HONOR has been making a lot of noise over the last few months about their new Magic V3 foldable. And how it is the thinnest on the market, also one of the lightest. Despite being super thin, at 4.35mm unfolded and 9.2mm folded, HONOR has managed to equip the Magic V3 with the largest battery we’ve seen on a foldable so far – 5,150mAh. That’s actually larger than the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, which are non-foldable flagship phones. But what about the rest of the Magic V3? Is it a foldable that’s worth buying? Let’s find out in our full review.
HONOR Magic V3 Review: Design and Build Quality
If you’ve used a HONOR phone over the past few years (even before Huawei sold the company off), you know exactly what to expect in terms of design and build quality. And that is one incredibly well-built phone. HONOR is selling the Magic V3 in three colors: Black, Green, and redish brown. I have the Green model, which has a glass back, whereas the Reddish Brown actually has a faux leather back. Which I would much prefer, because of the grip, and it won’t show fingerprints as much. But, HONOR does include a really nice faux leather case in the box with the Magic V3. Something you’d never see from a phone sold in North America.
The back of the phone is glass, with a metal frame that is black. So it looks really sleek. There is a pretty large camera bump on the back, though to be honest, I have seen bigger. So this isn’t that much of a deal breaker. Luckily, this larger camera bump means that the cameras are much better than the Magic V2 from last year. Honestly, that was the only real issue I had when I reviewed the Magic V2 RSR earlier this year, and that was how disappointing the cameras on a phone that cost that much were. HONOR has a triple-camera setup here, which is similar to the Magic6 Pro announced back at MWC Barcelona. This includes a 50-megapixel primary, a 50-megapixel periscope telephoto, and a 40-megapixel ultrawide camera. Which sits in an octagon-shaped camera bump. This is actually a really good design to have for the camera bump. It’s unique, but it also allows the phone to sit on a table without wobbling – unlike the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
An interesting design decision that HONOR made, was to have the volume rocker on the left side when unfolded and power on the right side when unfolded. This does make it a bit harder to press the wrong one when it’s in your pocket. It’s a small thing that you have to get used too, since a lot of tablets have the volume and power button together.
Because the HONOR Magic V3 is so thin when unfolded, the SIM card tray is incredibly thin. In fact, you could probably bend it and break it very easily. Though I didn’t try it, I did pop in my Google Fi SIM. The USB-C port is also about as thick as the phone when unfolded too. So there’s not much room to go thinner here, unless HONOR does decide to ditch the USB-C port for something like wireless charging.
The front of the HONOR Magic V3 is almost entirely displayed. The bezels on this 6.43-inch display are pretty narrow, with HONOR claiming a 91.10% screen-to-body ratio. The internal display is about the same, though bezels are a bit thicker. It also boasts a 90.50% screen-to-body ratio for its 7.92-inch display. Which is one of the biggest on the market, with really only the Pixel 9 Pro Fold being larger at a full 8-inches.
Then there’s the new HONOR Super Steel Hinge. This hinge allows the phone to be super thin, while also being very durable. It is a little stiff opening the phone at first, but once you work in the hinge, it becomes easier to open and you can open it with one hand too. You can open the phone halfway to 90-degrees, though it doesn’t always stay. It’s not quite as strong as Samsung’s hinge, where you can open it to virtually any angle and it’ll stay open.
When it comes to the build quality of the HONOR Magic V3, it’s probably the best of any foldable right now. We have not had the chance to use Xiaomi’s new foldables yet, but when compared to OnePlus/OPPO, Samsung, Motorola and Google, HONOR has done it the best so far.
It’s also one of the lightest and thinnest on the market. It weighs in at about 236g, which is lighter than a Galaxy S24 Ultra.
HONOR Magic V3 Review: Displays
One issue that really plagues foldables devices is, screen brightness. This is particularly an issue for the inner display since it is made of plastic, which is naturally more reflective. It’s something we’ve seen loads of foldables improve on this year, including the HONOR Magic V3. The inner display now has a peak brightness of 1,600 nits. That might not sound like a lot, considering the outer display goes up to 5,000 nits, but here’s what matters. It is easy to see outdoors in direct sunlight.
I’ve used this phone outdoors quite a bit, and both screens were very easy to see under direct sunlight. They also look incredible. There is still a crease on the inner display, though it’s about as visible as those on the OnePlus Open and Motorola Razr. Meaning it’s there, but you’ll really only see it if you’re looking for it.
