The HONOR Magic6 RSR is essentially the Magic6 Pro, turned up to 11. It’s mostly the same; however, it does sport more RAM and storage and has a slightly different design. If you’ve not read our Magic6 Pro review, I’d invite you to do so, as a lot of what we mention in this review will be similar. Of course, the Magic6 Pro is also going to be cheaper.
HONOR (and Huawei when it owned HONOR) had a good partnership with Porsche Design. It’s creating some pretty cool editions of its flagship phones. But now, with the Magic V2 RSR and the Magic6 RSR, HONOR seems to be taking it up a notch. Adding in some features specific to the RSR model, as well as some unique design aspects. Like the hexagonal camera setup on the backside of the Magic6 RSR.
But of course, the real question is whether you should spend the extra money on the RSR model versus going with the Magic6 Pro, which is close to half the price in China. Currently, we do not have the pricing for Europe, but we’d expect it to fall in line with what we have seen in China already.
HONOR Magic6 RSR Review: Hardware and Design
With the HONOR Magic6 RSR, HONOR and Porsche Design are bringing iconic Porsche hues and hexagonal structural design. It pays homage to the decades-long significance of Porsche cars and incorporates structural elements that are reminiscent of Porsche’s design excellence. This includes the hexagonal camera module on the back, which really makes it stand out.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not a car guy. So, a lot of this means very little to me. However, I will say that the Porsche Design phones HONOR has been putting out do look very unique compared to the competition. This is even compared to the Magic6 Pro that HONOR launched very recently. And that’s something that is actually pretty hard to do these days. A lot of phones just look so similar.
HONOR has also included a symmetrical peakline, which adds to the unique appearance of the Magic6 RSR, and honestly, I really like having it. It’s not as pronounced as a flyline, which the Magic V2 RSR does have, though I wish it was. Keeping up with the Porsche styling, HONOR is offering the Magic6 RSR in two Porsche colors, including Agate Grey which is a hue worn by revered Porsche models such as the iconic 911 sportscar. It’s also available in Frozen Berry, which is a reflective, bold shade of pink originally designed for Porsche models like the Taycan EV.
With the Agate Grey color, it is a matte feel, but it is still quite slippery. For the majority of the time that I’ve been using the Magic6 RSR, I’ve been using the included case. Which is a vegan leather Porsche Design case, and it looks great. However, the cutout for the USB-C port is kind of small, so some USB-C cables I use daily don’t fit in the port without taking the case off. A somewhat of a minor annoyance, but still an annoyance.
The front of the phone features a stunning 6.8-inch OLED display, which is slightly curved. Much like the Magic6 Pro, it also sports a version of Apple’s Dynamic Island, which works okay but is kind of weird on an Android phone since it is unnecessary.
Holding the Magic6 RSR in the hand is quite nice. Despite it being larger and heavier than a lot of other phones that I frequent, it doesn’t feel all that large. It does, however, feel thicker. But in reality, it’s still 8.9mm thick. It’s actually quite surprising how much heavier this phone feels compared to other 6.7-, 6.8- and 6.9-inch devices. The iPhone 15 Pro Max, for instance, is only 221g. While the Galaxy S24 Ultra is 232g, but still feels much lighter than the Magic6 RSR at 239g. But like with every phone, you get used to the size and weight.
HONOR Magic6 RSR Review: Display
As mentioned already, the display on the Magic6 RSR is a 6.8-inch OLED Tandem Display, with 1.07 billion colors and 100% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, making it an absolutely stunning display. Color reproduction is top-notch here, and with it being slightly curved on the sides, it makes it incredible for watching content. I’ve watched countless YouTube videos and TikToks here (before it gets banned in the US). Of course, a big part of that is Dolby Vision certification. Watch a Dolby Vision title from Hulu or Amazon Prime Video, and you’ll fall in love with this display.
HONOR claims that the screen can get up to 5,000 nits of peak HDR brightness. What that means is that while it can get that bright, you won’t see that happen very often. That’s going to happen in the most extreme circumstances. It’s actually rated for 1800 nits in HBM or high-brightness mode. Now in our testing, we were able to get it close to that, but not quite the full 1800 nits. That is pretty normal since we aren’t testing this in a lab but instead using a white background and shining a flashlight on the light sensor to get it as bright as possible.
