Skip to main content

Review: Honor 200 Pro

Honor’s quirky upper-midranger is all fun and good, but you can do better.
Left to right Closeup of cameras on a mobile phone mobile phone facedown between a book and pair of glasses and mobile...
Photograph: Simon Hill; Getty Images

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIRED

Rating:

7/10

WIRED
Nice display. Long battery life. Speedy wired and wireless charging. Versatile camera. AI features.
TIRED
Curved screen. Camera is inconsistent. Software is gimmicky. Not sold in the US.

Honor’s 200 Pro is an upper-midranger or maybe a lesser flagship. It has a lovely screen, good battery life, fast charging, a versatile camera, and the AI features of Honor’s flagship, Magic 6 Pro. Compromises are minimal. Sure, the processor is a step down from the flagship tier, it’s slightly less water resistant, the camera isn’t quite as good, and the 200 Pro misses out on secure face unlock, but it offers a pretty similar experience at a much more affordable price (£700 in the UK or 800 euros in Europe). It is not officially sold in the US.

Honor focused on the portrait prowess of the 200 Pro in the unveiling, talking up its partnership with Paris-based Studio Harcourt (a famous portrait studio). But, like many of the 200 Pro's AI features, this stuff feels a bit gimmicky. The real reason to look at the 200 Pro is the hardware you get for the price. Just be aware that Honor’s software can be jarring, and the design is not for everyone.

Classic or Old

While the Honor 200 Pro feels like a classy phone, the design gives me grandmother vibes. I acknowledge this might just be me, but something about the cameo brooch-shaped camera module (supposedly inspired by Gaudi's "Casa Milá") and the pale green (Ocean Cyan), swirly, mother-of-pearl finish has me picturing Grandma fishing it out of her handbag. There’s nothing wrong with the design, and I feel bad dunking on an attempt to do something different with the camera module, but it’s just not for me.

The 200 Pro is light, slim, and curves front and back into the aluminum frame. It's very comfortable to hold. But I have grown tired of curved screens and the inevitable accidental touches. I have no other complaints about the 6.78-inch AMOLED screen. The 2,700 x 1,224-pixel resolution is plenty sharp, the refresh rate goes up to 120 Hz, and it's bright enough to read outdoors (Honor claims 4,000 nits of peak brightness, but that sounds optimistic). The sound quality of the stereo speakers is also impressive.

Photograph: Simon Hill

The fingerprint sensor at the bottom of the screen proved fast and responsive. I’m not keen on the double cutout for the front-facing camera, and there is no 3D time-of-flight sensor, so the 200 Pro doesn’t boast the secure face unlock of its more expensive sibling. The 200 Pro scores an IP65 rating, meaning rain and spills are probably fine, but you should avoid submersion.

The 200 Pro relies on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, which is intended for the midrange. Somewhat confusingly, it is a step down from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but I doubt many folks will feel a lack of processing power. The 200 Pro felt snappy, mostly keeping its cool while running games like Asphalt 9: Legends. Honor has generously appointed the 200 Pro with 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage.

Portrait Photography

The Honor 200 Pro has a triple-lens main camera that combines a 50-megapixel main shooter with a fairly large 1/1.3-inch image sensor, a 50-megapixel telephoto lens with a customized Sony IMX 856 sensor capable of 2.5X optical zoom, and a 12-megapixel ultrawide that can also handle macro photography. Honor made a big deal of this phone’s portrait chops, developed with the help of Studio Harcourt. True to that theme, there is a 50-megapixel front-facing camera with a 2-megapixel lens for depth sensing.

Honor has been quick to roll AI features into its phones, and the 200 Pro has its “AI Portrait Engine” built in, which is supposed to make the most of shadow and light to help you nail your desired artistic style with portrait photos. There is even a Harcourt Portrait mode in the camera app that lets you choose between vibrant, color, or classic (black-and-white) styles, but it only works with the main camera, not the front-facing selfie camera.

This is all fun to play with, and the 200 Pro can certainly capture studio-style portraits, but general results proved mixed. The fake bokeh portrait mode effect is not always very accurate. The ultrawide is notably poorer than the main camera, which is not fast enough for moving subjects, and the 200 Pro lacks the impressive nighttime performance of the Magic 6 Pro. That said, this is a decent camera for the money.

Honor’s MagicOS 8.0 sits atop Android 14, but it feels more like Apple’s iOS. You might find it easier to adjust switching from an iPhone. Sadly, there is a bunch of bloatware to remove. Honor promises three Android platform updates and four years of security updates for the 200 Pro, less than its flagship and way behind Google and Samsung’s seven-year commitment.

AI-OK

The AI features are OK. AI suggestions float what it thinks you want, Magic Portal allows you to drag and drop text or images into relevant apps, and Magic Capsule expands around the camera cutout to give you things like media controls (just like Apple’s Dynamic Island). There are also air gestures, allowing you to wave at your phone to control it rather than touch it, though LG proved this is pretty useless a few years ago.

Photograph: Simon Hill

The 5,200-mAh silicon-carbon battery is a highlight. Silicon-carbon batteries have a higher energy density than lithium-ion batteries. The Honor 200 Pro can easily last a busy day and may push to two with relatively light use. You get a USB-C cable and 100-watt charger in the box capable of fully charging the phone from dead in around 45 minutes. The 200 Pro also supports wireless charging up to 66 watts, but you need Honor’s charger for top speeds.

You could get a Samsung Galaxy S24 (8/10, WIRED recommends) or Google Pixel 8 Pro (7/10, WIRED Review) for this kind of money, and I prefer both. Maybe the 200 Pro is a good choice if you fancied the Magic 6 Pro but balked at the price tag. Many of the best Android phones, including the Pixel 8A and OnePlus 12R, can be had for significantly less. You could also save a couple hundred bucks by going with the regular Honor 200. It has a slightly slower processor and weaker main camera, and drops wireless charging.

Ultimately, the 200 Pro sits in an odd spot in the market. It is a real mixed bag, with some compelling features and some gimmicky fluff. The hardware is an undeniably good value, but the software and design left me a little cold.