Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Great hardware but the software needs work

The Honor Magic 7 Pro is a battle cry. Honor has been coming for Samsung’s smartphone crown for a while, with varying degrees of success. And while the Magic 7 Pro likely won’t cause trouble for the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, it poses more of a threat to entry-level flagships like the Galaxy S25 Plus and Google Pixel 9 Pro XL than ever before.

Powerful performance and epic battery life are complemented by a robust set of cameras and a suite of features few rivals can match. Google and Samsung still have the edge in terms of software support, and I could do without yet another brand pushing AI this hard, but the Honor Magic 7 Pro still manages to stand out in the hyper-competitive flagship market.

Honor Magic 7 Pro review: What you need to know

There are multiple variants of the Magic 7 Pro available in China but only one configuration in the UK. This pairs the 4.32GHz Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space.

The 5,270mAh battery is smaller than last year but charging speeds have been improved; wired charging now peaks at 100W and wireless can hit 80W. You’ll need your own compatible chargers, however, as there isn’t one included in the box.

On the front of the phone, we’ve once again got a 6.8in OLED display with a 2,800 x 1,280 resolution and a dynamic refresh rate between 1 and 120Hz. A pill-shaped notch at the top houses the 50-megapixel selfie camera and a TOF 3D sensor, while over on the back, there are two 50-megapixel lenses – for standard and ultrawide shots – as well as a massive 200-megapixel 3x telephoto camera.

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Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Price and competition

The Magic 7 Pro uses a lot of the same hardware as the Honor Magic 6 Pro and I’m pleased to report that it’s retained the same £1,099 price tag.

This positions it a little cheaper than Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra and Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro Max, which start at £1,249 and £1,149, respectively. Those prices are for 256GB models but, at the time of writing, the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s introductory offer gets you the 512GB version for the same money.

Closer to the £1,000 mark, there’s competition from Google, with the Pixel 9 Pro XL costing £1,099 for the 256GB model, and the 512GB variant of Oppo’s Find X8 Pro a little cheaper, at £1,020. Undercutting them all, however, is the OnePlus 13, which can be picked up in the 512GB configuration for just £899.

Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Design and key features

Honor has made a few tweaks to the design that served the Magic 6 Pro well: the build is a little wider, now measuring 77 x 8.8 x 163mm, and it’s a couple of grams lighter, at 223g. The edges are now matte aluminium, rather than mirrored, which looks less stylish but is much less vulnerable to greasy fingerprints.

The rear drops last year’s vegan leather options in favour of a silky panel. The Black and Breeze Blue colourways are simple frosted styles while the Lunar Shadow Grey version has laser-etched swirls on the rear, vaguely mimicking the moon patterns from which it derives its name.

The camera module is more circular than last year – now more of a squared circle than a rounded square – and it’s dropped the Damascus steel design between the lenses in favour of simple glass. This still looks elegant enough, particularly when juxtaposed with the light grey rear on my review sample, but it also attracts fingerprints more than last year’s did.

Both the front and rear of the phone are covered in the latest generation of Honor’s NanoCrystal Shield glass, which the brand says is more scratch-resistant than before and ten times more drop-resistant than regular glass. The dust and water resistance has been upgraded, too, with the robust IP68/IP69 rating certifying it as protected against direct jets of water, submersion and extreme temperatures.

The Magic 6 Pro stood out due to its unique features and all of them return here. The display supports high-frequency PWM dimming up to 4,320Hz, which is designed to reduce eye strain, particularly when viewing at low brightness. The top of the phone houses an IR blaster, allowing you to use it as a replacement remote control for compatible devices, and the TOF 3D sensor next to the selfie camera makes for more secure face unlocking.

Honor’s MagicOS 9.0 makes its debut and is based on Android 15. This isn’t my favourite launcher – design choices like the split notification panel and the lack of an app drawer by default confound me – but to Honor’s credit, it’s kept bloatware to a minimum, with only a couple of unwanted apps waiting on the homescreen upon booting.

Like Samsung, Honor has slapped the letters “AI” in as many corners of the software as it can and, just as with Samsung, I find it to be an incredibly mixed bag. On the one hand, you’ve got useful features like document translation and summaries, on the other, there’s functionality that’s likely to be irrelevant for most users, such as AI Deepfake detection for video calls.

Software support is decent, with Honor promising five years of OS updates and security patches. Both Samsung and Google offer a more comprehensive seven years but Honor remains competitive with the likes of Oppo and OnePlus.

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Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Display

The 6.8in OLED display is much the same as last year, with the same sharp 2,800 x 1,280 resolution and fluid refresh rate that can dynamically adjust between 1 and 120Hz. Brightness scored decently in testing, topping out at 729cd/m² on manual mode and rising to 1,249cd/m² on adaptive brightness with a torch shining on the light sensor. The best result came during our HDR playback test, where brightness stretched to 1,444cd/m².

