Size & Weight | 161.15 × 75.0 × 8.4 mm, 219 g |
| Display | 6.71″ OLED, FHD+ (1256 × 2808), up to 6000 nits HDR |
| Processor | Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 (Octa-core, up to 4.6GHz) |
| Software | MagicOS 10 (Android 16) |
| Memory | 12GB RAM + 512GB storage |
| Rear Cameras | 200MP telephoto (3.7× OIS) + 50MP main (OIS) + 50MP ultra-wide |
| Video | Up to 4K 120fps (rear), 4K (front) |
| Front Camera | 50MP + 3D depth sensor |
| Battery & Charging | 6270 mAh, 100W wired, 80W wireless |
| Durability | HONOR NanoCrystal Shield, IP68 / IP69 / IP69K |
| Connectivity | 5G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 |
| Biometrics | 3D face unlock, fingerprint sensor |
| Audio | Stereo speakers, HONOR Surround Subwoofer |
| Ports | USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen 1) |
| In the Box | Phone, USB-C cable, eject tool, guides |
| Price | £1,099 |
Specs and pricing
The Magic8 Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, has 16GB of RAM, and three storage tiers – 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB.
Check out my list of the best phones here!
The battery is made from silicon carbon and 6,270mAh in size – and capable of 100W wired charging and 80W wireless charging. That’s big enough and fast enough for anyone. Trust me.
On display duties, we have a 6.71 AMOLED unit with the obligatory 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and 3,000 nits of peak brightness. That’s big enough, fast enough, and bright enough for anyone. Trust me.
The rear camera system is as follows:
- 200MP Ultra Night Telephoto (f/2.6, OIS, 3.7× optical zoom)
- 50MP Ultra Night Main (f/1.6, OIS)
- 50MP Ultra-Wide (122°, macro support)
The front camera is 50MP with a f/2.0 aperture.
As for the pricing, at the time of writing, I don’t have it to hand, but we will update this page as soon as it becomes available. However, the Magic7 Pro launched at £1,099 last year, so expect something very similar.
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I’ll reveal details of the other specs as I dig into this phone. Let’s start with the design and display.
Design and display
The Magic8 Pro is a purposeful-looking device. Premium, without being flashy. There are no crazy colours – just three which are utilitarian and, once again, premium-looking.
The focus (as is often the case with Honor phones) of the Magic8 Pro is – excuse the horrendous pun – the camera system. The impressively specced lenses are housed in a colossal camera bump, which has the unfortunate side effect of making the Magic8 Pro rather top-heavy. The trade-off is a handy ‘ledge’ for your forefinger, but it won’t be to everyone’s taste.
In the increasingly silly world of water and dust resistance ratings, the Magic8 Pro is IP68, IP69, and IP69K rated. The latter has something to do with boiling water, which is utterly hilarious.
It’ll be fine in most situations, basically.
More: OnePlus 15 review
The display? It’s big, bright, and fast, and even has its own not-a-Dynamic-Island. If it were anything less than lovely, then it wouldn’t be 2026.
Let’s move on.
Camera
The 200MP telephoto camera is, obviously, the headline spec that Honor is touting about the Magic8 Pro. However, there’s also some impressive stability provided for 3.7x – 10x zoom shots, which makes handheld night photography in particular rather successful.
In fact, as has always been the case with Honor phones, the Magic8 Pro is a wonderful snapper. The images are contrasty and slightly over-sharpened (standard in Android Land) but, as a result, immediately pleasing out of the box.
The zoom range is smartly chosen, too. While it would be nice to have a slightly longer optical reach than 3.7x (weird number, right?), the brilliant 10x digital zoom more than makes up for it. I was never left wanting in that regard.
During my testing, the Magic8 Pro’s camera system was perfectly reliable, too. It made one wrong choice when it overexposed a shot of my dog, but that was a rare miss.
Related: Oppo Find X9 Pro review
Portraits, in particular, are lovely and benefit from the Harcourt modes, which work very well if you’re into that kind of thing.
There’s also an AI feature called Magic Colour, where you can let the phone retouch your photos to mimic certain shooting conditions (such as golden hour). It’s clever, and looks pretty good, but I’m sorry – I’m totally against these AI photo ‘improvements’. Leave them as the photographer and shutter intended. In my humble opinion.
AI Button
Just like the iPhone – and an increasing number of Android devices – the Magic8 Pro features an extra, customisable button on the side. It’s called the AI Button, in this instance, because its primary function is to call up your AI assistant of choice.
Depending on what’s on the display at the time, a long press of said button will enable you to summarise the contents, instigate Circle to Search, or add whatever it is to AI Memories. The latter is a separate app which is used as a catch-all for the stuff you capture via that side button.
However, I found myself using the AI button mostly for taking photos, because with a double-tap, you enter the camera app, and a further tap takes a photo.
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It’s hard to get excited by the AI Button, but it is at least being put to good use.
Performance and battery
The Magic8 Pro is powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which means, immediately, that it’s a flagship smartphone. Paired with 16GB of RAM, it’s going to be performant enough for most people.
I like MagicOS 10, too. But as I’ve often said – and I know this is at odds with a lot of my reviewer mates – most iterations of Android feel… well, nigh-on identical. That’s a good thing, by the way.
Where this part of the review gets interesting, however, is the integration Honor offers with the Apple ecosystem. Honor Share now supports a tap-to-transfer feature where you can place the top of your Magic8 Pro against the top of an iPhone and transfer stuff to the Apple device. Just like you can with two iPhones. The difference is that you need to install an app (Honor Connect) on the receiving iPhone, and it uses the hotspot feature on the Magic8 Pro to do the transferring. So, it’s slower than AirDrop, but it does work.
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It’s even possible to transfer stuff from the Magic8 Pro to a MacBook. Once again, you have to install an app on the laptop (in this case, Honor WorkStation), but it’s at least another alternative to AirDrop for anyone who wants to make the switch from iPhone to Android. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to work on my MacBook Air, but it must be possible, right?
Battery-wise, the Magic8 Pro is a superb performer. Because it has a 6,270mAh battery made from silicon kryptonite. And it charges faster than any iPhone. Which brings me to my possibly inevitable conclusion about Honor’s latest flagship.
Conclusion
In my humble opinion, the Magic8 Pro has a better camera system than the best iPhone. It’s also objectively on level-pegging terms when it comes to performance, and the battery is far more convenient thanks to that fast charging.
It can also slot fairly seamlessly into your Apple ecosystem, and even plays nicely with iPhones.
Related: Oppo Find X9 Pro review
The problem? It’s the Magic8 Lite. It’s cheaper, has an even bigger battery, and some wild robustness claims (I fired a staple directly into its display during the press briefing, and there wasn’t a mark on it afterwards). It’ll be enough for most people and is probably the only Achilles heel for the Magic8 Pro. But maybe that’s what Honor wanted it to be.
The other downside of the Magic8 Pro is the rather bland, utilitarian look. But, again, that’s what we often get with flagships. And again, for a lot of people, the camera system and battery will be the deciding factor here.
If you sit within that camp, I can’t blame you at all.
1 Comment
the choice comes down to priorities: users focused on camera quality and top-tier performance may still prefer the Magic8 Pro, but for the majority, Geometry Dash the Magic8 Lite represents better overall value—perhaps intentionally positioned by Honor as the Pro’s internal “Achilles heel.”