The Honor Magic 6 RSR is one of the few phones to justify its high price tag

Honor’s flagship Magic 6 Professional has obtained the Porsche Design therapy and is reborn because the Magic 6 RSR. Fortunately, not like the Magic V2 RSR, we weren’t ready an age for a European launch, so this mannequin is as present as its flashy appears counsel.

The Magic 6 RSR’s Porsche-inspired appears are the obvious change from the usual mannequin, it stands out with a singular hexagonal digital camera housing, and the signature Porsche flyline operating down the centre. This telephone provides greater than first meets the attention, although.

This mannequin maxes out the specs, providing you with double the RAM and storage of the usual Magic 6 Professional. It’s additionally the primary telephone I do know of to characteristic a dual-layer tandem OLED show, identical to Apple’s 2024 iPads. If that wasn’t sufficient, a brand new autofocus system and prolonged dynamic vary take the cameras up a notch, too.

Luxurious comes at a value, although. With an MSRP of £1599/€1899, can this dear handset probably be definitely worth the outlay? I spent a few weeks utilizing it as my main smartphone to seek out out.

Design & Construct

• NanoCrystal Protect Glass entrance and rear
• 162.5 x 75.8 x 8.9 mm, 237g
• IP68 rated

The Honor Magic 6 RSR is available in two colourways, each of that are impressed by Porsche paint jobs.

I’ve the Frozen Berry choice in for testing, which is a super-glossy mild pink quantity. Personally, I a lot desire the matte-finish Agate Gray choice, however my associate thinks the Frozen Berry color appears pretty. Both approach, it’s good to have such distinct choices.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Simply as we noticed with the Magic V2 RSR, this telephone has an aerodynamic flyline operating down its backbone and curved glass protecting the digital camera module with a elaborate titanium bezel. The hexagonal digital camera encompass makes it stand out in a market crammed with sq. and round cameras. It received’t be to everybody’s tastes, however I believe the Magic 6 RSR appears nice.

Once more mirroring the foldable Porsche Design collaboration, the Magic 6 RSR comes with an ultra-premium case within the field. This case has a vegan leather-based backing and comes colour-matched to the telephone. Raised stitching traces the flyline and provides the case the feel and appear of a steering wheel. It’s a stunning case, the type you’d anticipate to pay first rate cash for, somewhat than discover included within the field.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

The Magic 6 Professional is already a giant and heavy telephone, and with the Porsche Design bling added, it will get even heavier, now tipping the scales at 237g. Regardless of that, the graceful curves on all sides make it sit properly within the hand. It’s not too top-heavy, and the hexagonal digital camera bump gives a pleasant little shelf on your forefinger to take a seat in.

The entrance and rear are lined with NanoCrystal Protect glass, which Honor says is 10 occasions extra drop and scratch-resistant than common glass. It even demonstrated this by hitting it with a hammer on the MWC commerce present, however all I do know for sure is that after a number of weeks of utilizing it with out a display protector, it nonetheless appears spotless. It’s additionally IP68 licensed, so it’s unphased by a fast dunk in some water or publicity to mud.

The haptic motors are lots highly effective and exact sufficient to offer some good suggestions when typing. I’d say they’re not fairly as spectacular as Samsung’s Galaxy S24 collection, however they’re not far off.

Display screen & Audio system

• 120Hz 6.8-inch OLED show
• 5000 nits, 1280 x 2800 decision
• Stereo audio system

One of many largest upgrades that comes with the Magic 6 RSR is the brand new tandem OLED show. This tech is designed to make your show final for much longer, whereas nonetheless outputting extraordinarily excessive brightness ranges. Honor says it ought to final 600 occasions longer than a standard OLED show, and can lose lower than 1% of brightness output after three years of standard use.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

All of us love vibrant shows – they make your telephone look approach higher if you’re out within the vibrant daylight – however the increased the brightness output, the larger the prospect of failure.

A tandem OLED panel will get round this subject by stacking two OLED panels on high of one another. Every show solely must run at half brightness for a similar complete output, which equates to much less stress on every panel.

The quoted peak brightness is identical because the Magic 6 Professional, however that’s already one of many brightest panels in the marketplace, boasting an astonishing 5000 nits. The one sensible distinction is that it ought to keep wanting its greatest for much longer.

Clearly, I can’t actually speak concerning the longevity, as I’ve solely used the telephone for a few weeks, however it’s a pleasant little bit of reassurance when you plan on conserving the telephone for a very long time.

In any other case, the show is similar to the Magic 6 Professional. You get the identical 120Hz adaptive refresh price, the identical 1280 x 2800 pixel decision, and it has the identical curved-edge design. Once we reviewed the Magic 6 Professional, we stated it had probably the greatest shows round, and that’s simply as true with the RSR.

The display appears completely beautiful, particularly when enjoying again HDR content material. The larger-than-usual pill-shaped digital camera cut-out is bound to harass some customers, although.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

I usually desire flat shows, however I believe the curvature of the Magic 6 RSR works to its benefit. It is a massive telephone, and the curved edges make it a lot simpler to grip. It’s a pointy sufficient angle that you just received’t expertise many phantom touches and a easy radius on all sides makes gesture controls really feel very pure.

