The HONOR 200 series is the successor to the HONOR 90 series which I reviewed previously, that worked so good for me, I bought one for my dad to replace his aging Huawei phone. With HONOR Singapore managed by the partner-distributor Telechoice International, I received the HONOR 200 Pro for review. It retails for S$799 and comes in Moonlight White and Ocean Cyan colours, with 365-day front and back replacement.
Last year, HONOR Singapore did not offer the HONOR 90 Pro version. This time round, the new HONOR 200 Pro is available which runs on Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, which means the performance is closer to the flagship. When I ran Geekbench 6 benchmark test and compared with the HONOR Magic6 Pro (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3), the HONOR 200 Pro surprisingly won in the single-core score (1534 vs. 1369). Everything else – multicore CPU, GPU, etc. – is faster. But who are we to kid, the Magic6 Pro that is above $1000 price range definitely performs much better.
The most important question a consumer would ask is: is the phone good enough for my usage demands? Everyone loves to own a powerful and speedy phone with super mega-pixel long mega-zoom camera system, but the price budget may not allow. I myself is a sucker for price-value. I never believe in spending more than S$1200 for a smartphone, so my way of working around this budget is buying second-hand phones, or find gems like HONOR phones, which have not disappointed me since 2017 (HONOR 8 Pro).
With the HONOR 200 Pro, you will be getting these features:
- Snapdragon 8s Gen, 12+12GB RAM 512GB storage
- 50MP + 50MP + 12MP rear camera system, 50MP front camera
- Studio Harcourt Portrait mode
- 6.78-inch quad-curved screen, 2700×1224 pixels 437PPI, 4000 nits HDR peak brightness
- 120Hz refresh, 3840Hz PWM dimming, DCI-P3, Amazon HDR, Netflix HDR
- 5200 mAh silicon-carbon battery, 100W SuperCharge, 66W Wireless SuperCharge
- Stereo speakers
- Infrared blaster, NFC, Wi-Fi 2X2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.2, LDAC, AptX HD, AptX, AAC, SBC
- 5G Dual SIM + eSIM
- IP65 water rating
- 199 grams
The phone is rather thin and light for a 6.78-inch flagship-tier device. It is the lightest compared to my other daily phones, the Google Pixel 7 Pro and the HONOR Magic6 Pro. Throughout my review period, I usually bring all three phones with me so the HONOR 200 Pro is less chunky to handle. The glass back has a unique matt texture design which departs from the plain finish, but I reckon most owners will be using the phone with the free transparent TPU case.
If you have an existing HONOR device, it is easy to copy data to the new HONOR device using “Device Clone” option under the “System & Updates” page. It will copy all apps and data if you choose to, and once it’s done, the home screen icons layout will be identical. It takes jus 15 minutes to transfer about 32GB data. But you need to re-authenticate all your apps login as it is impossible to migrate your logins due to security.
The other feature that you can benefit with owning multiple HONOR devices is Magic Ring, a feature that allows devices logged in with the same HONOR ID to discover and connect with each other. Users can then share screen, control device, transfer files. I tried it and it is pretty cool to be able to access another HONOR device remotely, so I can effectively manage two devices from a single screen.
I am also thoroughly impressed with the 100W super fast charging on the HONOR 200 Pro. It truly takes less than 50 minutes to fully charge the phone from 15%. The phone also does not feel overheated during the charging. The background app usage is also less aggressive but at the expense of higher battery consumption. I feel that the HONOR Magic6 Pro lasts longer, while the HONOR 200 Pro has the risk of running low on battery for heavy users. Still, it’s nothing compared with Pixel phones, who consumes battery at a higher rate.
Magic OS UI
I noticed a new feature in the MagicOS 8.0 homescreen – which is regularly updated – now supports resizing of the folders to various dimensions. It definitely offers more possibilities in the icon layouts, which allows me to directly select the app from the homescreen without opening the folder.
Of course, there are many other features on the MagicOS 8 UI to customise the way you like to interact with the phone, some of which we have taken for granted. For instance, you can change the grid layouts to display more icons, change font size, UI themes. It also supports on-screen gestures like auto-wake, knuckle screenshot, triple-finger swipe screenshot. You can also invoke Navigation Dock which is a virtual touch button to control your screen gestures. Air gestures like air scroll is available. To initiate one-hand mode by shrinking the screen to a smaller size, just swipe along the bottom navigation button bar. Screen video recording is also available on the HONOR 200 Pro without having to get third party apps.
I also like the ability to run apps as floating window. It is easy to initiate that by swap inward from the side of the screen and hold until the side bar slides out, then choose the app from the favourite list that you can customise. The floating window can be resized, and you can also minimise to the sidelines. To float other apps not in the favourite list, just tap the background app icon and tap the top right icon on the app you want to float. Not all apps are supported though.
