A DSLR in our pockets. That’s what all flagship smartphones are trying to be in this day and age. Be it actual camera hardware chops or computational photography on-device, tech brands are trying harder than ever to deliver a great photography and videography experience. And Honor is no exception. With the latest Honor 200 Pro, the brand promises a camera experience, particularly a portrait experience that’s better than ever. I’ve been snapping away and here’s what I think of the smartphone experience overall.
Design
With its glass aluminium alloy body, the Honor 200 Pro weighs around 200 grams and is easy to carry around. While quite slim at 8.2 mm, the camera island does cause an uneven bump when placed flat on any table and even wobbles a bit. I got the pleasant-looking Ocean Cyan colour variant while there are the Moonlight White and black options as well.
Display
The Honor 200 Pro features a 6.78 inch curved AMOLED display. With close to zero bezels and curved edges, the smartphone was great to consume content on. The colours look vibrant on the AMOLED display, along with its ability to display true black shades. The minimal bezels made the reruns of Monk on Netflix a joy to watch.
The sound from the dual speakers on the Honor 200 Pro was great. It has been a while since I’ve experienced well-tuned speakers on a smartphone which stay distortion-free even at higher volumes. I cued up some classic EDM tracks such as One More Time by Daft Punk, where the separation between the vocals and synth instruments was clear, even at full volume.
Camera
The Honor 200 Pro features a primary camera setup that includes a 50 MP wide camera, a 50 MP telephoto camera and a 12 MP ultra-wide camera. The primary camera is one of the best I have tested recently, especially for the portraits it delivers.
Photos taken in daylight retained ample details and sharpness. Those taken in low light and at night also offered a fair amount of detail, with the colours occasionally boosted but with decent sharpness retained. The headline feature of the device is the 50x digital zoom, but up to 2.3 to 3x is where I found the image resolution held its own before getting grainy.
Selfies were sharp too on the 50 MP front camera. Portrait images retained detail and sharpness. Skin tones are rendered naturally, most of the time, when the Harcourt Portrait mode is turned off. The Harcourt studio profiles — Vibrant, Color, Classic — however it gives better results with portraits by amping up the contrast and saturation.
Performance
The Honor 200 Pro features the latest Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, powering the likes of Poco F6 and realme GT 6. In AnTuTu benchmark tests, the device scored 12,70,023 points, landing in the vicinity of Poco F5 Pro and Xiaomi 12T Pro in terms of performance. The phone multitasks well while rarely throttling during gaming.
On Battlegrounds Mobile India, the device consistently delivered 60 FPS without breaking a sweat (with graphics set at ‘High’). It also dissipated heat well, despite the glass aluminium alloy body.
The smartphone comes with MagicOS 8.O, based on Android 14. It does have a lot of bloatware, with the only mercy being fewer annoying notifications from these.
One fun feature is the Magic Capsule, fashioned after the iPhone’s Dynamic Island. I was able to use it for attending calls, access the stopwatch and also see an ongoing audio recording’s duration. While there is no haptic response to the interaction with the pill, it still carries a fair bit of functionality. Honor’s Magic Text feature lets me extract text from images. There’s also Magic Portal, which lets me drag and drop images and text directly onto apps like Gmail and notes. Air gestures, which let me use my hands to scroll up and down without ever touching the phone and taking a screenshot by closing my fist also worked well.
Battery
The Honor 200 Pro features a 5,200 mAh silicon-carbon battery, which is easily able to last 6.5 to 7 hours of screen-on time and close to 1.5 days on standby. Sadly, there is no charger in the box just like the last time. With a standalone 100 W charger, it took about an hour to charge fully from zero.
Verdict
The Honor 200 Pro offers a stunning display, distinct camera, great design and good battery life. However, its price seems a bit more than competitors with similar specs, such as Xiaomi 14 CIVI and Moto 50 Edge Ultra. If one is willing to look beyond the occasional quirk of inconsistent white balance, then the Honor 200 Pro does come out on top as a camera-centric mobile.
