Verdict

The Honor Magic V2 is an impeccably designed foldable with dimensions that bring it into classic smartphone territory, and there’s very little compromise to do so. However, the delayed release means that its spec is no longer the best around, and it’s £300 more than its predecessor.

Introduction

Months after the Honor Magic V2 had its international debut, the gorgeously thin-and-light foldable is finally available to buy in the UK – and I’ve spent the past few weeks with it.

Boasting a folded thickness of just 9.9mm and weighing 231g, the Honor Magic V2 is a triumph of engineering that brings the foldable closer to its candybar smartphone brethren than any other foldable that has come before it. It’s a serious competitor to popular big-screen foldables like the Google Pixel Fold, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and OnePlus Open.

However, the five-month delay between announcement and release does complicate things a bit, as does the £300 price jump to £1699 compared to the Honor Magic Vs. So, does Honor do enough to tempt fans away from established foldable brands like Samsung, or has it appeared too little too late? 

Design

• Thinnest and lightest foldable on the market
• Rounded corners
• No official IP rating

Honor has managed to do the impossible: create a foldable smartphone that isn’t thick or overly heavy, bringing foldables closer to their candybar smartphone brethren than ever before.

Simply put, the Honor Magic V2 is a triumph of design and manufacturing, measuring in at an impressively thin 4.7mm thick when unfolded and 9.9mm thick when folded. For comparison, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 measures 13.4mm thick when unfolded. In fact, it’s much closer in width to standard smartphones than any other foldable around.

It’s a similar story when it comes to weight as, at 231g, the Honor Magic V2 actually weighs less than the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, let alone the likes of the 253g and 283g from Samsung and Google’s foldables respectively. 

It’s even thinner and lighter than the 11.7mm/245g OnePlus Open, which I praised in its October 2023 review. This makes a huge difference not only in the pocket but in the hand, making for a much more comfortable experience whether you’re using the external or internal displays. In fact, when folded, it doesn’t feel like you’re using a foldable – and that’s a new experience for me.  

That’s thanks in part to Honor’s new hinge mechanism, which boasts a 91% titanium alloy construction for improved rigidity, and there’s 0 gap when in its folded position to help reduce the amount of dust and debris building up on the internal panel.

But looking past all the numbers, the Honor Magic V2 is simply a very good-looking phone and quite possibly the best-designed foldable we’ve seen so far. Its curved design, impressively thin screen bezels, gorgeous matte-finish sparkling rear and small camera housing all contribute to the stunning look of the phone, with no hint of foldable compromise anywhere to be found. 

I love the shade of purple I was provided for review, but if you want something a little different, it comes in Black (both silk and vegan leather finishes) along with a flashy Gold finish, though the latter isn’t available in the UK. 

There is one key area where the Magic V2 falls behind the competition however; water resistance. While the Galaxy Z Fold 5 boasts the same IPX8 water resistance as its predecessor, the Magic V2 doesn’t boast any kind of official IP rating at all, so don’t go dunking it in water. 

However, the Honor representative I spoke to at my briefing assured me that the foldable is very much splash-resistant, so it should survive a short stint in the rain. There’s nothing in terms of protection on the dust front, though that’s a challenge the larger foldable market still has to face. 

Screens

• 6.43-inch and 7.92-inch displays
• Very shallow internal crease
• Premium display tech on both screens

As a book-style foldable, the Honor Magic V2 has not one but two displays; a cover display and a larger internal panel. The good news is that both are of the highest quality available, making for a rather exquisite viewing experience.

Let’s start with the cover display. It measures 6.43 inches and it’s much shorter and squatter than the comically tall-and-thin 6.2-inch display of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, more closely resembling a regular smartphone display. In fact, I think it’s even closer to the standard experience than the OnePlus Open’s cover screen, with a slightly wider curved display and smaller screen bezels. 

It also helps that it’s absolutely packed with high-end display tech like an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, support for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision and a mega-bright peak brightness of 2500nits that’s actually brighter than the 1600nit internal panel. This does make sense though; you’re more likely to use the easily accessible cover display when out and about in bright sunlight. 

Importantly, the Magic V2 further develops the dimming tech present on recent models like the Magic 5 Pro and Honor 90 with a boosted 3840Hz dimming rate to help reduce eye fatigue, and it’s a feature available across both the external and internal displays. 

This is all a roundabout way of saying that you can use the external display just as you would a regular candybar phone. It’s comfortable to text with one-handed, makes for a more convenient way to scroll through emails and even provides a solid gaming experience with a wider field of view for shooters like Call of Duty Mobile. 

But let’s move on to that whopping 7.92-inch internal display which, along with the OnePlus Open, is the largest of any book-style foldable right now. 

The premium experience from the cover display also translates to the foldable screen, sporting a 2K resolution, adaptive 120Hz refresh rate tech and HDR10+ support, even going a step further with IMAX Enhanced support. It’s clear where Honor expects you to do the majority of your movie-watching. 

It’s a solid OLED display that suits itself well to a variety of tasks, be it split-screen multitasking or simply enjoying TikTok on a larger screen. That’s also helped by the fact that most popular third-party apps now offer support for big-screen foldable like this, and even those that don’t can be forced to with no issue most of the time. 

The phone’s new hinge also delivers a much shallower crease on the internal foldable display not only when compared to the Magic Vs, but the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and Pixel Fold too. If you look at the screen off-centre, it’s still there, but the tactile feeling of running your finger over the crease is nearly non-existent. 

There’s still a ways to go before we reach the fabled creaseless foldable, but Honor’s implementation is up there with the OnePlus Open as the best I’ve seen to date. 

