Honor Magic 5 Lite review

By no means let or not it’s stated that former Huawei sub-brand Honor doesn’t be taught its classes. Final 12 months’s Honor Magic 4 Lite supplied a reliable if deeply unremarkable mid-range smartphone package deal with excellent battery life, but it surely was considerably unwieldy, its show lacked pop, and its cameras weren’t a lot cop.

The Honor Magic 5 Lite returns with a thoughtfully refined providing much more spectacular stamina in a smaller type issue, and with the advantages of an AMOLED show. Its digital camera syste,, too, has acquired a delicate overhaul.

Not every part speaks to progress, nonetheless, with an similar Snapdragon 695 chip to its predecessor making certain comparable efficiency to the Magic 4 Lite. The dearth of a bundled-in charger and help for a slower charging normal is one other notable backwards step. 

In the meantime, Honor has been unable to flee the price of dwelling squeeze, with a £30 bump to the Magic 5 Lite’s asking worth within the UK. The query is, does the Honor Magic 5 Lite really feel like good worth in a market filled with mid-range marvels?

Design & construct

• Seems and feels much more costly than it’s
• Twin-curved show and glass again
• No IP certification

Whereas it may need branched out into extra premium telephones of late, Honor constructed its model on cheaper telephones that punched above their weight. That experience is on show right here, as you wouldn’t know the Magic 5 Lite was a sub-£350 cellphone just by dealing with it.

The cellphone appears to be like decidedly premium, with a slim 7.9mm physique, a dual-curved show, and a sensible glass rear. My mannequin comes with a frosted, rainbow-shimmering white again, often called Titanium Silver, however you can even get the cellphone within the much less glitzy Emerald Inexperienced or Midnight Black.

It is a smaller cellphone than the surfboard-proportioned Magic 4 Lite, due to a lowered 6.67-inch show. It’s additionally considerably lighter at 175g, regardless of packing in a bigger battery.

The rear of the cellphone sees the return of the Magic 4 Lite’s ring-shaped digital camera motif. Certainly, Honor has actually leaned into this so-called ‘Matrix Star Ring’ design right here, producing an much more pronounced photographic donut with a bigger ‘gap’ that now matches the color – if not the premium materials – of the remainder of the rear panel.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Whereas the facet body is as skinny as you want, with skinny and clicky quantity and energy keys on the suitable edge, Honor has flattened out the highest and backside edges. 

One other signal that that is certainly a less expensive cellphone comes from the entire lack of IP certification. Greatest maintain this one away from our bodies of water.

Display screen & audio system

• 6.67in OLED
• Full HD+
• 120Hz refresh fee
• Mono speaker

One of many greatest drags with the Magic 4 Lite was its use of an LCD reasonably than an OLED show. Honor hasn’t made the identical mistake with the Magic 5 Lite, supplying a 6.67in FHD+ (2,400 x 1,080) OLED with a 120Hz refresh fee. It’s smaller than its predecessor, however that simply makes it simpler to wield.

Apart from, the advantages are value it. Colors pop, blacks are really black, and all is true with the world – particularly with regards to color accuracy. I recorded a gamut protection of 96.5% sRGB and a gamut quantity of 98.3% sRGB within the better-balanced Regular color profile, and a median Delta E of 0.93. These are wonderful outcomes.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

In relation to brightness, the Magic 5 Lite will get to a respectably shiny 510 nits with auto-brightness turned off within the aforementioned Regular show mode. You’ll get barely brighter with the default Vivid mode, however the colors can be extra garish.

Audio output is much less spectacular. The underside fringe of the cellphone homes its sole speaker, and the shortage of true stereo sound is a little bit of a disgrace. As it’s, this solo speaker yields a transparent if inherently restricted sound profile.

Specs & efficiency

• Ageing Snapdragon 695 5G chip
• 6GB RAM
• 128GB storage

Honor has geared up the Magic 5 Lite with the very same Snapdragon 695 5G chip because the Magic 4 Lite, which is a little bit of a disappointment. True, we stated that final 12 months’s mannequin “punches above its weight” in efficiency phrases, however a 12 months is a very long time in smartphones. 

We just lately noticed the equally priced Poco X5 Professional change as much as the Snapdragon 778G, leading to a major bump in efficiency from the Poco X4 Professional and its Snapdragon 695. It’s a disgrace Honor didn’t comply with swimsuit.

Certain sufficient, our common suite of benchmark exams reveals that the Magic 5 Lite performs very equally to its predecessor in CPU and GPU phrases, and a good bit worse than some equally priced rivals.

Away from such synthetic exams the Honor Magic 5 Lite performs fairly nicely normally, although the cellphone’s premium construct performs a humorous trick together with your expectations. It’s like your mind expects flagship-level efficiency to go along with that elegant design and slick show, which makes each time an app takes an additional beat to load up or a scrolling animation hitches barely stick out like a sore thumb.

It’s not that the Magic 5 Lite’s efficiency is dangerous, although, and it’s definitely aggressive with different equally priced rivals just like the Moto Edge 30 Neo, which options the very same chipset.

Elsewhere you get a fairly 6GB of RAM and 128GB of inside storage. We’ve seen cheaper telephones doubling that storage allowance, so it’s not fairly as beneficiant as it would as soon as have appeared.

Digital camera

• 64Mp predominant sensor
• 5Mp ultrawide
• 2Mp macro
• 16Mp selfie digital camera

Honor has gone with a extra pixel-packed 64Mp predominant digital camera sensor for the Magic 5 Lite, and it’s additionally added a 5Mp ultrawide this time round. There’s nonetheless a pointless 2Mp macro sensor, although.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

See also  WundaSmart review: zone your home with this smart heating system

That predominant sensor produces respectable, sharp, fairly well-exposed pictures in good lighting. I significantly appreciated how pure colors look right here, with little of the oversaturation that many low cost telephones fall again on. It does fairly nicely in HDR situations too, balancing out gentle and shade properly.

