Review of the Honor 200 Pro
Our Verdict
The Honor 200 Pro is a cracking mid-range Android smartphone, delivering excellent camera quality, brilliant battery life, and a stylish design. While MagicOS 8.0 can frustrate at times, it also has some really useful new features, making their way to mid-range Honor devices for the first time. The 200 Pro continues Honor's long-standing tradition of top-notch mid-range phones.
- Fantastic cameras
- Solid performance
- Stylish design
- Rapid charging
- Some software quirks
- Curved screen not for everyone
Honor is a company that keeps getting better and better, releasing new phones with blockbuster features at budget-friendly rates. The brand's newest phone, the Honor 200 Pro, fits that description. It houses a top-tier Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 inside a sleek, slim 6.78-inch body, and it has an excellent triple-camera array with an intriguing and distinctive Harcourt portrait mode—more on this later.
The back panel, which takes inspiration from nature, is wonderful to the touch and smooth, although it may be a little slippery. The 4,000 nit brightness screen has a little curvature around the edges, which is contained inside the housing, which is mostly made of plastic. Despite its plastic exterior, the Honor 200 Pro is a well-designed smartphone that will appeal to both casual users and gamers. So, how does it stack up against the top mid-range phones available on the market? Let's investigate.
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Availability and cost
On June 12, 2024, in Paris, the Honor 200 Pro and the standard Honor 200 were introduced for the European market. Honor, a Chinese business, originally introduced the 200 Pro on May 27, 2024, and on May 31 it became on sale.
As of this writing, there is no word on the Honor Pro 200's introduction in the US, but because Honor devices aren't subject to the same regulations as Huawei's previous parent firm, I have a sneaking suspicion that it will happen soon. For instance, Honor smartphones are available at all major shops, and the Honor Magic V2 functions well on US networks.
Even so, there may not be much of a wait for the Pro 200, since pre-orders are now open in the UK on the Honor website, and more shops will be adding stock later this month. The Honor 200 Pro, which comes in Ocean Cyan, Moonlight White, and Black hues, costs £699.99 and boasts 12GB RAM and 512GB storage. The detailed specifications are covered in greater detail below.
Details
Software and features
Honor has added a ton of additional features to the 200 Pro. It is the first mid-range smartphone to be pre-installed with MagicOS 8.0, an overlay for Android 14.
As a result, the 200 Pro comes with a number of apps from the Magic6 Pro, such as Magic Portal, an AI-powered program that enables you to drag text or photos from one app into another. Say, for instance, that you get an address via WhatsApp but not a link to a Google Maps location. You may just drag the whole location into Google Maps using Magic Portal, and the directions will display. By quickly dragging the picture to the app, you can also quickly search for it on eBay. Once you get the hang of it, it's very cool.
To organize your playing media, timers, and other alerts around the selfie camera, the Magic Capsule is also a useful feature. It's a familiar feeling for iOS users since it's kind of like the Dynamic Island.
Some features, like as air motions, are less reliable. Although I like the concept of air gestures, why not simply scroll the screen normally when I'm already raising my hand to use the phone? It's not like we can utilize air gestures while operating a vehicle either, as you would still need to look at the screen to confirm that you are on the correct page. Parallel Screen is helpful as well, but I found that utilizing the Parallel Screen side-swipe launch as a rapid launcher was more practical. As a result, I promptly went back to using Swiftly Switch to activate my preferred app circle.
Some of MagicOS's peculiarities may also irritate those used to standard Android; for example, the app drawer is deactivated by default, and I've never seen an Android user who arranges all of their applications over many home screens, as iOS does. Why when you long-press an app, is there no shortcut to App Info? In addition, Honor has crammed MagicOS 8.0 with a number of unnecessary applications that may be annoying to uninstall and take some time. While this seems a little bloatware-like, at least Honor lets you uninstall apps easily.
Nevertheless, MagicOS 8.0 improves overall with each release, and it's wonderful to see Honor adding new features with each new release. It's also a wonderful attempt to bring the functionality of its flagship handsets to its mid-range alternatives, and even while it's obvious that iOS has influenced them, that's definitely not a bad thing.
Honor promises to provide five years of security patches and four major Android upgrades, which is encouraging since it means you can keep the 200 Pro for a good few years.
Design
The Honor 200 Pro's physical appearance is very appealing to me, yet I have some concerns about a few functions.
To begin with, the smartphone has an amazing appearance. The 200 Pro feels very thin because to its ever-so-slightly curved screen, which makes it seem smaller than its already-slender 75.2mm width. When combined with its 8.2mm thickness, the 200 Pro almost seems small, but its 172.2mm screen more than makes up for it. The 200 Pro feels really thin and light, which I really like.
However, at 199g, it's not exactly a lightweight smartphone either. In comparison, the weight of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is 229.5g and the iPhone 15 weighs 171g, hence the 200 Pro is quite light compared to other contemporary smartphones. The fact that the 200 Pro feels fantastic in your palm even without a case indicates to me that it is a well-balanced device.
The Moonlight White hue with a pearlescent white back panel is what I was issued. The iridescent look is present in the other color selections, Ocean Cyan and Black, and it's a great touch. Oh, and you won't ever leave a fingerprint mark on the phone's back thanks to its velvety-feeling material!
