HONOR Magic6 Pro Review – Unleashing Gaming Magic

As a long-time console gamer, I have been less than enthusiastic to play games on mobile phones as my perception of gaming on it is a lesser experience overall. With an opportunity to review the HONOR Magic6 Pro present, I jumped on the chance to experience mobile gaming using the latest hardware created by HONOR.

In the box

The phone comes inside a regular rectangle black box with gold lettering stating the model, HONOR Magic6 Pro. There is no typo here, the number 6 is attached to the word Magic. Inside the box is the phone in Epi Green colorway, a 100W power charging brick, a charging data cable, a transparent TPU case, a sim tool and some paperwork. The included charging brick was a pleasant surprise, as other region was released without one in the box. Kudos HONOR Malaysia for not following the trend by other brands of not including a charging brick for their flagship phones.

Design and Build

HONOR calls it Epi Green, the eco leather textured back. The back of the phone itself is wrapped in green textured eco leather, aptly named Epi Green. I personally find the Epi Green to be more striking in looks compared to the other colorway which is the glass backed Black. The textured back surface feels very comfy in the hands and leaves absolutely no fingerprints at all. While no fingerprints are evident, utmost care is advised as exposure to dirty fingers and surfaces may cause the back to be stained permanently. Luckily HONOR have the foresight to include a transparent case to protect the back from dirt stains.

The back top half houses a huge circular cluster of triple camera setup similar to last years model, is now wrapped in a stylish rectangular dome shaped bump with shiny metallic ring that matches the sides of the camera. The resulted protruding camera bump does cause the phone to be top heavy, although with prolonged use, you will adjust your hold and eventually get used to the weight. In fact, I find the protruding ring to be the perfect finger resting support while holding the phone vertically.

The front is protected by HONOR NanoCrystal Shield, which HONOR claims as “ten times the drop resistance as certified by SGS’s Five Star Glass Drop Resistance Ability”. I am no certification body affiliate, but I can attest to the resilience of the screen, which have an added bonus to being very resistant to fingerprints too. HONOR have paid careful attention to the screen, the front screen curves on all side, subtly on the top and bottom. The sides curves too, but they are much less pronounced that curved display phones of yesteryears. The shiny aluminium alloy sides are given as much thought too, the frame blends nicely with the curved front and back, even the corners are also nicely rounded. This creates a phone with have no sharp edges that makes holding the phone for prolonged gaming sessions a pleasurable painless experience for the palms.

Specifications at a glance

Display, battery and gaming performance

HONOR have upgraded the innards of the Magic6 Pro. Equipped with Qualcomm’s now familiar Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with an Adreno 750 GPU, mated to 12GB+512GB UFS4.0 memory configuration. With only one configuration option in Malaysia, the ample storage thankfully allows us to install several storage gulping games like Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail and Honkai Impact 3^rd and still have plenty storage for more games, camera images and other apps. HONOR Turbo RAM of 8GB is additionally added to the onboard 12GB for a total of 20GB, which makes loading of any menu screens, animations, launching apps, multitasking and more importantly, running games with no hassle at all.

Equally impressive is the display, featuring a 6.8-inch LTPO OLED panel with a blazing-fast 120Hz refresh rate and Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support. The screen is able to display a class leading brightness of 5000nits peak brightness and 1600nits of full screen peak brightness. This result in buttery smooth visuals, with stunning clarity and colour accuracy, making even the most visually demanding games pop off the screen. And with a screen able to output such brightness, gaming on the Magic6 Pro on the go is yet another magical experience.

The Magic6 Pro is powered by a 5,600mAh capacity Silicon-Carbon battery. This type of battery was previously only available in China in the Magic5 Pro at 5,450mAh, and HONOR have now included in the global version of the Magic6 Pro while managed to keep the phone slim at 8.9mm.

With the improved battery packed inside, the charging abilities of Magic6 Pro is now improved to 80W wired charging and 66W wireless charging. I am able to charge the phone from 10% to 100% in just 50 minutes with the charging brick included in the box. Even more impressive is the long gaming session I am able to squeeze out of the phone, we played 2 hours of Genshin Impact and it only lost 35% of its juice. The phone easily lasted me the whole day with general use (browsing, reading chats, watching 30 minutes videos) and 30 minutes of gaming with 35% juice remaining, colour me impressed.

But it’s not just about what you see—the Magic6 Pro also delivers an immersive audio experience thanks to its dual stereo speakers and DTS-X support in when a headphone is connected. There is no 3.5mm audio jack, so you have to rely on either Bluetooth connection, or use a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter. The dual stereo speakers get pretty loud with little hints of distortion, until it’s annoy-your-colleague-next-to-you loud. So loud that I can actually feel the speakers vibrating from the back. Whether I’m listening to in-game dialogue or getting immersed in a cinematic soundtrack, the device’s audio capabilities never fail to impress.

Magic6 Pro does get warm while gaming on max settings. With Genshin impact set to the highest graphical and 60fps (the highest settings you can squeeze from the game), you start to feel the warm from the screen and the back in about 5 minutes in. However, there are no signs of throttling or frame drops despite the phone gets warm, and I actually played 2 hours in the above highest setting while maintaining 50% brightness and the phone never got too toasty that I had to throw it down and run for the nearest fire extinguisher.

Magic6 Pro does come with a Game Manager pre-loaded, and it is this particular app that caused a kink in the otherwise stellar gaming experience. It adds very little functional improvement that the phone can’t natively do, and more horrifically, it’s a paid subscription Game Booster costing RM8.69 for 30 days and up to RM73.29 for 365 days. Thankfully, Game Booster is not needed at all to play even the most demanding games, so I find absolutely no reason to pay for it.

