Honor continues to prove it is more than capable of keeping up with industry veterans when it comes to flagship smartphones. The Magic 7 Pro introduces hardware upgrades over its predecessor, namely the latest Snapdragon chipset, 200MP telephoto sensor, and slightly bigger battery (in SA). It joins the rest of them with integrated AI capabilities via its MagicOS software, but that still feels a little undercooked compared to some competitors.
-
Design
-
Display
-
Performance
-
Battery
-
Value
The Honor Magic 7 Pro is the brand’s latest smartphone to launch in South Africa, only a few months after it debuted in China. It succeeds the well-received Magic 6 Pro and ticks every box for a flagship device in 2025.
That includes Qualcomm’s current best chip, an imposing rear camera array, a larger battery and slightly faster charging, and now-obligatory AI features. But are these changes enough to warrant an upgrade?
Looks… like a smartphone
Like most of the industry, Honor opted for a boxier design with the Magic 7 Pro. It retains slight curves on all four edges of the screen and rear, tapering to flat side rails for a flatter overall impression. The textured rear of the Magic 6 Pro has been replaced with a slightly frosted glass back, and it’s slightly wider than last year’s device. Thankfully, these changes didn’t mess with its one-handed operation. The frosted back makes it grippier than the non-frosted competition, but we’d still recommend using the included protective case if you make a habit of dropping things.
Up front, the 6.8in display hasn’t changed much from the Magic 6 Pro. The LTPO OLED panel features a resolution of 1,280 x 2,800px and scales between 1Hz and 120Hz, depending on use case. It can also get crazy bright, even in direct sunlight, making use in any lighting conditions a non-issue. The resolution might not be as high as some competitors, but this premium display still looks sharp and produces fantastic visuals thanks to support for Dolby Vision and HDR10+ content.
Up there with the best
With the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset inside, we weren’t surprised by the Magic 7 Pro’s performance. This chipset introduces meaningful performance and efficiency improvements over last year’s flagship, and while the average smartphone user probably won’t notice, it makes the benchmark scores go up. That’s always satisfying for reviewers, but unless you’re a professional mobile gamer where every bit of performance increase counts, you’ll likely be fine sticking with last year’s chipset.
The Magic 7 Pro offers great performance across synthetic benchmarks and real-world use. If you’re looking for the numbers, our review unit scored an average of 2,604,996 in Antutu Benchmark 10 across five runs. Geekbench 6 score averages 9,061 for the multi-core test and 3,004 for the single-core test.
We noticed higher battery drain and increased heat output while running the tests and while gaming, but that is expected from any smartphone under a heavy load. And it’s not like it ever got hot enough to make us put it down.
If those figures don’t mean much to you, maybe our ‘trust me, bro, it has enough performance’ will. The only model in South Africa comes with 12GB of RAM and 512GB of non-expandable storage, which should be ample for most folks.
Battery performance is equally impressive. If you’ve seen overseas reviews of the Magic 7 Pro, you might have seen complaints about battery life and that the smaller battery feels like a step back from the Magic 6 Pro. Thankfully, that isn’t the case with the Magic 7 Pro in South Africa. We get the same device as China with a 3rd-gen 5,850mAh silicon carbon anode battery, instead of the 5,270mAh cell in European models.
On top of that, the 7 Pro charges quicker than the 6 Pro, supporting 100W wired charging (charger included in the box) and 80W wireless charging. Like the Magic 6 Pro, battery life isn’t an issue unless you’re a power user constantly switching between power-hungry tasks like gaming or shooting video. And even then, a 15-minute charge should be enough to get you through the rest of the day.
More reasons to say ‘cheese’
The camera array in the Magic 7 Pro is where most of Honor’s effort went – and it shows. The Magic 7 Pro features one of the most capable smartphone camera systems we’ve come across. That might not be saying much, considering every smartphone maker is kitting their devices out with increasingly larger sensors. But we don’t need to spell out how a 200MP sensor in a R10k phone isn’t the same as a 200MP sensor in a R30k phone.
You get a 50MP main camera with a dual-aperture lens (f/1.4-2.0), multi-directional auto focus, and optical image stabilisation (OIS). The 200MP periscope telephoto sensor features a 3x optical zoom lens (and 100x ‘AI Super Zoom’), multi-directional auto focus, and OIS. Finally, the 50MP ultra-wide sensor also receives the autofocus treatment but lacks proper stabilisation. For front-facing shots, a 50MP sensor lives inside a pill-shaped cutout at the top of the display, next to a 3D ToF (Time of Flight) sensor for secure biometric face unlock.
Hold still
The performance of all camera sensors is generally pretty good. The main camera produces well-detailed shots with vibrant colours, wide dynamic range, and good tonal development even in harsh lighting. If you’re shooting portrait shots of people, skin tones are handled well. There are a plethora of filters and shooting modes from Honor’s partnership with Harcourt that allow for plenty of expression, like our tastefully captured berries. When lighting works against you, you can still expect good exposure and dynamic range with natural-looking detail in most of your shots. Colour reproduction seems to be a strong suit here; even in low light, colours look vibrant.