Additionally concealed on the back of the Honor 200 Pro is the oval-shaped camera housing, which has a height of just a few millimeters. I'll go into more detail about the superb cameras of the 200 Pro shortly, but I'm not a big admirer of the camera housing's conspicuous location or its glossy silver bezel. Although the design seems to have been inspired by Barcelona's Casa Milá, it stands out in terms of style and doesn't quite mesh with the sleek and polished pearlescent back panel's appearance.
All of my cellphones go straight in case, which balances out the protruding housing, as I said in my Nothing Phone 2a review, so it will be OK in the end. To make it blend in, Honor ought to have chosen a black or dark-colored metal instead.
Though I like something more solid to keep devices in top shape, the Honor 200 Pro does come with a slimline silicone cover, which is really helpful for a freshly launched phone since you can't purchase them elsewhere.
And thus I arrive to the shiny silver metal frame that holds the 200 Pro together. It seems perfect from a distance, and if I acquire a case for the phone, it will be protected, but the design is rather let down by the feeling of plastic edge. Even so, it ought to endure everyday abrasions; nonetheless, I wouldn't offer to drop test it anytime soon.
Display
One other noteworthy aspect of the Honor 200 Pro is its display. With a high peak brightness of 4,000 nits and an adjustable refresh rate between 60Hz and 120Hz, the 6.78-inch curved screen is very vibrant. It's definitely bright enough for gaming, but if you lower the brightness to save battery life, it still looks fantastic. In addition, it has 10-bit color depth, 1,224 x 2,700 pixel resolution, and HDR10 capability.
Although I lack the tools to verify Honor's brightness claims, the screen remained fully visible in direct sunlight—exactly what you want.Additionally, Honor is marketing the screen of the 200 Pro as an Eye Comfort Display, which aims to lessen flickering in low light conditions, thereby lessening eye strain. To be fair, the PWM dimming rate of 3,840Hz is outstanding and currently leads the class in this regard. The other common choices for eye protection are also available, such as dark mode, blue light adjustment, and so on.
Two additional features that I like are Circadian Night Display (which uses AI-tracking to adjust screen color based on your circadian rhythm) and Natural Tone 2.0 (which optimizes screen color based on ambient lighting; surprisingly useful given that the UK was experiencing a period of good weather during the review!).Cameras It's obvious that Honor is pleased with the 200 Pro camera setup. And rightfully so; the Honor 200 Pro has let me to capture some beautiful moments, and the excellent hardware that powers it up confirms this.To complete the set, the 200 Pro has three cameras: a 12MP f/2.2 112˚ ultrawide, a 50MP f/2.4 telephoto with 2.5x optical zoom and OIS, and a 50MP f/1.9 primary camera with a 1/1.3-inch sensor and OIS. It covers the whole gamut of photos and is quite the collection.
The most remarkable feature of all is perhaps the portrait mode created by Studio Harcourt, which automatically modifies the lighting based on 100,000 pictures from the storied Parisian studio. There are three modes to it:- Harcourt Classic aims to recreate the studio’s classic black-and-white shoot, adding amazing depth and subtle emphasis to the subject
- Harcourt Colour is similar but brings a warm color palette to the portraits
- Harcourt Vibrant delivers extra saturation compared to Colour, but it isn’t over the top.
I discovered that the standard camera settings were accurate and provided good-quality zoom outside of the Harcourt Studio mode. Given that most smartphone cameras go for 3x optical zoom, the primary camera's 2x and 2.5x optical zoom settings seem a bit strange. Nonetheless, the photos taken at 2.5x look amazing.
The primary and telephoto cameras both have strong video performance and recording capabilities, with 4K60 video capture possible. At 4K30, the ultrawide is little more subdued; this also holds true for the selfie camera.Achievement
The Honor 200 Pro performs really well for a mid-range smartphone. As it should, given that it has an Adreno 735 GPU for visuals and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor for processing capability. As one would assume, the "full-fat" Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 performs ever so slightly better in important areas. However, you would also anticipate having to spend an additional three to four hundred pounds or dollars for the opportunity. In my opinion, the Honor 200 Pro is a great little companion.Using Final Fantasy 10 and God of War 2 in AetherSX2, I first tested the Honor 200 Pro. It's usually a good idea to stress test a new phone using a PS2 emulator to determine where its limitations are, and I'm delighted to say that the Honor 200 Pro handled it well, scaling up to five times. I played Need for Speed Most Wanted Black Edition as well, and although it was on a smaller screen, it performed just like the original. It also managed up to 5x scaling without exhibiting any problems.
Although there is always a trade-off between increasing scale resolution and battery life, you could definitely push it farther. It's encouraging that AetherSX2's GPU and CPU display stayed quite low. You may certainly infer from that example that the Honor 200 Pro's emulation of the PS1 and Nintendo Wii was also rather simple.Even though I've just recently begun to play Honkai: Star Rail, everything went quite well, with no problems at all throughout menus, turns, transitions, or anything else. Although I haven't played much of it before, I have to confess that it seemed very strong for my first experience with the series. In a similar vein, the well-reviewed Grid: Autospot functioned well.Without a doubt, the Honor 200 Pro can handle whatever game you throw at it. In this fiercely competitive mid-range Android market, the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 with its Adreno 735 is a true upper-mid-range smartphone processor that delivers the goods (and is quicker than the Diminesity 8300 Ultra in the Poco X6 Pro).