In day-to-day usage, you won’t have any issues seeing this display. I’ve used it outdoors in direct sunlight plenty and had very few issues with the display. Even in dark mode, you can still see it pretty easily in direct sunlight.
HONOR Magic6 RSR Review: Performance
The internals of the Magic6 RSR are simply beastly. We’re looking at the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, which is going to be in most phones released in 2024. On top of that, HONOR has included 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which is something Samsung is not doing right now. While we don’t know the US or even European price yet, we do know the Chinese price, which is CNY 9,999 which converts to around $1,389 USD. That’s less than $100 more than the Galaxy S24 Ultra, with twice the RAM and four times the storage. That’s pretty crazy.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I’ve been using the Magic6 RSR for a month now and have done basically everything with it so far. And the phone has yet to overheat or even really get hot. Nor has it slowed down. Of course with that much RAM, you’d kinda expect that it would perform quite well.
This phone does have 24GB of RAM, however, if you need a bit more memory, there is a RAM boost of another 8GB. That brings you to 32GB of total RAM here, which is incredible for a smartphone. My laptop has 36GB of RAM. If you’re worried about performance here on the Magic6 RSR, don’t be. In fact, you’ll likely never really see it slow down for a few years since the specs are so monstrous on this one.
Before we jump into the benchmarks, let’s talk about audio for a minute. While using it to watch content and listen to Spotify, the on-board speakers sound great. However, we do have our own tests to test out the audio. Each of these tracks specifies a different aspect of audio, including the bass, the highs, the mids, and even the vocals. To be honest, they all sounded really good to my ears. The vocals for say a podcast, sounded really good and clear, even at higher volumes. However, the bass can get distorted when you turn the volume all the way up.
The Benchmarks
As we do with every phone, we’ve put the HONOR Magic6 RSR through a number of benchmark tests to see how it stacks up with other phones that have come across our desks. You can read more about our testing for reviews here.
The first test is Geekbench 6. In the graph below, you can see the Single- and Multi-Core scores from Geekbench 6, as well as the GPU score. Here, we are comparing it to the Magic6 Pro, which should have very similar scores, as well as the HONOR Magic V2 RSR, which uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy. As you can see, the single-core scores were all pretty similar, between 1870 and 2206. Multi-core scores were also very similar, but a slightly larger difference. GPU scores is where things really start to take a turn. The Magic6 Pro and RSR are virtually the same, but both scored over 2,000 points more than the Galaxy S24 Ultra with the same processor. And was close to doubling the Magic V2 RSR.
The next test we run is the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This benchmark runs the same loop of about 60 seconds long, 20 times. The purpose of this test is to push the device to its limit and then see how well it stays at that level. So this test does heat the phone up quite a bit, which is why we also use this for a thermal test, but more on that later. It also spits out a Best Loop Score, Lowest Loop Score, and a stability percentage. The Magic6 RSR scored a little better than the Magic6 Pro but had a slightly lower stability percentage at 66.8% versus the Magic6 Pro having 69.1%.
The last benchmark we run is one that we actually designed, which means that OEMs can’t “cheat” on it. Basically, we open Capcut. Load in a 60-second long video – it’s the same video for every phone – and then export it at 1080p 60fps. We time how long it takes to export, which is generally under 10 seconds. Perhaps a little surprising, the Galaxy S24 Ultra beat them all but around a second, at a time of 7.75 seconds. The Magic V2 RSR had the slowest time of the four at 12.87 seconds.
For the most part, the Magic6 RSR performed as we had expected. And was very similar to the Magic6 Pro, as it should be. Seeing as the only major difference is RAM, which jumps from 16GB on the Pro to 24GB on the RSR.
Thermals
Now let’s talk about how cool, the phone actually stayed. These temps were actually very close to the Magic6 Pro, which again, they should be. They were within a degree in each test. The first test is measuring the temperature after running the 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. Generally, this one provides the highest temperature as it pushes the phone to the absolute edge. Here, we achieved a temperature of 111.2 degrees Fahrenheit.
Next up, we play Genshin Impact for an hour, on max settings and max brightness, then measure the temperature. The Magic6 Pro had a temperature of 98.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Finally, we recorded the video at 4K60 for 10 minutes, measuring the temperature at 5 minutes and again at 10 minutes. The Magic6 RSR had temps of 94.9 and 97.4 Fahrenheit on those.