As with most flagships, there are two colour profiles to choose from: Vivid uses the wider DCI-P3 colour space and is best for making your streaming and gaming look more vibrant and punchy, while Natural aims for authentic reproduction of the sRGB gamut. On the latter profile, I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 99% and a volume of 102.1%. The average Delta E colour variance score of 1.36 is a little higher than the target (1 or under) but it’s close enough to not be a dealbreaker.

Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Performance and battery life

The octa-core 3nm Snapdragon 8 Elite has proven to be a big improvement over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, with the 4.32GHz peak clock speed delivering massive benchmark leaps in all tested handsets thus far. As you can see below, the Magic 7 Pro beats its predecessor by a ridiculous 135% in the single-core test and 74% in the multi-core.

Samsung’s slightly overclocked “for Galaxy” configuration of the Snapdragon 8 Elite lands the Galaxy S25 Ultra at the front of the pack but the Magic 7 Pro makes for a stunning silver medalist. It scores near enough identically to the OnePlus 13 and even surpasses Apple’s notoriously powerful silicon, besting the iPhone 16 Pro Max by 12% in the multi-core benchmarks – though the iPhone still had a 13% edge in the single-core results.

The Magic 7 Pro continues to impress in the gaming stakes, matching the Galaxy S25 Ultra in both the onscreen and offscreen benchmarks. These impressive results aligned with my testing; I dialled Genshin: Impact up to the highest graphical settings and the Magic 7 Pro managed to run it smoothly and without stuttering. I did get an overheating warning from the game but I never noticed the phone getting uncomfortably hot while playing.

In a bizarre move, Honor has opted to fit the European Magic 7 Pro with a smaller 5,270mAh silicon-carbon battery than its global variant (5,800mAh). What we get is also lower capacity than the Magic 6 Pro’s 5,600mAh cell, which sees battery life take a small hit.

The Magic 6 Pro delivered some of the best phone battery life we’ve ever recorded, however, so you’re still getting incredible stamina. In our looping video test, the Magic 7 Pro lasted for 31hrs 18mins, which is just shy of two hours less than its predecessor but will easily see you through a couple of days of moderate use.

The 100W charging appears to be limited to Honor’s own-brand chargers – with my 100W Motorola plug, the speeds peaked around 80W. Even still, this got the battery from empty to 50% in around 17mins and to full in a nippy 35mins.

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Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Cameras

Honor has made minimal changes to the camera setup and has instead enhanced its offering with AI features. The new loadout includes motion detection, which works with the new burst mode to better capture moving objects, and a decent magic eraser feature.

In my testing, this effectively removed people from a scene and while the generative fill isn’t flawless – note the floating patch of snow at the edge of the cliff – it’s one of the better erasers I’ve used.

The other big feature is AI Super Zoom, which can be enabled once you’ve zoomed past 30x. I was less impressed with this one, as the results were very hit-and-miss. It effectively sharpened up my muddy zoom shots but the images were coated in a plasticky sheen that betrayed their heavily processed nature. Object detection also struggled to differentiate between fore and background in places, resulting in an uncanny valley blending of both.

The AI Super Zoom isn’t handled on-device, so you’ll need an internet connection for it to work. Without it, hybrid zooms beyond 30x quickly get quite blurred and muddy. Before then, however, you can get decent 6x and 12x shots that remain reasonably sharp and well-lit.

3x zooms from the 200-megapixel (f/2.6) telephoto camera are even better, with rich contrast that plucks out finer details, even from objects way in the distance, and a solid colour palette that matches the main camera.

Speaking of which, the 50-megapixel main camera is the standout here. The two-step aperture can switch between f/1.4 and f/2.0, making for a versatile lens that excels in all lighting conditions. On bright days, the dynamic range is fantastic and details are nice and sharp, making this camera especially well suited to capturing sweeping landscape shots.

Night mode is a bit of a pain, as you still need to actively engage it – most other phones will recognise low light levels and adjust the exposure length accordingly. With the mode switched on, however, the shots delivered are excellent, with moody shadows, vivid colours and no visual noise cluttering up big blocks of darkness.

The 50-megapixel (f/2.0) ultrawide camera carries over the colouring of the main lens well and does a decent job of retaining detail. Clarity towards the edges leaves something to be desired but overall, it’s not a bad effort.

Video remains the same as on the Magic 6 Pro, which is to say that it’s sharp and stable enough, recording 4K up to 60fps, with OIS keeping the worst of the sway out of footage. There’s still no 8K option, mind you, which is included by both the OnePlus 13 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL.

Honor Magic 7 Pro review: Verdict

The Honor Magic 7 Pro’s priorities are a little too close to those of Samsung’s latest flagships for my liking, pushing gimmicky AI additions that few users are likely to need over tangible hardware upgrades. And yet the one area in which it should be copying Samsung – namely, offering seven years of software support – continues to be overlooked.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset may be one of very few actual hardware upgrades, but it’s a good one, delivering exceptional performance and balancing out the smaller battery to keep stamina near the top of the class. Add in returning favourites like a stellar camera system and unique features and the Honor Magic 7 Pro is a welcome return that’s a different flavour of flagship from anything else on the market.