The telephone has stereo audio system positioned on the highest and backside sides, and fortunately, they’re positioned as such that they hardly ever get muffled by your palms in panorama mode.

They’ll get fairly loud, however they’re removed from the loudest I’ve come throughout. Extra importantly, although, they don’t distort – even at max quantity. There’s an excellent quantity of low-end response too, it’s fairly spectacular.

Specs & Efficiency

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
• 24GB RAM
• 1TB storage

The Magic 6 RSR is powered by the identical Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip because the Magic 6 Professional, solely this time, the RAM and storage capacities are doubled. 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage sound extra like laptop computer specs than one thing you’d discover stuffed in a telephone.

No quantity of multitasking is prone to gradual this beast down, and you may retailer a wild quantity of media. In apply, it implies that the telephone feels lightning-quick, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing on it, and it’s glorious for gaming, too. 

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

I booted up my standard efficiency touchstone, Genshin Influence, and it ran at most graphical settings in 60fps with out breaking a sweat. Even after half-hour of continuous motion, the telephone barely acquired heat – it’s spectacular stuff.

Most customers are unlikely to note a lot of a distinction with the additional RAM, however having a lot space for storing is simply luxurious. You’ll doubtless by no means want to fret about deleting giant video information, or cleansing up seldom-used apps, there’s a lot house right here that you would be able to simply hold all the pieces helpful.

Honor Magic 6 RSR benchmarks

Cameras

• 50Mp fundamental sensor with LiDAR AF
• 50Mp ultrawide
• 180Mp telephoto
• 50Mp selfie digital camera

For probably the most half, the digital camera specs are similar to the Magic 6 Professional, however there are two important adjustments with this mannequin.

The primary is that the principle sensor makes use of LiDAR autofocus, somewhat than the laser-based autofocus of the Magic 6 Professional. The second is that the principle sensor now captures as much as 15 stops of dynamic vary, up from 13.5 stops.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

I didn’t have the Magic 6 Professional readily available to check the 2 cameras aspect by aspect, however the autofocus does appear barely quicker, and it’s higher at sticking to topics and monitoring them all through the body, too. It’s precisely what you need from a digital camera that’s so good at capturing fast-moving topics.

As for the dynamic vary, I didn’t discover a large distinction. The Magic 6 Professional already did properly in that regard, and I think scenes that reap the benefits of the additional stop-and-a-half are few and much between.

In any other case, the expertise is sort of similar to the Magic 6 Professional, and that’s an excellent factor. This telephone can take glorious pictures in all lighting situations, delivering vibrant and sharp pictures that basically pop. The pictures may be a bit of over-saturated for images purists, however the colors are correct they appear thrilling with none edits, making them nice for social media.

Portrait mode works brilliantly on this telephone, with glorious edge detection and loads of management over the blur results. Night time images is spectacular, too, with the comparatively giant fundamental and telephoto sensors and vast apertures permitting for fast publicity occasions and natural-looking lighting.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

One space the place this telephone begins to wrestle, although, is with longer telephoto zoom ranges. The periscope telephoto digital camera solely has a 2.5x lens, however it makes an attempt to compensate for this with a large 180Mp decision.

It really works to an extent, 5x pictures look very good, and 10x pictures are first rate, too. Nonetheless, when you enterprise past that, the Magic 6 RSR falls properly in need of the competitors. The digital camera provides a most zoom of 100x, however something above 20x is bound to result in disappointment.

That stated, the alternative is true at 2.5x zoom. Most different telephones will likely be digitally cropping from the principle sensor at this focal size, so the Magic 6 RSR is sort of assured to look higher. So, when you’re pondering of choosing this one up, positively think about which focal lengths you want to make use of probably the most.

I’m a giant fan of the ultrawide as a result of it’s wider than a lot of the competitors. You may squeeze a lot into the body, to the purpose the place I usually unintentionally acquired my hand within the pictures. It does wrestle in low-light situations, although, so it’s greatest to stay to the principle and telephoto when it will get darker.

The Magic 6 RSR can shoot video at as much as 4K60 on all of the cameras and the footage is kind of spectacular. Stabilisation is excellent within the daylight, however you may anticipate a number of jitters in low-light situations. There’s an enormous quantity {of professional} choices within the default digital camera app, too, together with a LOG profile, handbook controls and even the flexibility to use LUTs.

Battery Life & Charging

• 5600 mAh battery
• 80W wired charging
• 66W wi-fi charging

Whether or not you go for the flowery Porsche Design mannequin or the usual Magic 6 Professional, you may anticipate among the greatest battery efficiency of any trendy flagship. Each fashions use silicon-carbon battery tech to squeeze a large 5600mAh battery into a comparatively slim chassis, and the outcomes are superb.

A mean day’s use often noticed me going to mattress with 40% or extra remaining, when you use your telephone considerably sparingly, you might simply obtain two days on a single cost. Contemplating that is operating Qualcomm’s strongest chip, and it has one of many brightest OLED panels in the marketplace, that’s actually saying one thing.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Not like most of Honor’s units, the Porsche Design collaborations have a tendency to return with a charger within the field, too. On this case, my unit shipped with each a UK and a European 100W wall charger included – very helpful for frequent travellers.