Overall, pretty respectable temperatures from the Magic6 RSR. The OnePlus 12 did have lower numbers in our testing, however that phone does have a massive heatsink and a ton of cooling inside to keep it that cool.
HONOR Magic6 RSR Review: Battery
The HONOR Magic6 RSR has, I believe, the largest battery I’ve ever used in a smartphone. It’s rated at 5,600mAh, finally pushing past that 5,000mAh threshold that everyone seemed to be stuck at for years. OnePlus pushed past it this year with a 5,400mAh battery in the OnePlus 12, and it offered some incredible battery life too. But the Magic6 RSR tops it.
This is how battery life should be
To put it in perspective, I use every review device in the same way. I unplug at around 7 am when I wake up and call it a day around 11pm or so. That’s about 16 hours of usage per day. With the OnePlus 12, which I mentioned in the review, I would get 57% by the end of the day. But with the HONOR Magic6 RSR, I’m typically above 65%, and a few times have been above 70% after a 16-hour day. That’s just incredible. And I’ve been able to get through two full days from a single charge, and still have some juice leftover. That’s two full days and nights before charging, using the phone as I normally would.
Now, how does it stack up in our battery rundown test? Well, pretty favorably. Let’s talk about this test first. Basically, we charge it to 100% and let it sit for a good hour charging past 100% to make sure it’s actually full. Then we load up a video on YouTube – the same video on every phone – and let it run at full brightness. It’s a 24-hour video, and the Magic6 RSR and Magic6 Pro are the only phones that have lasted longer than the video. Both of these phones were over 26 hours, with the Magic6 RSR having bested the Pro by about 28 minutes. That’s honestly truly incredible.
With this, it really makes me want to use the Magic6 RSR at a trade show to see how well it performs under all of the stress of using the phone a lot more often than normal.
However, I do wish that the battery stats in MagicOS 8.0 weren’t just a rolling 24 hours. But giving me the data since the last time the phone was fully charged. This makes it pretty tough to get a good gauge of how good (or not) the battery life really is. Since I can’t kill the phone in a single day, Google and Samsung used to do this, but they have since updated their battery life screens, so hopefully, HONOR will follow suit with MagicOS 9.0 next year.
HONOR Magic6 RSR Review: Software
The HONOR Magic6 RSR comes with MagicOS 8.0 which is based on Android 14. This is the same software that is found on the other Magic6 smartphones, with the biggest changes being some additional wallpapers and icons that make it feel more like a “Porsche Design” phone. MagicOS 8.0 feels pretty solid. However, it does also feel like a mixture of iOS and Android.
Now, we have seen phones, particularly from the East, leaning into the iOS aesthetic a lot over the years, but with MagicOS 8.0 it feels like a good mix of iOS and Android. As my colleague, Kristijan noted in his review of the Magic6 Pro back in February, it feels like you’re using both operating systems on the same phone. Now, what I will say here is that there are not as many typos or carbon copies of elements from iOS. But ther are still quite a few things that look like they were straight up lifted from iOS, like the camera app. Which I don’t have a problem with. It’s still easy to use, with all of the features you might want or need in a camera app right where you can reach it easily.
Where the Magic6 RSR really excels, however, is in the integration of different apps. For instance, you got an address on WhatsApp. You might want to copy and paste that into Google Maps. Well, now you don’t have to. Just Drag the address over to the right side of the screen, and a few apps will pop up. Just “drop” the address on Google Maps, and it’ll open up Google Maps in a pop-up window, with directions to that address. This is just one of many features that HONOR has included in MagicOS 8.0 with Magic Portal.
The Dynamic Island was lifted from the iPhone, but I somehow like it better on the Magic6 RSR versus my iPhone 15 Pro Max. It’s thinner, so there’s that, but it does also have more functionality. HONOR has added some UI elements around the pill-shaped cutout for the front-facing cameras. Like playback controls for media that you might be listening to, among other things.
The HONOR Magic6 RSR will most likely get Android 15 when it launches later this year. However, if MagicOS8 and Android 14 are anything to go by, it might not be available until early next year. This is perfectly fine, in my opinion, since new versions of Android aren’t really all that much different from the previous version. More of the changes come from the skins that companies like HONOR is putting on top of Android. HONOR is promising five years of security updates and OS updates for the Magic6 Pro and Magic6 RSR. So this should get to Android 19, which isn’t too shabby.
