Technologies

The Honor Magic 8 Pro Is My First Big Phone Disappointment of 2026

Having tested multiple models of this phone, I’m confident that this one is a let down.

When I first started testing the Honor Magic 8 Pro, I found significant purple fringing on images from the ultrawide camera. Honor identified the fringing as a fault with my first review unit and sent me new review samples to test. Having subsequently tested two additional Magic 8 Pro models, I can confidently say that this particular camera problem is not an issue on final retail handsets. But I do still have complaints about this phone’s camera, and since it’s a flagship handset with a high price, I definitely expected more.

The Magic 8 Pro is Honor’s first major Android phone of 2026, and it’s has some potent tech, including the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, which delivered some of the best scores I’ve ever seen in our benchmark tests. I like the display, too. The Magic 8 Pro has features like 100W fast charging, various AI skills and a generous seven years of software and security support.

But I wasn’t blown away by the phone’s battery life despite its large capacity. Plus, the exceptionally heavy-handed image processing on the camera means that this phone falls down in two significant areas for me. At £1,099 in the UK, this phone needed to impress more than it does. Honor doesn’t officially sell its phones in the US, but for reference, that price converts to roughly $1,480.

The camera is the big issue for me, so let’s start there.

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Problematic camera

I’ve shot hundreds of photos across three models of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, and in all honesty, I haven’t been able to take many images that I especially like. This wasn’t helped by my first handset having early teething troubles, but even putting that aside, this phone camera did not live up to my expectations at all. All images shown here were taken using the replacement models which are the same units that people are able to buy in stores.

On paper, the camera hardware is solid: A 50-megapixel main camera leads the way, backed up by 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 200-megapixel telephoto with a lens that offers 3.7x optical zoom and 10x hybrid. But the hardware’s not the problem — it’s Honor’s software processing that’s ruining the fun here.

I’ll start off with this shot above of a street in Edinburgh. At first glance, it’s fine — the photo has a decent exposure (albeit with overly brightened shadows) and accurate colors. It’s actually one of the better shots I’ve taken with the phone.

But a closer look shows that things start to fall apart. An unpleasant hazy halo surrounds the tower block, along with digital artifacts, where the phone is clearly trying to both reduce image noise while also increasing the sharpness.

Here’s a comparison from the iPhone 16 Pro. The shadows haven’t been lightened as much, which gives the image a more natural feel.

Punch into the iPhone’s image, and it’s clear that Apple is processing the details less. There is almost no fuzzy halo around the tower and no artifacts from noise reduction or sharpening. The details on the brickwork look better too.

Switching to the Honor’s ultrawide camera doesn’t help matters, with more haloing around the tower and details that have a weird oil painting effect due to the digital sharpening.

Again, this image above looks fine. It has a solid exposure and a color balance that I actually think looks pretty good.

But again I see evidence of heavy-handed digital processing, with the sky looking almost cut out against the edges of the buildings. If it feels like I’m nitpicking, it’s because I am. This phone is expensive, and an elite price tag should come with elite performance.

Shall we have a look at some more examples? Of course!

The details in this sunset scene actually don’t look as overcooked as in the previous images, but the Magic 8 Pro has brightened the shadows so much that it’s lost a lot of the nice mood and drama that was present in the moment.

Even the iPhone 17 Pro lightened things a bit, but nowhere near to the same extent, resulting in a much more natural-looking image.

It’s not that the camera can’t take a good shot — the hardware is more than capable. Look at this example. The JPEG above has suffered at the hands of the phone’s processing, with unnaturally brightened shadows, crunchy details and overly vibrant colors.

And above is the same scene, taken as a DNG raw image using the phone’s Pro mode and adjusted in Adobe Lightroom. I’ve maintained the nice depth of the shadows, added almost no extra image sharpening and kept the colors at a natural level. I actually really like this shot and it goes to show that this phone is perfectly capable of taking good photos — it’s the image processing in the camera that’s going too hard.

Case in point, I took the shot above overlooking Edinburgh using the 3.7x telephoto lens. It’s overly bright — both in the highlights and in the shadows — while the noise reduction and sharpening have resulted in crunchy details that look unpleasant, especially when viewed close up.

Yet the DNG raw file above looks great. I’ve barely touched this one as it didn’t need much. The drama of the sunset has been maintained with strong shadows and details that haven’t been destroyed by software.

Pushing the zoom to its 10x hybrid produced the decent-looking image above of a lighthouse. But guess what.

That’s right, the Magic 8 Pro’s image processing (left) has given it harsh, crunchy details that look unpleasant compared to the more natural look of the iPhone 17 Pro’s image (right).

I did say I’d taken some that I like, and sure, these photos above are pretty decent and not overly troubled by image processing, in my opinion.

But at night, the image processing demon shows its hand yet again. The image above is overly saturated with details lost in some areas due to noise reduction while other areas have been over sharpened. Maybe it’s a one off?

Nope! The colors have been seriously ramped up in the image above while the noise reduction and sharpening have again had their fun with the details.

Here’s how the iPhone 17 Pro handled the same scene. It’s far more natural.

And here’s a weird one — the software smoothed out a lot of detail on the buildings, giving them an unnatural smooth look, but yet there’s still a huge amount of image noise in the sky and the dark parts of the river.

It’s not super easy to see, but it’s even produced these odd square patches where the colors have shifted, presumably an error in how the phone processes different parts of the scene.

