Honor 200 Pro test, close-up portraits

If there’s anything we can’t fault honour, it is its ability to try to differentiate itself from the competition. Once again, Honor arrives with a new smartphone that stands out with an original cover on the back and, above all, a photo unit with a very distinctive design. And since the heart of the market is more likely to be a mid-range or even high-end smartphone, honour took advantage of the arrival of summer to announce its new high-end smartphone: the Honor 200 Pro.

Even if George Zhao believes that the future of smartphones is necessarily a foldable smartphone, Honor has not forgotten that this is still the future and that today the classic smartphone remains a safe bet for the general public, especially in this market segment that is more affordable than premium smartphones. We just spent a few weeks with the new one Honor 200 Pro and it has everything. Judgment.

Honor 200 Pro features

As a reminder of the features, the new Honor 200 Pro offers you :

Honor 200 Pro
screen – AMOLED from 6.78 batteries
– Definition 1224×2700 (437ppi)
– Format 19.5:9
– Curved screen
– LPTO 1-120Hz
– PWM 3840Hz
– HDR10+
– 1600 nits brightness (4000 nits peak)
– Dolby Vision
– Hit
Design – Contour and aluminum
– Frosted glass back
– IP68
– Physical buttons
Colors – Black
– White moonlight
– Ocean Cyan
SoCs and GPUs – Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
– GPU Adreno 735
memory – 12GB RAM + 8GB RAM Turbo
– 512 GB of internal memory
Camera – Vision Falcon system
– Three cameras, main with 1/1.3″ Omnivision H9000 50-megapixel sensor, ultra-wide-angle with 12-megapixel sensor, telephoto with 50-megapixel Sony IMX856 sensor
– 27mm wide-angle lens with F/1.9 aperture
– 112° ultra wide-angle lens with F/2.2 aperture and macro function
– Telephoto lens with 2.5x optical zoom and F/2.4 aperture
– EIS+OIS stabilization of the main camera and the telephoto camera- Harcourt Portrait mode
– Honor AI Portrait Engine: AI Enhance Shadows and Light, AI Enhance Optical Effect, AI Enhance Artistic Style
– Honor AI Motion Sensing Capture
– Instant movie
– Memories

– Dual tone LED flash
– Scene recognition through artificial intelligence
– Super HDR
– Night mode
– AI Best moment
– Video recording up to 1080p/60 and 4K(2160p)/60
– 4K HDR 10+ up to 60fps

– 50 MP front sensor
– Wide-angle lens (90°) with f/2.0 aperture
– Autofocus
– Automatic HDR
– Front-facing video capture in UltraHD at 30fps

audio – Stereo speaker
– No 3.5mm jack
Battery – 5200 mAh silicon-carbon battery
– Recharging Honor SuperCharge 100W
– Recharging sans-fil 66W
– Reverse charging (wireless and wired)
Connectivity – Face recognition
– Fingerprint reader under the screen
– Bluetooth 5.3 LE
– Wi-Fi 6E
– USB-C USB 2.0
– 2x nano-SIM
– 5G
Software – Android 14
– Magic UI 8.0 with Magic Capsule and Magic Portal
Height and weight – 163.3 x 75.2 x 8.2 mm
– 199 gr
price €799.90
availability date – June 25, 2024

We saw it with the Honor Magic6 Pro, we find with Honor the path discovered by Apple, then by Samsung and other manufacturers. So, for the packaging itself, we find a small white box with a USB-C cable and instructions to get started. The charger is no longer mandatory, and in the same vein, there is no longer a transparent protective case.

For the price, it officially counts €799.90 for availability from June 12, 2024 for pre-order and arriving on June 25, 2024. For the pre-order period, Honor is offering a €100 coupon, an €80 trade-in for its old smartphone, Marshall Major IV headphones and an Honor GS3 connected watch.

Design, Ecran and Audio

The first thing you notice when you pick up the new Honor 200 Pro is its back. Indeed, we find a frosted glass back, except for the cyan model, which has a double coating for the most beautiful effect. This allows Honor to differentiate itself while allowing the smartphone to resist fingerprints. The second thing we note is this oval photo block, which once again allows Honor to offer a smartphone with a different design, but also allows us to highlight the new partnership with Studio Harcourt (later we will see the result of such a partnership).

On the screen side, we find a curved screen at the front with a large hole punch that is in the center of the screen. While the Magic6 Pro offers a true 3D facial recognition system, the Honor 200 Pro will settle for a dual front camera with a classic wide-angle and an ultra-wide-angle. Despite the diagonal of 6.78 inches and the very long format, the Honor 200 Pro offers a good grip.