The 5Mp ultrawide isn’t anyplace close to as achieved as that predominant sensor, producing an enormous drop off intimately and a way more muted palette. You count on that form of factor in a less expensive cellphone, although.

So-called Tremendous Macro pictures utilizing the 2Mp macro digital camera are just about a waste of time. It’s very arduous to get a correctly targeted shot, and even while you do the pictures are usually extraordinarily fuzzy and washed out. I received a lot better outcomes capturing close-up pictures utilizing the primary digital camera.

Taking pictures in low gentle utilizing that predominant sensor is a considerably hit or miss affair. Hit the Evening mode button and take the time to line up your shot, preserving a gradual hand, and you’ll seize some spectacular crisp pictures. Nonetheless, it’s simple to lose definition when you don’t body correctly. The dearth of OIS may need one thing to do with that.

The 16Mp entrance digital camera is able to taking respectable selfies, although the selfie portrait mode smudges edges and pores and skin tones alike.

Battery life & charging

• 5100mAh battery
• 40W charging help
• No adapter included

The standout spec with the Honor Magic 5 Lite is its 5100mAh battery. That represents a uncommon bump over the typical, and a good enhance over the Magic 4 Lite’s 4800mAh cell.

In sensible phrases, I discovered that this resulted in real two-day battery life for the Magic 5 Lite. You possibly can count on to get by way of a full day of moderate-to-intensive utilization, with round 4 hours of screen-on time, and nonetheless have greater than half a tank left.

It’s not all excellent news, nonetheless. Curiously, the Honor Magic 5 Lite scored worse than the Magic 4 Lite in our PCMark Battery Work 3.0 check, which fashions fixed on a regular basis utilization. At 12 hours and 58 minutes, it fell a very good two hours quick.

That is regardless of operating on the very same chip and having a bigger battery. I can solely assume that the Magic 5 Lite’s superior OLED show is behind this drop in stamina. 

Jon Mundy / Foundry

One other adverse is the charging provision, and it’s a little bit of a double whammy. Not solely does the Magic 5 Lite solely help 40W charging (down from the Magic 4 Lite’s 66W), but it surely doesn’t embrace a charger within the field both.

Of all of the chargers I’ve in my possession (and that’s quite a bit), I didn’t have a 40W unit handy. Utilizing each a 60W and a 67W charger, nonetheless, the cellphone constantly hit round 13% in quarter-hour from empty, and 25% after half-hour. That’s not too speedy.

Software program

As with final 12 months’s mannequin, the Honor Magic 5 Lite runs on a technically outdated model of Android. On this case it’s Android 12, whereas a whole lot of respectable telephones have upgraded to Android 13.

That’s not all that consequential, nonetheless, as a result of your predominant level of interplay comes by way of the customized Magic UI, which is on model 6.1 right here. It’s one other strong, if considerably busy interface.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

As soon as once more, there are a couple of too many customized apps clogging up the house display screen, together with Honor’s personal app retailer, App Market, its personal Themes retailer, and the My Honor system manager-meets-user guide app. In the event you’re something like me, your first intuition is to clear all such apps right into a folder, and there’s quite a bit to clear away.

As well as, you’ll be given a bunch of third occasion pre-installations, together with Fb, Netflix, TikTok, and Reserving.com.

Worth & availability

UK pre-orders for the Honor Magic 5 Lite are dwell now over on the official Honor web site, earlier than it formally goes on sale on 28 February – by which era the remainder of the Magic 5 telephones could have been revealed. It’s priced at £329/€369 for the only mannequin, which supplies you 6GB of RAM and 128GB of inside storage.

This worth positions the Honor Magic 5 Lite up towards the Poco X5 Professional, which prices just a little extra at £369 and doesn’t look or really feel half nearly as good. Nonetheless, it does provide you with double the storage (256GB) and a superior processor.

The Motorola Edge 30 Neo, in the meantime, prices £350, which will get you an identical processor because the Magic 5 Lite and sooner charging.

Jon Mundy / Foundry

Try our full rating of the perfect mid-range telephones for different choices, or the perfect finances telephones for one thing just a little cheaper.

Verdict 

The Honor Magic 5 Lite is one other strong lower-mid-range providing from the model, supplying an uncommon stage of match and end for the cash. It’s an altogether extra aesthetically pleasing cellphone than the Magic 4 Lite, with a a lot better OLED show.

Simply as spectacular is the Magic 5 Lite’s bigger battery, which produces a stage of stamina that may simply stretch throughout two days of normal utilization. It’s only a disgrace that Honor has cheaped out with slower charging and no bundled brick.

It’s additionally a little bit of a disgrace that there’s been completely no advance on the efficiency of the Magic 5 Lite. It runs simply tremendous, however now you can get sooner for comparable cash.

Specs

• Android 12
• 6.67in, FHD+, OLED, 120Hz, curved show
• In-display fingerprint sensor
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 695
• 6GB RAM
• 128GB storage
• Digital camera:
  • 64Mp, f/1.8 predominant digital camera
  • 5Mp ultra-wide digital camera
  • 2Mp macro digital camera
  • As much as 1080p @ 30fps rear video
  • 16Mp front-facing digital camera
• Mono speaker
• Twin-SIM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
• Bluetooth 5.1
• 5100mAh battery
• 40W charging (no charger in field)
• 161.6 x 73.9 x 7.9 mm
• 175g 
• Launch colors: Midnight Black, Emerald Inexperienced, Titanium Silver