The iPhone 17 Pro’s shot has better handling of noise and better-looking details. I do prefer the more cyan tone of the sky in the Honor’s shot, but that’s me really grasping at straws in trying to find some positives.

And another example of the phone producing weird noise artifacts.

Nighttime results from the ultrawide camera are roughly in-line with what I saw from the iPhone. The Honor’s exposure is a little better, but unsurprisingly, its details look far too digitally sharpened.

And at 3.7x zoom, the Honor’s shot is slightly brighter and higher contrast than the iPhone 17 Pro’s, but yes, details don’t look as natural. In all honestly, though, neither phone has exactly excelled here.

Safe to say then that I’m disappointed with the Magic 8 Pro’s camera performance overall. Like many phone manufacturers, Honor is leaning increasingly hard into its software processing to overcome the limitations of small smartphone camera sensors. But this phone is a perfect example of things going way too far. The DNG raw files I took show that the hardware is capable of taking good-looking images with natural exposure and clear details. Those same images look, to my eye, truly awful when the phone’s image processing has had a go on them.

Photography is, of course, a subjective matter, and what might look good to one person can look awful to someone else. So sure, maybe you love hyper saturation and shadows that are barely there. But some of the bigger problems — like the image noise in night scenes or the blurring of details that should be clear — are objective signs of bad image processing. So, Honor, I’m begging you directly now: You have a great camera here — please stop ruining it with your software.

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Display and processor performance

Moving on to something more positive now, I do like the phone’s 6.71-inch display. It’s bright and vibrant, which makes it easily visible under harsh outdoor sunshine and allows colorful YouTube videos to pop nicely. It’s lovely for gaming, too, thanks to its max 120Hz refresh rate that can dynamically shift to 1Hz to help reduce the load on your battery.

Honor Magic 8 Pro performance compared

Honor Magic 8 Pro 3,705 11,333 8,036Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra 3,053 9,707 6,950Oppo Find X9 Pro 3,171 9,357 7,281

Geekbench 6 (single core)
Geekbench 6 (multi-core)
3D Mark Wild Life Extreme

Note: Longer bars equals better performance.

The phone is powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon Elite Gen 5 processor, which puts in some of the best scores we’ve ever seen on our benchmark tests for both processor performance and graphics processing. It feels extremely zippy in everyday use. Playing demanding 3D games like Genshin Impact was no problem at all, even when I cranked the settings to the max.

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Software and AI additions

The phone runs Android 16 at its core, over which Honor has slapped its own Magic OS 10 interface. It functions basically like any version of Android, but you will find some additions thrown in, mostly in the form of AI tools, including ones like Google’s Gemini we would see on other Android devices.

The AI Photos Agent allows you to use generative AI to upscale, recompose or remove objects from an image or transform it into a few limited styles including “Cartoon” or “Animation,” which I would have assumed are the same thing. Does it work? Well, I’ll let you judge.

Here’s my original selfie taken with the phone.

And here’s what the phone’s “Cartoon” AI tool has done to me. I don’t even need to think of a sarcastic quip; it very much speaks for itself.

Elsewhere, you’ll find tools like an AI settings agent, where you can ask how to do things like dim your screen brightness, and an AI Memories tool, which largely seems to be a repository for screenshots. You’ll also have Google’s AI tools like Gemini Live, Gemini Advanced and Circle to Search, the latter of which can be accessed through a dedicated button on the side of the phone. The button, however, can also be programed to open and operate the camera — much like Apple’s camera control button — and I find it more useful in that form.

Honor has said that the phone will receive seven years of software and security support, meaning this phone should still be good to use all the way through to 2033.

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Battery life and charging

The phone runs on a 6,270-mAh battery, which, while sizable, only gave average results on our battery drain tests. Battery performance sits more alongside phones like the Galaxy S25 or Google Pixel 10, but it’s a big step below the iPhone 17 Pro Max or OnePlus 15.

It does, however, offer 100W wired charging, which should make it extremely quick to juice it back up, as long as you have a compatible charger. It also offers 80W wireless charging, but you’ll need a proprietary charger to hit those speeds as the phone doesn’t support Qi2.2 accessories.

Honor Magic 8 Pro: Should you buy it?

I’m glad I retested this phone on multiple units. It showed me that the early issue I found with the camera was not a problem, but it also proved to me that the cameras on this thing still need a lot of work. I’m disappointed with Honor here, as the phone’s hardware is probably good, but its image processing all but ruins otherwise solid photos. I wouldn’t mind so much, but with a flagship price over £1,000 here in the UK, I expect better.

Sure, you can shoot in raw all the time and edit your images in Lightroom like you might with a regular camera. But you shouldn’t have to circumvent the phone’s efforts in order to get something usable. There’s a chance, of course, that you love saturated images with lightened shadows and details that look like they’ve been given an oil painting filter from a free Play Store editing app. If that sounds like you, then you’ll probably get on extremely well with this phone.

It’s not all bad of course, the Magic 8 Pro is hugely powerful. I love the generous software support period, and while some of Honor’s own AI additions are fairly redundant, the overall interface of the phone is pleasant to use. Battery life could certainly be better, but I’ve seen much worse.

For the high price, I think your money is better spent on rival Android phones. Want a better camera? Go with the Oppo Find X9 Pro. Want better battery life? The OnePlus 15 is for you.

How we test phones

Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team was used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to determine how it holds up and whether it has an IP rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using standardized benchmark tools like Geekbench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high-refresh rates.

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