We also measured the screen brightness on both displays. To do this, we use a plain white image on the screen at full brightness, then shine a flashlight at the light sensor at the top of the phone to get it as bright as possible. And use a Lux meter to measure the screen brightness. Now those peak brightness numbers I mentioned above, you’ll never see that. Those numbers were achieved in a lab in absolutely perfect conditions. Which you won’t see in real life. We did get around 3,000 nits on the front display and about 1,250 nits on the inner display. That’s closer to what you’ll see in real life, and honestly, that it is still extremely bright. It is good enough for use outdoors or in other bright environments.
HONOR Magic V3 Review: Performance
Inside the HONOR Magic V3 is the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. There is also a pretty large vapor chamber, which we’ll put to the test a bit later in the thermals sub-section here.
In daily tasks, things like checking X, Instagram, and Threads, or reading emails, it works as well as you’d expect. Even playing games like League of Legends Wild Rift, it still performs really well and stays pretty cool, even after 3 hours of gameplay at max brightness and in the Gaming mode. That is really impressive, to be quite honest.
There’s plenty of RAM here too. Apps stay in the background for quite some time. HONOR isn’t as aggressive as some other brands, in closing apps in the background to conserve battery life, which is good to see. The only time that it really closes apps in the background often is when it is playing a game for a long period of time, as it needs that RAM for the game.
Benchmarks
While we believe that benchmarks aren’t the be all end all for seeing how well a phone performs, we do believe it is a good way to compare phones equally. So in our reviews, we run three different benchmark tests. The first is Geekbench 6.
Most of you are likely familiar with Geekbench 6. This test will give us a score on the raw performance of the Magic V3 in the single-core and multi-core CPU tests. And a GPU test. Here, we are comparing it to the HONOR Magic V2 RSR (which has identical scores to the Magic V2), and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, as these are the most recent foldables to come across our desk. The HONOR Magic V3 scored 1996 in the single-core test, 5,241 in multi-core, and 14,975 in the GPU test.
The next test is also a thermal test, and its 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This test is designed to push the device to its absolute limit, by running the same 60-second loop, twenty times. It then provides a Best Loop score, a Lowest Loop Score and from that it provides us with a stability percentage. What’s interesting with this test is that, a phone with the exact same specs can score vastly different numbers here. The HONOR Magic V3 had a Best loop of 4,792, a lowest loop of 2,481 and a stability of 51.8%. Which has higher loop scores than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 with the same internals, but a lower stability score. What this means is the HONOR Magic V3 does not throttle as quickly as the Galaxy Z Fold 6, and it also has similar numbers to the Magic V2 RSR.
Finally, we have a video export test. This is one that makes it harder for OEMs to “cheat” on, since it’s not an actual benchmarking test. What we do here is, import a 60-second long video into Capcut, and then export at 1080p30. We time how long it takes to export the video, and surprisingly since we started doing this test a year ago, the numbers vary quite a bit. The HONOR Magic V3 did pretty well with a time of 8.9 seconds. That’s a solid 4 seconds faster than the Magic V2 RSR, and just over a second slower than the Galaxy Z Fold 6.
So what does this tell us? Well, the Magic V3 is a pretty good upgrade from the Magic V2 (RSR) in terms of performance. It also tells us that Samsung’s overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 for Galaxy chipset does help it achieve better results in these tests.
Thermals
As we mentioned earlier, HONOR did include a pretty massive vapor chamber in the Magic V3, which has done pretty well for the phone in our thermal tests.
Our first test is, 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This is a benchmark that we run, and then we check the temperature of the phone. Typically, the hottest point is near the camera, as that is where the processor is. So that’s where we checked it this time, and got a reading of 109.9 degrees Fahrenheit. That might sound high, and it is a good deal warmer than the Magic V2 RSR was (98.9 degrees) and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (at 100.4), but still pretty cool compared to other phones. Especially slab phones.
After letting the Magic V3 cool down a bit, back to room temperature, we then run another test. This is playing Genshin Impact at max settings and max brightness for an hour. With this test, we were able to record a reading of 103.5 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, it’s warmer than the Magic V2 and Galaxy Z Fold 6, but much closer this time. That is still a pretty respectable reading for Genshin Impact, as we have loads of phones that have recorded much higher temps.