The 3x telephoto camera – the one Honor upgraded from 180MP in the Magic 6 Pro, to 200MP here – can lack organic detail in some shots, and there seems to be some over-sharpening to compensate. In most images, however, you still get fantastic colour reproduction and a wide dynamic range. The same applies to photos shot in low light. They have great dynamic range and colour reproduction, but still suffer from a lack of detail definition.
Shots from the ultra-wide camera offer more of the same: great detail considering the wider field of view, good dynamic range, no immediately noticeable noise, and the same great colour reproduction. The story changes slightly when the lights go out. You still get good exposure and colours, but they are prioritised over detail, which makes darker areas look soft.
Selfie lovers will be happy with shots from the Honor Magic 7 Pro. They generally feature plenty of detail, organic colour reproduction, and great dynamic range. It also has great autofocusing, so you can get creative with your framing.
All of the Magic 7 Pro’s camera sensors support shooting video at up to 4K 60fps, even the selfie cam, and there’s a movie mode that offers a ‘cinematic’ 24fps shooting mode. Videos from all cameras generally have fantastic dynamic range and great colour reproduction, where both white balance and saturation are concerned. That’s true in most lighting conditions.
The two small downsides we observed are a lack of organic detail, as videos appear overly processed at times, and the image stabilisation of the ultra-wide cam. It doesn’t feature the same OIS system as the other two sensors, and it shows.
Going soft
The Magic 7 Pro ships with Honor’s MagicOS 9, which is based on Android 15. Announced at MWC this year during the unveiling of Honor’s ‘alpha plan’, its flagship ‘Magic’ smartphones, starting with the Magic 7 Pro, will now get seven years of Android OS and security updates.
As far as the user experience is concerned, if you’ve used an Android smartphone in recent years, you’ll know what to expect. Some iPhone users might even notice a few similarities, like the separated notification and system settings swipe-down menus, or the pill-shaped cutout on the display doubling as the Magic Capsule – it has a ‘dynamic island’ feeling about it.
Not that we’re complaining, it’s one of the MagicOS features we use most often. We can’t say the same about Magic Portal, which allows you to separate any text or image on the screen and send it to another app without switching between them manually. That’s probably down to preference. We’ve heard from other Honor flagship users that they enjoy Magic Portal and use it constantly.
Just make sure you’re not in a hurry if you’re setting the Magic 7 Pro up for the first time. You’ll need to set aside a good few minutes to declutter the home screen of preloaded and placeholder apps. This issue isn’t inherent to Honor, most smartphone makers are guilty to some extent.
Lastly, on the hardware front, we need to highlight the speakers. Honor has gone for a familiar hybrid stereo speaker setup. It’s one of the best speaker systems we’ve heard on a smartphone, which probably has something to do with Honor including a subwoofer inside and larger cavities for the speakers. We’ll stop short of saying it can replace your favourite portable Bluetooth speaker, but maybe you won’t need it as often.
The proper smarts are coming later
At MWC, Honor made a big deal about wanting to develop an ‘intelligent phone’ and how it is transitioning from a smartphone maker into an “AI device ecosystem company”. The Magic 7 Pro certainly isn’t what we’d call ‘intelligent’, but it includes a few of the now-customary AI features and is a notable standout.
Google’s Gemini, and by extension, Circle to Search, come pre-loaded on the Magic 7 Pro. Magic Portal can help with inter-app operability, and AI Translate does what you’d expect. As far as AI editing goes, you can remove objects from photos, generate fill to artificially expand your shots, and we can see the AI upscaler being a hit with old photo hoarders.
The deepfake detection system isn’t something you’ll find on any other smartphone (yet), but it isn’t the silver bullet to ending deepfake fraud Honor makes it out to be, unless you field important video calls on your smartphone exclusively.
And that’s about it. The telephoto camera has what Honor calls ‘AI Super Zoom’, but, like any 100x digital zoom, it doesn’t produce great results unless lighting conditions are on your side and great care is taken to stabilise the phone. And even then, they’re middling at best. It also requires an internet connection, but it’s there if you want it.
Honor Magic 7 Pro verdict
Wrapping everything up brings us back to the question we asked in the intro: Does the Magic 7 Pro warrant an upgrade?
If you haven’t experienced a flagship smartphone in the last couple of years, the Magic 7 Pro is a great place to start. With a recommended retail price of R30,000 (Vodacom even offers it for R3k less), it’s competitively priced considering the Samsung and Vivo equivalents are R4k and R10k more, respectively. Although, both edge out Honor’s effort when it comes to productivity and camera chops, respectively.
If you’re coming from any of last year’s flagships, you’ve got to really want faster charging and the new chipset to make the Magic 7 Pro worth it. And even then, the Magic 6 Pro still offers decent performance and great camera chops. If you can find one still floating around, it might provide better value.