These chargers are quick sufficient to get you from flat to round 80% charged in simply half-hour. A full cost takes just below 45 minutes, by my depend.

In case you desire to cost wirelessly, you are able to do that astonishingly fast, too. You’ll want Honor’s Wi-fi SuperCharger to reap the benefits of the total pace, however with a whopping 66W cost price, it’d simply be value investing in.

Software program & Apps

• MagicOS 8.0
• Primarily based on Android 14
• Some bloatware

The Magic 6 RSR runs MagicOS 8.0, which relies on Android 14, however it’s so closely modified that it begins to really feel like a special OS totally. It’s positive to be a turn-off for some, however personally, I’ve grown fairly fond if it.

Honor clearly takes some inspiration from Apple: the notifications and fast settings shade are separated, whereas there’s a big pill-shaped digital camera cut-out on the high of the show. It even acts like Apple’s Dynamic Island, with animations coming out to disclose media controls and extra.

This pill-shaped selfie array permits for facial recognition that’s so correct you may log into your banking apps with it. It’s actually handy, and after getting used to it, it made me want that it was extra widespread on Android units.

This OS is clearly very properly optimised- it by no means stuttered throughout my use and all the pieces feels extraordinarily fast.

A few of the AI-powered options are actually helpful, too. My favorite is a characteristic known as Magic Portal, which lets you drag parts from one app to a different. Essentially the most helpful, for me, is the flexibility to long-press an handle and drag it into Google Maps for speedy instructions. It additionally works properly as a Circle to Search with Google various if you drag a picture into Google search.

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Luke Baker

Sadly, not all the pieces about MagicOS 8.0 is kind of so nice. There’s some bloatware put in on the primary boot, which is particularly irritating with a premium-priced system like this. It’s nothing too egregious, however if you’re spending this a lot, you shouldn’t actually see any.

It may also be fairly complicated if you’re coming from a special Android telephone. Issues aren’t all the time the place you anticipate them to be, and with so many apps and options out there as normal, the OS can get a bit maze-like.

Worth & Availability

The Porsche Design Honor Magic 6 RSR is on the market to buy globally, and that rollout consists of the UK, however as standard, excludes the US.

In Britain, you should purchase it instantly from Honor’s web site, however I haven’t seen any contract particulars and it’s not carried by many third-party retailers both. In case you determine to select one up, you should definitely try our information to the very best SIM-only offers or see our high picks beneath:

It retails for £1599 within the UK, and €1899.90 in Europe. This may sound like a daft sum, however when you think about that it has 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage on board, it stays pretty aggressive.

For instance, the 1TB model of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely goes for £1549 within the UK, with solely 12GB of RAM and no charger or case within the field. The Magic 6 RSR, by comparability, comes with two 100W chargers and an especially premium case. It’s not a steal, however I don’t assume it’s too overpriced, both.

In any case, this pricing places the telephone firmly in ultra-premium smartphone territory alongside units just like the iPhone 15 Professional Max and foldables just like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and OnePlus Open. If you wish to see the way it compares to the competitors try our rating of the very best smartphones round.

Must you purchase the Honor Magic 6 RSR?

In all honesty, most individuals contemplating the Magic 6 RSR ought to most likely go for the Magic 6 Professional as an alternative. It provides a really comparable expertise at a considerably lower cost.

The digital camera enhancements are good to have, however solely make a marginal distinction, and most of the people aren’t going to note the additional RAM, so that they shouldn’t issue too closely into your shopping for choice. Nonetheless, when you want a large quantity of storage, otherwise you’ve simply fallen in love with the attractive design, then the Porsche Design mannequin is a superb choice.

In case you do determine to splash out, you received’t be disenchanted. From the packaging to the construct high quality and equipment, all the pieces feels luxurious and premium. It’s an absolute delight to make use of.

Alongside to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely, I believe this is without doubt one of the most well-rounded Android flagships out there immediately. The cameras are good, the efficiency is blazing quick, the show is without doubt one of the greatest round and the battery life is staggering.

In case you’re pleased with some barely unorthodox software program, and the value doesn’t scare you off, then it’s very simple to advocate.

Specs

• MagicOS 8.0, based mostly on Android 14
• 6.8-inch, 2800×1280, tandem OLED, 120Hz
• In-display fingerprint sensor
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3
• 24GB RAM
• 1TB storage
• Cameras:
• 50Mp fundamental digital camera
• 50Mp ultrawide
• 180Mp 1.5x periscope telephoto
• 50Mp selfie digital camera
• As much as 4K @ 60fps rear video
• Stereo audio system
• Twin-SIM + eSIM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be
• Bluetooth 5.3
• 5600mAh silicon-carbon battery
• 80W charging
• 66W wi-fi charging
• 162.5 x 75.8 x 8.9 mm
• IP68 licensed
• 229g
• Colors: Agate Gray, Frozen Berry