Finally, is the camera test. As you likely know, using the camera for a long period of time, particularly 4K recording, does heat up the phone quite a bit. So here, we are recording at 4K30 (since not all phones have options for 4K60) for 10 minutes. We record the temperature at 5 minutes in and at the full 10 minutes. At 5 minutes, the temperature was 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And at 10 minutes in, the temperature was 105.2. Again, these are a few degrees higher than other phones, but still respectable numbers here.
HONOR Magic V3 Review: Battery Life and Charging
It’s kind of mad that HONOR was able to fit such a large battery in a foldable that is so thin. But that’s thanks to Silicon Carbon, which HONOR has been using a lot lately for its devices. The Magic6 series also used a Silicon Carbon battery, which is why the Magic6 Pro had a 5,600mAh capacity battery. Having a 5,150mAh capacity battery on a foldable is definitely nice to see, but I think my hopes were a bit too high for battery life, coming from a number of slab phone reviews before this.
Don’t get me wrong, the battery life is pretty good for a foldable, and a pretty decent increase over the Magic V2 series. It will get you through the day with some battery left over, in fact, I’ve had trouble killing the phone in a single day. Even with loads of gaming. But in the end, it wasn’t all that much better than the Galaxy Z Fold 6 which has a somewhat small 4,400mAh capacity battery inside.
Just like with performance, we also run a benchmark on the Magic V3 for battery life. What we do is, charge the phone to full, and let it charge overnight, so we know it is fully full, and not just barely at 100%. Then we play a YouTube video that is about 24 hours long, and put the screen at full brightness, running it until it dies – or just before, at about 1%. During this test, the Magic V3 was able to hit 16 hours and 34 minutes. That’s about an hour and a half longer than the Magic V2 RSR, and just barely an hour longer than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. It is the longest time we’ve recorded on a foldable, so far.
When it comes to charging, we charge the phone from 0% or nearly dead, up to 100%. If there is a charger in the box, we use that for the test, otherwise, we will use a charger that can output the max wattage that the phone can take. So using an adapter – since this is an EU plug – we charged the Magic V3 from 0% to 100% and timed it. The Magic V3 has a peak charging speed of 66W, which we saw for only a couple of minutes. It mostly stayed between 40 and 55W until it got to 80%. It finished in just over 45 minutes. That’s 12 minutes faster than the Magic V2 RS, and 34 minutes faster than the Galaxy Z Fold 6. But it wasn’t quite quick enough to take the crown of the fastest charging foldable (we’ve tested), as the OnePlus Open was able to do this in 42 minutes.
Battery life and charging are both quite good on the Magic V3. And we didn’t even get to talk about wireless charging. Which is rated at 50W. Though you do need HONOR’s own wireless charger to get those speeds, which makes the speeds pretty pointless unless you want to spend the money on buying that specific wireless charger.
HONOR Magic V3 Review: Software
Let’s preface this section of the review by stating that we reviewed the Magic V3 on MagicOS 8.0.1 with Android 14. It also had the August security update. We expect that this will get Android 15 and MagicOS 9 in the next few months, which is why we are mentioning this here. HONOR is promising four OS updates and five years of security updates for the Magic V3. Which is pretty respectable, that means it’ll get Android 15, 16, 17 and Android 18. It’s still behind Samsung and Google, who are promising 7 years of updates.
Software is always a weak point for Chinese OEMs, and it’s even more noticeable with foldables like the Magic V3. While the hardware is nearly perfect here on the Magic V3, the real let down is the software. And it’s not so much MagicOS as a whole, but the lack of features to really take advantage of this being a foldable.
Sure, there’s the usual features like multi-window and their version of pop-up window, but there’s more that HONOR could do. And really take advantage of the nearly 8-inch display on the Magic V3. Despite being behind in hardware, Samsung does a really good job with foldable software, and it feels way more polished than the competition. Whereas the Magic V3 feels the opposite, with the hardware is much more polished compared to the competition. To be honest, it feels very identical to the Magic V2 RSR that I reviewed earlier this year, and that’s because both are running on MagicOS 8. I do wish that more OEMs would adopt the Flex-style features that Samsung has. While it might not seem like they are useful, they really are.
