Honor Magic 4 Pro review: a Samsung S22 rival?

Pricing at a glance:

• Buy Honor Magic 4 Pro | from £949 at Honor
• Buy Honor Magic 4 Pro | from £949 at Amazon

Notably, it's quite a lot of cash too. Honor is asking £949 for the Magic 4 Pro and the standard Magic 4 is not being sold in the UK. That puts it into competition with the identically priced Samsung Galaxy S22+ and iPhone 13 Pro — as well as the slightly more expensive Xiaomi 12 Pro and slightly cheaper OnePlus 10 Pro.

We've tested the camera, features and display and used the phone as our daily driver for a while now — so how does it stack up?

Jump to:

• Honor Magic 4 Pro review: summary
• What is the Honor Magic 4 Pro?
• How much is the Honor Magic 4 Pro?
• Honor Magic 4 Pro features
• Honor Magic 4 Pro display
• Honor Magic 4 Pro battery
• Camera
• Design
• Honor Magic 4 Pro: our verdict
• Where to buy Honor Magic 4 Pro

Honor Magic 4 Pro review: summary

We first got hands-on with the Honor Magic 4 Pro at MWC 2022, shortly after its unveiling. Straight away it struck us as an eye-catching premium handset, albeit one with a divisive look and a jarring tendency to pick up fingerprints and marks. Now, having spent more time with the phone, most of those observations have remained true. The Honor Magic 4 Pro feels like a true premium flagship, but it does have one or two frustrating features.

The phone's 100x digital zoom function gives the camera a USP against rivals and the speedy wireless fast charging further adds to this.

However, the smudgy back of the phone is a complete fingerprint magnet and somewhat undermines the premium feel that's present elsewhere. Stick a case on it though and this won't be a problem.

Key features:

• 100W fast charging, wired or wireless
• 8GB RAM and 256GB storage
• 100x digital camera zoom
• Triple-camera array: 64MP, 50MP, 50MP
• 12MP selfie camera
• IP68 dust and water resistance rating
• Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset

Pros:

• 100x zoom camera
• Fantastic quad-curved display
• Speedy wireless or wired charging
• Great camera
• Lots of features

Cons:

• Expensive
• Fingerprint magnet
• Wireless charger not included as standard
• Magic UI gesture controls
• Divisive design

What is the Honor Magic 4 Pro?

The Magic 4 Pro is a new flagship phone from Chinese brand, Honor. Previously, Honor was a sub-brand of Huawei, but after US government sanctions left Huawei devices unable to access Google services, their usefulness in Europe, the UK and the US was greatly reduced.

Seemingly as a result of this, Honor separated from Huawei and now manufactures devices which can access and utilise Google services.

Many former employees of Huawei crossed over to work for Honor and ultimately the two brands still produce some similar devices. Honor claims to be increasingly autonomous though and — as a result — we're seeing more differences between the devices the two companies create.

How much is the Honor Magic 4 Pro?

The Honor Magic 4 Pro will cost £949 in the UK. That's exactly the same as the base model of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus and iPhone 13 Pro.

That's a bold move from Honor, as the brand is essentially looking to go toe-to-toe with the most popular smartphone brands on the UK market.

For the Honor brand, this represents a bit of a change of tack, at least in terms of what it's offered to British buyers. Rather than targeting the 'flagship killer' niche, (flagship style features for less, like the Honor 50) it's trying to mix it with the genuine circa £1000 flagships. It will be interesting to see how popular the phone is in the UK and whether buyers are tempted by those stand-out USPs — 100x zoom and wireless charging.

• Buy Honor Magic 4 Pro | from £949 at Honor
• Buy Honor Magic 4 Pro | from £949 at Amazon

Honor Magic 4 Pro features

Just like its non-Apple competitors, Honor's latest flagship basically runs Android 12. However, in this case, it's overlaid with Honor's own operating system 'Magic UI 6'. Magic UI 6 isn't a huge departure from pure Android 12, but does repeatedly try to foist Honor's gesture control on you, rather than the simple three-button alternative that is essentially the industry standard. It's simple enough to change this during set-up, or later, by going to settings, then 'system navigation' and selecting 'three key navigation'. We found that much simpler and more reliable than Honor's alternative.

It comes with 8GB of RAM and 250GB of storage.

The Magic 4 Pro does pack in some nice quality of life features, including the ability to take photos while capturing a video. This is handy, innovative and generally worked quite smoothly during our tests.

Under the hood, it's all powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, which is Qualcomm's latest offering and mainly an industry standard for current flagships. Notably, this chip has seen overheating issues in the Xiaomi 12 Pro and the Honor handset did heat up slightly during some high-intensity tasks. However, it never got so hot as to malfunction or exit an app, as the Xiaomi has been known to. Honor claim this is thanks to the 'superconductive hexagonal graphene' used in building the phone.