For someone from the West who is used to using software like Samsung’s One UI, Google’s Pixel Experience, and OnePlus’ OxygenOS, it definitely takes some getting used to MagicOS 8.0, but I quite like this software. And perhaps, most importantly, it does also absolutely fly on this hardware.
HONOR Magic6 RSR Review: Camera
Much like the Magic6 Pro, the Magic6 RSR is absolutely stacked with its camera setup. This includes a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 180-megapixel telephoto camera that is able to do 2.5x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom. Not to mention the 50-megapixel front-facing camera, plus the 3D ToF sensor, which is used for better portrait photography. A bit weird seeing that in 2024, as it’s a feature that LG added on the LG G8 back in 2019.
Let’s first start with the primary camera. This 50-megapixel camera takes some really good pictures, as you might expect. It has a f/1.4 aperture, that is adjustable to f/2.0. Variable aperture is another feature that Samsung debuted on the Galaxy S9 back in 2018. So HONOR is here using tech that was introduced a few years ago and kind of forgotten about, making it even better. Every picture I’ve taken with this sensor, however, has come out incredible. I truly have no complaints about the quality of images out of this primary camera.
Next, the ultrawide. Now to be honest, I don’t take a whole lot of photos with the ultrawide camera on any smartphone. But, that sensor is used for “Super Macro”, which can be used at 0.5x, 1x or 2x zoom. The Super Macro shots I’ve taken have come out really good. If it has enough light, you can get some breathtaking macro shots out of this camera. However, I do wish it was easier to switch over to the “Super Macro” mode. You need to swipe over to “More” and then select it, which isn’t as quick as having a toggle on the screen. Which the Xiaomi 14 Ultra does have.
Now, the mother of them all is that 180-megapixel telephoto lens. I will say that when I first took the phone out of the box and tested the camera, I was a bit saddened to learn that this 180-megapixel telephoto lens only does 2.5x optical zoom. There is an option to do 5x zoom, which still looks quite good, but I think that HONOR could have cropped into that lens and given us a good 5x or 10x optical zoom option. Now this does go up to 100x digital zoom, but similar to other 100x phones on the market, it’s not that great. However, the telephoto zoom is pretty good by itself. Below, I’m sharing a number of pictures I’ve taken with the HONOR Magic6 RSR with this 180-megapixel sensor. You can use a macro mode on the telephoto sensor here, which does look incredible. In fact, I’ve been using it more for macro than the ultrawide lens (Basically, don’t use the super macro mode if you want to use the telephoto lens).
The only real issue with the telephoto is in low-light mode. It’s not always as sharp, which you kinda expect from a zoom lens. Typically the more you zoom in, the more light you’re going to need for a good picture. But all around, the camera setup on the Magic6 RSR is really impressive. One of my favorite camera setups on a phone so far this year.
Should you buy the HONOR Magic6 RSR?
I really like the HONOR Magic6 RSR. There are only two real complaints here for me. One is the price, and the other is the fact it won’t be available in the US. Otherwise, the Magic6 RSR excels at just about everything you throw at it, as it should. It also comes with 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which does help to justify the price, of course. And if you are planning to keep it for a few years, it’ll definitely be worth the price. The Falcon Camera system on the Magic6 RSR is simply incredible and likely will continue to improve too.
It really is a shame that the government is trying so hard to keep phones like the HONOR Magic6 RSR out of the US because it’s nearly perfect. It does so many things so well, from the camera, to the battery life, to the stunning display with HDR support. If it weren’t for the lack of bands support in the US, the HONOR Magic6 RSR would definitely be my second phone, primarily for the battery and camera experiences.
You should buy the HONOR Magic6 RSR if:
- You want a big phone with big battery life
- You want a big phone that’s not a Galaxy S24 Ultra
- You want an incredible zoom camera setup
- You are a big Porsche fan
- You want a phone with 1TB of storage
You should not buy the HONOR Magic6 RSR if:
- You live in the US (while you can import it, it won’t work on all of the bands on all US carriers)
- You don’t like a heavy skin on top of Android
- You don’t like big and heavy phones.
2024-05-02 15:07:04