But, it’s not all bad news for HONOR and its software. Of course, HONOR is also debuting some new AI features with the Magic V3, because that’s basically a requirement in 2024. A few of these AI features are being powered by Google Cloud.
One of the bigger features that HONOR is touting is Magic Portal. This is not a new feature, as it was available on the Magic6 series that launched earlier this year. The Magic V3 builds on Magic Portal with Magic Portal on Foldable feature, which does take full advantage of the inner display. Users are able to now open two different floating apps simultaneously. This allows for easier multitasking, though competitors do allow more floating windows and apps in multi-window to be open at the same time. It’s a step in the right direction for HONOR, but there’s still more that could be done here.
There’s a couple more AI features that I actually really enjoyed using. Including Face-to-face translation. This is similar to what we’ve seen from other OEMs this year, where you can use the Magic V3 for translation for another language. This has become very useful here in Germany, since I don’t speak German, but I’m able to communicate with taxi drivers and locals very easily using this feature.
Then there’s HONOR Notes, which is very similar to Google’s Recorder app, but perhaps better. In the Notes app, tap on the recording icon in the lower right corner. It will then start to record what is being said. HONOR Notes is also able to show speakers, mark a specific spot in the Note and even transcribe it. Finally, what puts it above the Google Recorder app is the fact that it can translate. This makes it very useful, especially if you do a lot of traveling.
HONOR Magic V3 Review: Camera
The camera was one of the only issues I had with the Magic V2 RSR. If I hadn’t used the OnePlus Open for so long before that review, it probably wouldn’t have left such a bad taste in my mouth. The camera was okay, but not good enough to where I’d carry that phone with me for the camera. For most people, it’d probably be fine. But knowing what HONOR was able to do with the Magic6 Pro, it felt nerfed.
Fast-forward to the Magic V3, and HONOR seems to have taken that feedback to heart. We’re still looking at 50-megapixel sensors here, but they are upgraded. So we have a 50-megapixel primary at f/1.6 aperture, a 50-megapixel telephoto at 3.5 optical zoom, and a 40-megapixel ultrawide camera. And these cameras take some incredible photos.
To be honest, I’ve been very happy with the pictures coming out of all three of these cameras. In fact, I’ve taken some pictures that are some of the best I’ve ever taken with a smartphone during this review, like the picture below of the flowers. If it didn’t have the watermark frame on it saying it was taken with the HONOR Magic V3, I’d have thought I took that with my Sony ZV-E10 mirrorless camera.
The cameras (except for the ultrawide) do an excellent job with natural bokeh. Some other cameras do provide a bokeh that looks great, but you can also tell it was AI-generated. That’s not the case on the Magic V3, and that mostly comes down to the much larger sensors here. Not to mention, the primary is pretty wide at f/1.6.
Of course, there’s the usual AI features included here, including AI Eraser. I’ve noticed that AI Eraser on the HONOR Magic V3, is slower to actually erase the object(s). However, it does a better job than what I’ve found on recent Pixel and Galaxy devices. Which is rather impressive when you think about it.
Regarding foldables, I’d rank the Magic V3 camera just below the OnePlus Open right now. It’s pretty close, though. Many other foldables tend to use older cameras, such as the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6.
Should you buy the HONOR Magic V3?
It’s important to note that we are writing this review before we know the price of the Magic V3. HONOR typically will not disclose the price until it is announced. Not giving it to press early with other embargo material. But we do know that it is priced at CNY9,999 in China for this particular storage size. That translates to around $1,403 USD or €1258 in Euro. So we’re expecting around €1300 in Europe. Which is far cheaper than a lot of the competitor devices we get further West. But regardless of price, this is still an incredible foldable to pick up.
HONOR has continued to check just about every box for foldables lately. And the only real thing that HONOR needs to work on is its software. It has been working on with the Magic V3. And we expect it to get even better with MagicOS 9 (based on Android 15).
You should buy the HONOR Magic V3 if:
- You want a thin and light foldable that doesn’t cut any corners.
- You want one of the best displays we’ve ever seen on a foldable.
- You live in a market where HONOR will be selling the Magic V3.
You should not buy the HONOR Magic V3 if:
- You live in the US, and while it does work on T-Mobile and AT&T, it’s not perfect.
- You don’t like foldables.
2024-09-05 15:05:24