The Magic Portal is another new feature just introduced recently. You can select text or images, drag to the side, and then a list of apps will appear for you to copy the content to the app. This saves you the hassle of copy and paste. The Magic Portal does not work for many scenarios because of the inherent Android behaviour that prevents the press-hold command from being recognised by Magic Portal. In most cases, press-hold will trigger native app options.
I’ve also shared the Magic Capsule during the HONOR Magic6 Pro review. It is the area surrounding the front camera module and when there are media running, like music player, it will display an icon for you to tap and access the media controls. Again, very useful.
Another underrated feature is the infrared blaster. Why isn’t it in all the smartphones as a standard, just like NFC? Almost all TVs, AV systems, and aircons operate with IR remote controls. If there is one deal-breaking feature, it might well be the IR blaster. This alone sets HONOR apart from the rest of the smartphone brands.
HONOR 200 Pro Camera System
The HONOR 200 Pro features a triple 50MP portrait camera config – 50MP 1/1.3-inch main camera, 50MP telephoto camera, 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 50MP front camera. The camera system is capable of shooting from 2.5cm macro to 50X digital zoom.
What HONOR is throwing into the ring with the HONOR 200 Pro is the collaboration with Studio Harcourt to offer a differentiated camera system with special portrait imagery. According to Wikipedia, it costs 1900 Euros to have a photo taken at Harcourt. Well, with the HONOR 200 Pro, you can claim to have taken a Harcourt photo for a fraction, and the evidence is in putting a “Harcourt” watermark that is exclusive only for images taking in Portrait mode.
The shot above was actually a cropped image of the original shot. Even so, there is an analogue feel to the image. You can see the details of the hair strand and the blouse embroidery. The background blur is rather convincing too. Clearly the large 50MP image sensor helps tremendously in capturing the details.
Compared to the HONOR Magic6 Pro, the HONOR 200 Pro’s images are warmer, tuned to appear more vivid. From the camera app, there are also more finetune settings to adjust the Beauty parameters.
After taking the shot, you can also adjust the focus area and the depth of field which affects how much background blur. Look for the “f” icon at the top right when viewing images with the Gallery app.
Two things I prefer the camera of the HONOR Magic6 Pro. First is that it is wider angle than the HONOR 200 Pro. Notice also that there is more luminance in the green tone on the Magic6 Pro.
The second thing I favour the Magic6 Pro is its 100X zoom reach, while the 200 Pro can only hit 50X. Even though both are digital zoom, the Magic6 Pro is clearer even at 50X, thanks to its 180MP telephoto lens.
Here’s another comparison with the 2 HONOR models plus Pixel 7 Pro, the latter clearly being the most neutral-looking. Apart from the colour saturation, all three smartphones successfully capture the scenes in detail and well-exposed.
The HONOR 200 Pro seems to handle low light shots well, capable of determining the hot LED areas and toning them down in HDR fashion.
Once you have amassed hundreds of photos, HONOR 200 Pro’s Gallery app is able to generate videos easily and automatically through its AI detection of scenes, locations, people. Once you select your images, it will generate the video highlights. You can also manually edit the transition, length, music. There is also a “Story” mode with preset templates, where you just pick the video clips and it will piece together a short IG-like clip. I can also create collage photo of up to 9 photos! No need to download third party apps!
Verdict
The HONOR 200 Pro is quite a capable midrange smartphone that has some of the processing power of a premium flagship. While it is still not as fast as the true Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, it is definitely more powerful than Snapdragon 7 series. When I move from HONOR Magic6 Pro to the HONOR 200 Pro, I missed the slightly more responsive UI, wider angle camera, higher zoom factor, slightly faster biometrics, fuller-sounding stereo speaker, longer battery life. But the HONOR 200 Pro beats in terms of weight, price point, and a better-tweaked portrait camera. If I have a budget limit, I am actually quite happy to use HONOR 200 Pro as my daily phone, the overall phone smoothness is to me, “Goldilocks” level.
For the uninitiated, the above review describing the HONOR MagicOS UI and app features are largely available on most HONOR models. The camera features will be specific to the HONOR 200 Pro. You might want to check out other HONOR smartphones, like the affordable HONOR 200 (Snapdragon 7 Gen 3) starting at $599 albeit with performance compromise. For those who need a little more power but not paying too much, the HONOR 200 Pro 5G (512GB) is the choice. Retailing in Singapore at S$799, visit the official page for more product details and links to the online retails like Eplanet World (by Telechoice), Shopee, Lazada, Courts, Challenger, Harvey Norman, Gain City, Best Denki.