When it comes to security there are good offerings too. The fingerprint scanner is responsive and the 3D depth camera on the front allows for a more secure face recognition unlock facility. This was fairly simple to set up and we generally found the facial recognition system on the Magic 4 Pro was more responsive than those on some competitors, as well as more secure.

A few other niche features also appear — 'AI Privacy Call' harnesses the phone's AI to cut down on sound leakage. Meaning that when you're having a phone call in a public place, you're not likely to subject everyone else to both sides of it.

Honor Magic 4 Pro display

The Honor Magic 4 Pro's quad-curved 'IMAX-enhanced' display is one of its biggest selling points. At 6.81 inches it's very slightly larger than the competition, the Samsung being 6.6 inches and most other comparable handset coming in at 6.7 inches.

The LTPO OLED display offers an adaptive 1-120Hz refresh rate and HDR10+. It's more than capable of competing with the competition in the screen stakes but does have a lower peak brightness than the Apple and Samsung equivalents. In practice, that shouldn't matter too much and we found the display easy to read and use even in low light, or bright direct sunlight.

Right now, premium phones are setting themselves apart from the lower-end competition with fantastic high-resolution displays. The Honor Magic 4 Pro is no exception and it was perfect for streaming, scrolling and reading.

Honor Magic 4 Pro battery

The phone comes with a 4600mAh battery, which is a good size and the same as the £1049 Xiaomi 12 Pro and slightly smaller than the 5000mAh cell in the OnePlus 10 Pro.

We found it lasted a day and a half comfortably. This use included periods of lighter use and periods of heavy use, including downloads, video streaming, audio streaming, social media use and more. The phone comfortably goes toe-to-toe with rivals in the battery stakes, registering similar results to several notable flagships.

In the charging stakes, Honor claimed the Magic 4 Pro would smoke the competition. It offers a 100W wireless or wired 'super charge'. That wireless offering is a real stand-out spec and an industry first. Honor suggests the phone can go from 0-50% in 15 minutes.

During testing, we found that the wired charging came close to these figures, but the wireless charging was a bit slower.

Honor Magic 4 Pro camera

That huge camera array on the reverse houses three cameras — a 5oMP wide-angle, a 50MP ultra-wide capable of macro photography and a 64MP periscope telephoto camera with 3.5x optical zoom. The phone bolsters this digitally, up to a 100x digital zoom, which is hugely impressive but loses detail — as you would expect.

The array also includes a flicker sensor and a laser focusing system. That's a lot of kit, which goes some way to explaining the behemoth of a camera bump.

The phone is also capable of impressive video capture, shooting 4K video at 60fps. Of the competition, the iPhone 13 is capable of this and the Samsung Galaxy S22+ is too, but can also shoot 8K video at 24fps.

The amazing 100x zoom feature on the Magic 4 Pro's camera captures some detail at each stage of the zoom. This allows you to crop into images and create your own frames while retaining good levels of sharpness, colour and detail.

Honor Magic 4 Pro design

The design is definitely a divisive one. While the phone feels every bit the tactile premium handset, the huge circular camera array, placed centrally on the back of the phone, won't be for everyone.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, we preferred the look and feel of the OnePlus 10 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Series. But of course, that is an entirely subjective preference.

When the phone was unveiled Honor executives repeatedly referred to the design as 'iconic'. Is it though? Really, that's up to you.

Our verdict: should you buy the Honor Magic 4 Pro?

The Honor Magic 4 Pro is a genuine premium flagship. There is a lot to like — from wireless charging to the crisp display and the camera's 100x digital zoom function. However, there are hitches too and no one wants, or expects, too many hitches when they're spending £949 on a smartphone.

During our testing, we found the Magic 4 Pro felt a little more well-rounded than the Xiaomi 12 Pro and had some more premium features than the OnePlus 10 Pro, (though the OnePlus starts at £799 and is good value). However, when it comes to competing with the big boys, it's a big ask.

Magic UI 6 is a little less seamless than Samsung, Apple and Google alternatives and its gesture control option is far from smooth or intuitive. A quick settings shuffle can sort this out, but at this premium price-point users generally want the whole experience to feel premium.

It's a great phone in and of itself, but the obvious comparison with the S22+ doesn't flatter the Magic 4 Pro.

Ultimately, if you're picking up an Android flagship and your budget is £949, it's hard to see why you wouldn't choose the Samsung Galaxy S22+. The case for the Honor Magic 4 Pro is its wireless charging capability, its 100x zoom and perhaps its novelty factor? Some of those bells-and-whistles-style features alongside the big specs and selling points, may make this phone stand out to you as a buyer.

Where to buy Honor Magic 4 Pro

• Buy Honor Magic 4 Pro | from £949 at Honor
• Buy Honor Magic 4 Pro | from £949 at Amazon

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