Honor has planted their flag firmly into flagship territory with this. The Honor Magic 5 Pro retails for £950 here in the UK. And it is available in black and meadow green. But what has Honor done to tempt customers from other well-known brands such as Samsung, Apple and Google? Well, I'm going to show you.

Because here in the box the first area where Honor one ups their adversaries. It's in regards to power & speed of power delivery.

Power Delivery

The inclusion of the power brick is the first win. It is included and capable of faster power delivery than all the phones mentioned in the intro. At 66 watts…it charges faster wirelessly, too, at 50 watts which is crazy… The icing on the power delivery cake is that the battery size is 5100mAh making it bigger than almost all the popular flagships.

Speed & Performance

Well, you know. Speed and power make the world go round, and there is no point in having all that power…if the vehicle isn't equipped to use it…but the Honor Magic 5 Pro is.

It does have this year's Qualcomm Snapdragon flagship chip at its core. The 8 Gen 2. It doesn't get much faster than that at the time of this video. But what makes this phone even faster is the type of memory Honor has used.

The storage is the latest UFS 4, and the Ram is LPDDR5X, the latest, greatest, and fastest available. So the Honor Magic 5 Pro has got the firepower, and it's also got a GPU turbo booster feature and Ram expansion if you're willing to sacrifice some memory to be used as virtual RAM.

And this may not be relevant to you right now, but it will be soon. The Honor Magic 5 Pros antenna array and Snapdragon X70 modem have been optimised to receive WiFi 7.

Display

So now, let's look at the bigger picture. The Honor Magic 5 pro display is fantastic and has a world's first feature, but, It's not in the way you might think. We'll come back to that.

First, when it comes to display, it's worth noting that DXOMark has given this as their number one smartphone display spot in their current rankings.

If you're unfamiliar with DXO Mark, all you need to know is that they specialise in doing their own third-party scientific benchmarks… on things like cameras and displays. And they are pretty well respected.

The screen is slightly wider than other 6.81-inch smartphone displays. Its resolution is an interesting 2848x1312. Making it slightly slimmer than the iPhone Pro Max and S23 Ultra. This makes it a little easier to wield with one hand & I am a big fan of the rounded edges on all sides of this display…particularly the bottom edge, as it makes gesture navigation smoother.

But here's the world's first feature. It's called Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) Dimming. PWM it's an intelligent way of reducing flickering that can cause eye strain.

It is an LTPO display and can automatically adjust the refresh rate between 120 to 1 hertz, so it is fantastically efficient. You can also set the max refresh rate to 90Hz to save power.

Now, if you feel you can't trust DXOMark rankings, these certifications may sway you…This display has been IMAX enhanced and HDR10+ certified, TuV Rheinland blue light certification… So it shouldn't burn your retinas…despite its 1800nitts peak brightness which is on par with the Galaxy S23 ultra.

And I do appreciate the circadian mode. Which is a feature that reduces blue light at night. So you can get better sleep.

And just out of interest. Let me know if you trust DXOMark's rankings?

And before we move on from the display. There's just one more thing. Something that some brands neglect is good audio…

And the Honor Magic 5 Pro is better than just good because instead of just using the phone's earpiece speaker as one of the drivers. Like most phones do. It has a dedicated speaker and speaker grill on the top edge. It's one thing to discuss, but here's how it sounds. Watch this video to see how it compares the iPhone and the Samsung and the Pixel at the max volume.

Camera

So now let's talk about the shooters. There are a few things that I immediately appreciate here in the camera department. I don't mind the pill cutout in the display for the 12mp selfie camera because the sacrifice of screen real estate is worth the trade-off for a properly secure 3D face unlock.

The same tech works well on the iPhone and is far more secure than 2D face unlock. And it also works perfectly here on the Honor Magic 5 pro…and I do believe it's one of the only new Androids using this advanced tech today. Let me know if you know any others.

Also, the same 3D scanning tech can be utilised for better portrait selfies because of its ability to better understand the depth. And it also opens up the door to air gestures. That could be handy when cooking or if your hands are wet. And the rear camera module on the back is pretty sweet. It actually acts as a nice finger rest when holding the phone. That's something I know MKBHD appreciates.

And I don't know why I can't stop running my finger around it like a kind of old-school volume dial…it's just got a really nice groove to it…which was apparently inspired by the psychedelic-inspired Gaudi…and the black hole at the centre of the milky way.

We have a 50, 50, and 50 MP camera setup here. They call this arrangement the star wheel triple camera design. Also referred to as 'the eye of muse' camera design. I won't go in-depth with the cameras as I'll likely be making a WhatGear-style camera comparison for you guys…so let me know what you'd like to see it compared to in the comments. Here are some samples for you

The primary is 23mm equivalent and uses a huge one-over-one point two-inch sensor. So you get an excellent natural shallow depth of field in regular photo mode…of course, that blurry background is improved even more using the portrait mode.

Some of the great features of this camera are the fast focus speed & focus tracking & impressive shutter speeds. This makes the 5 Pro great at capturing fast-moving subjects, for example, pets. Honor calls it, Millisecond Falcon capture.

honor magic 5 pro camera sample luts.jpg

honor magic 5 pro camera sample 100x zoom.jpg

And there's a mode specifically for capturing photos of people in mid-air. That would have been funny if someone had this phone that time I got thrown out of that one place in Soho.

It's also capable of 10-bit 4K 60 fps Log recording, and there's a bunch of movie luts available that mimic the colours of pro-grade cameras. This is that Honor the Movie Master mode with iMax enhanced. And let's remember the 50MP ultra-wide. Which doubles up as the macro lens. It's impressed me so far. The details are some of the best I've seen in macro mode and ultra-wide.

And then there is the periscope zoom. It is the first phone to use Sony's IMX858 50 MP sensor. This shooter can zoom optically from 3.5 to 10x and all the way up…digitally to 100x. So might be able to see Fat Joe's mansion in the hills. And It's got some good stabilisation at that maximum range. Which is likely down to the hybrid Eis and Ois stabilisation features.

But in reality, you're not going to capture an Instagram-worthy picture at 100X…from my tests so far, pictures seem pretty good all the way up to about 20X. After that, it gets a bit hazy. But I'm sure you can find some uses for it.

And it got me thinking about tech visionaries who create this stuff. Right now, we have 100X zooms in our pockets. They are telescopic cameras out there that can take photos of the centre of our galaxy.

Technology is so good right now. How much better, how much further will we be able to see 10 years from now. One day, we may be able to zoom into the three dots in the black hole and see what they are.

But returning to the Honor Magic 5 Pro & life here on earth, This phone isn't pretending to be an Apple, a Galaxy, or a Pixel...It is pretty distinct...

And let's end this with a quote from Socrates.

" The greatest way to live with honor is to be who we pretend to be. "

Honor Magic 5 Pro - Official site

And on that note. If you want to see what the oldest pub in England looks like, there's a thumbnail on the screen…can't tell you the name though it's too explicit.

Want to see the oldest Pub in Britain & Royal Air force aircraft?

Here is my Honor Magic VS unboxing!