Camera

The cameras on HONOR Magic6 Pro gets refreshed too, the main 50MP camera now sports a dual aperture of F1.4 and F2.0, and a 1.2µm pixel size sensor, while the 50MP ultrawide sensor gets a slight bump in size. The more significant changes lie in the 180MP periscope telephoto sensor with 2.5x optical zoom and OIS, as well as the front facing selfie camera is now also a 50MP sensor. Images taken from all four cameras on the phone detailed and sharp, even in Auto Mode, which is the mode that most users will stick to.

The 50MP Super Dynamic Falcon Main Camera utilizes the H9000 sensor from Omnivision is snappy fast, now enhanced with dual apertures of F1.4 and F2.0. A new Aperture mode is also added to the camera app to facilitate users to adjust the apertures only while letting Magic6 Pro to do the rest, akin to the “A” aperture priority mode on DSLR dials. I don’t find huge discernible differences between the two, thus I tend to keep it at F2.0 most of the time. The main camera handles the 1X 27mm focal length with up to 2X digital zoom of equally image quality. Vignetting is non-existent, but purple fringing can occur in difficult scenes.

The new 180 MP Tele-Falcon camera enables the phone to capture great zoomed images, especially sweet is the 2.5X (68mm focal length) that produces very creamy bokeh shots. Going longer to 5X (135mm) and even 10X (270mm), images are surprisingly very usable to social media platforms given ample daylight. Night zoom shots at the longer lengths is still usable, but just don’t expand the images too much. I would caution going any longer than 10X zoom to, as the images are often grainy and noisy as the lens and sensor could not allow much light to be captured to have usable images.

HONOR have added a new Motion Sensing Capture mode to the camera UI this year. Switched on by pressing an icon on the screen preps Magic6 Pro to prepare to capture fast moving subjects or scenes. Aided by AI enhancements to the images captured, the Magic6 Pro is now able to capture stunning action shots, detailed, focus and not blurry. Motion Sensing Captures is works only with the rear cameras up to 5X zoom.

The Sony 50MP front camera sensor too produces selfie images that is as sharp and detailed as the rear main camera, good for selfie and wefie. Impressive as well are the macro shots, with the 2.5X optical telephoto allowing you to take macro shots with great details without having to position the phone very near the subject.

As for video, the rear cameras can take up to 4K60fps with EIS or 1080p240fps in slow motion mode while the front facing camera can only do 4K30fps or 1080p60fps. Video shots are detailed and sharp in within the optical zoom ranges of 2.5X and is still very usable at 5X digital zoom. Any more zoom than that, I would advise you to get closer to the subject. Also, nighttime or darkly lit video is best kept to the optical zoom ranges, as too dark or too long a zoom will result in grainy, noisy and jittery video.

The dedicated Super Macro mode is hidden within the menus, which requires some scrolling to get to. using the Super Macro mode allowed me to get really close with the subject and can results in some amazing very close up shots. I personally find that using the Tele-Falcon photo camera with the 2.5X optical lens produces nicer composed shots, with better bokeh, although I do have to keep the Honor Magic6 Pro really stable.

Another thing of note is that the phone tends to get warm when taking many shots or long videos, as well as draining the battery faster at the same time. I suppose this is due to the extra work the phone is doing while the AI is enhancing the images taken.

Software

HONOR Magic6 Pro is the first phone to use the brand new MagicOS 8.0 based on Android 14. HONOR promises four Android version updates and five years of security patches, so you can rest assured that HONOR will be supporting the Magic6 Pro for a very long time. Although it being brand new, MagicOS 8.0 pretty much looks and feels like the previous version albeit with some cool additions.

Magic Capsule takes its inspiration from others that have done it before, implementing a pill shaped display at the front facing camera cutout, to display background notifications for music, YouTube and Spotify playback, as well as timer countdowns. Tapping on the Magic Capsule will bring up the respective app quick control, to which you can pause or skip music, or stop the timer.

Another very cool new feature is called the Magic Portal, which behaves like a drag and drop shortcut on the Magic6 Pro. You can highlight, touch and hold text, images, thumbnails and even screenshots and drag them to the sides of the screen. A vertical row of apps will automagically appear, and you can then drop the held item directly into any app on the Magic Portal, launching the app in a window of its own.

Drag and dropping into the Magic Portal is very intuitive and saves you from multiple actions to get the same results. For example, drag and drop a shared address directly into Google Maps which will immediately launch the directions to the address, without the need to copy paste or even launch the Google Maps app. A neat trick of the Magic6 Pro that I use a lot and will sorely miss moving on to other phones. The apps currently supported are Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.

In summary

What I Really Liked About the HONOR Magic6 Pro:

• Brilliant LPTO OLED Display
• Very solid gaming performance
• Impressive overall experience
• Stunning sharp and detailed images from all the cameras
• 180MP Periscope Telephoto camera
• Long lasting battery and very fast charging
• Epi Green colourway and textured eco leather back

What I Wished Was Better

• Game Center’s Game Boost is a paid subscription add-on
• Warms up when taking more photos or long videos

HONOR Magic6 Pro is a very well-built flagship smartphone, with superb high-end hardware to match its flagship status. Coupled with a very brilliant and bright display, and exceptional battery capacity and quick fast charging, the Magic6 Pro is a very impressive smartphone for gaming. Coupled with refreshed camera at the back and front, capturing images pleasing to the eyes is easy for most people.

The cherry on top is its aggressive pricing. At RM4,499, HONOR Magic6 Pro presents itself as a compelling alternative to the other flagships out there, matching the hardware blow for blow while not costing a kidney to own one. Whether you’re a casual player or a hardcore enthusiast, HONOR latest flagship smartphone is sure to exceed expectations and elevate gaming experience to new heights.