The ending, by the way, is always excellent. More classically, the panel is of the OLED type with Full HD+ definition, and the panel itself remains very well balanced in terms of colorimetry, brightness and viewing angles. It’s one of the best screens we’ve ever seen. Contrasts are strong and blacks are deep, brightness is still impressive, even if it doesn’t reach the level of the Magic6 Pro. In short, everything is fine. We’ll just note that the bottom edge remains thick, while the other three edges?

When it comes to audio, the Honor 200 Pro offers two stereo speakers, and that’s at least what we’ve come to expect from a high-end smartphone. On the other hand, since it’s not a premium smartphone, we don’t find support for DTS:X Ultra or Dolby Atmos.

On a daily basis, we did not experience any particular discomfort, whatever the content. In social media content, the speakers offer a powerful and balanced sound with bass that we feel quite well. Obviously this won’t compete with a true external speaker, but we always applaud the effort, especially for the short content we’re all used to seeing now. In any case, if you have an external speaker or headphones, it will always be better.

Magic UI, performance and autonomy

Not surprisingly, we find Android 14 with the Magic UI overlay in version 8.0. Nothing really new per se, apart from the arrival of the AI ​​part with Magic Portal. That time is not yet and we still have the right to duplicate apps like the calendar, phone app, etc. It’s about time manufacturers realized that if we had to choose, we’d always prefer Google apps. We also find third-party apps installed by default that we’ve uninstalled as soon as possible!

In terms of performance and no surprises, this is a high-end smartphone. And not surprisingly, we find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 3, which is not a faster version of the 8 Gen 3, but a more affordable version. In benchmarks, we obviously don’t get results among the best, but from our tests, this remains a high-end SoC that will not let you down in everyday life.

On the demanding apps side, we tried all recent games like Dead Cells, Call of Duty Mobile, Diablo Immortals or even Genshin Impact. Not much to say, it was just super smooth, even at 120Hz for compatible games.

Finally, we find a 5200mAh silicon-carbon battery and this new technology allows Honor to offer a relatively thin and light smartphone compared to the competition with a similar battery capacity. With it, we also have 100W wired fast charging and 66W wireless charging.

If for some it is not the fastest on the market, we remain far from the two reference smartphones, the iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra offer at best 45W support. All of this means that the Honor 200 Pro will easily see you through a busy day. In our daily tests, we got more than two days of autonomy, making a few concessions. Nothing to complain about, that’s what we want!

Photo and video

Even if we are not in the presence of a premium smartphone like the Magic6 Pro, the Honor 200 Pro still remains a high-end smartphone and therefore has no choice but to make sure in a photo. We remind you that the Honor 200 Pro is part of the Honor N range of smartphones and that it would normally be a mid-range smartphone.

But just to blur the lines, the Honor 200 Pro isn’t mid-range, it’s high-end. In addition, the Honor 200 Pro offers a module composed of three cameras, but above all the main camera offers a sensor identical to that of the Magic6 Pro (but without variable aperture lenses). And to offer that little extra compared to the competition, Honor has signed a partnership with Studio Harcourt.

With this new partnership with Studio Harcourt, Honor aims to make its new smartphone the new champion of portrait photography. Also, when we’re in 2024, what do we need to clearly show that we’ve developed something revolutionary? Well we use AI. Therefore, Honor offers with the Honor 200 Pro the Honor AI Portrait Engine technology, which, drawing on the experience of Studio Harcourt, makes it possible to offer lighting close to the Parisian photo studio using the portrait mode of the smartphon

To be honest, we didn’t expect much, and it turned out that the Honor 200 Pro was a pleasant surprise with a complete and multifunctional photo unit. It’s clearly not at the level of the Magic6 Pro, but it’s much more mainstream, and maybe that’s why Honor has positioned it like that with this AI Portrait feature with Studio Harcourt. As for this partnership with Studio Harcourt, these are not simple filters, AI is used to best simulate the lighting of the Parisian studio. We’ll let you judge, but we’ve assessed the results, it’s not comparable to a real camera, but to the general public, the Honor 200 Pro creates an illusion, and that’s what we want from it.

But better than words to give you an idea, here are some sample photos :

And for Studio Harcourt’s portrait mode, we posed and greeted our colleagues Omar and Romain :

On the selfie side, up front we find a 50-megapixel sensor with two lenses, a wide-angle lens and an ultra-wide-angle lens. It is quite classic and effective in itself. With this resolution, it is more than enough for selfies, without causing particular problems for Honor’s algorithms.

And finally the video, an area where Honor has already excelled with its premium smartphones. Here, focus on the video part. This is a classic for a smartphone in this range with detailed and sufficiently stabilized results for us to use the smartphone in a living room environment like Computex 2024.

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