Cameras

• 50MP main and 50MP ultrawide lenses
• 20MP 2.5x telephoto
• AI-infused Falcon Capture

Not just a good-looking foldable, Honor has its sights set firmly on photography chops with the Magic V2. Flip the foldable around and you’ll find a rectangular camera housing with three high-res cameras ready for use. That includes a 50MP f/1.9 main, a 50MP f/2.0 ultrawide and a 20MP f/2.4 2.5x telephoto with digital zoom up to 10x. 

That means the trio of lenses offer a higher megapixel count than alternatives from Google and Samsung, although the OnePlus Open and its trio of high-res lenses does outshine the Magic V2 – on paper, at least. 

The Magic V2 also sports the same Falcon Shot camera tech from the flagship Honor Magic 5 Pro, using a combination of AI and fast lenses to capture much more detail from fast-moving subjects. It was a feature I praised with the Magic 5 Pro, able to capture even my German Shepherd running at full speed, so it’s great to see it available here too. 

The question is, how does all that camera tech translate to the daily shooting experience? Thankfully, it’s largely good news. 

The primary 50MP snapper, complete with OIS and a fast f/1.9 aperture delivers consistently sharp, well-lit shots free of blur whether I’m snapping photos of my cat at home on a dark winter’s evening or making use of that rare winter sun as I wander around snapping shots of the London skyline. 

It does a particularly good job at balancing exposure, especially with heavily backlit subjects, pulling plenty of detail back from the shadows and massively toning down the highlights. 

Night photography is possible with the Magic V2, but it’s best suited to stationary subjects like city streets or skylines. As soon as you introduce any kind of moving subject, be it my cat or my partner, images come out a little soft. 

It’s fine for most people, but if night photography is important, the larger sensor from the OnePlus Open or advanced AI from the Pixel Fold will serve you better. 

I’ve been fairly happy with the quality of images produced by the 2.5x telephoto lens too, with levels of detail not far from what you capture from the primary lens despite the lower resolution on offer. 

It’s great for portrait photography, with decent edge detection and bokeh generation, though I wouldn’t push it far beyond – at 10x digital zoom, details become notably soft, with smaller details like brickwork looking blurry in places. Without a dedicated periscope lens, the regular candybar competition wins out. 

The 50MP ultrawide lens is perfectly suited to capturing those scenic vistas or group selfies with almost identical colour tuning to the primary camera, and there’s very little noticeable edge distortion despite that wide angle either. It’s not the best in low-light conditions, but it’s rare to find an ultrawide that is. 

Rounding off the cameras are twin 16MP selfie cameras, one on the exterior and one on the interior. These are fine for video calls with plenty of detail and light, but with the foldable nature of the phone allowing you to use the rear lenses for selfies, you won’t be using these all that often. 

Performance 

• Year-old Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor
• 16GB of RAM
• Android 13 with MagicOS 7.2

The Honor Magic Vs was a great big-screen foldable, but due to a hugely delayed international release, it meant that the phone’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 had already been replaced by the newer, more powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 by the time it hit the UK. 

While I was hopeful that Honor was keen to rectify things with the Magic V2 and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, the gap between its September 2023 reveal and January 2024 release means that it’s the same story all over again, with the newer Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 now appearing in devices. 

It’s not just a chipset that’s faster and more power efficient than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 of the Magic V2, but it’s a chipset that enables on-device GenAI capabilities. 

As we’ve already seen with the Samsung Galaxy S24 reveal, that’s set to be a huge focus for phones in 2024, and it means that the Magic V2 simply can’t join in on the fun. Given that Samsung and Google are expected to update their competing foldables with Gen AI capabilities this year, the Magic V2 might struggle to stand out. 

That means that the Magic V2 doesn’t score quite as highly in benchmarks as recent phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, but with that said, it is still a performance beast, besting the OnePlus Open and delivering results similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 5’s custom 8 Gen 2 chipset. 

That all said, you’re unlikely to notice a difference in performance between the Magic V2 and recent Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 smartphones. The phone feels rapid in use, with apps opening immediately, buttery smooth scrolling on apps like Threads and Instagram and smooth gaming performance, even with more demanding titles like Call of Duty Mobile. 

What’s more, the Magic V2 manages to stay relatively cool under high loads, with the phone barely getting warm after a 25-minute session of COD. It won’t beat dedicated gaming phones like the ROG Phone 8 Pro and RedMagic 9 Pro, but the large internal display is a treat to play on. 

That’s paired with either 256-, 512GB or 1TB of storage depending on the variant you opt for, though like its predecessor, there isn’t any way to expand storage post-purchase. 

Software

• Runs Android 13 with Honor’s MagicOS 7.2
• Handy features like enlarged folders
• Very limited UI customisation

Despite its early 2024 release, the Honor Magic V2 comes running the year-old Android 13 out of the box with Honor’s MagicOS 7.2 on top. 

That’s pretty odd considering we’re now seeing a steady flow of Android 14 devices and it means that one of the three upgrades that Honor is promising for the Magic V2 will be to take it from Android 13 to Android 14.

It’s not a huge deal, however; unlike recent big iOS updates, Android version updates are a little more subdued when it comes to adding new features. Instead, it’s up to manufacturers to add unique functionality to their smartphones.

In this respect, Honor’s MagicOS 7.2 does a great job. There are foldable-specific functions like a dedicated split-screen gaming mode that lets you play two games simultaneously. It seems like a bit of a gimmick – who wants to play two games at once – but it does at least show just how capable the chipset at the heart of the foldable is. 

You’ve also got multiple ways to run up to three apps on-screen at once, with gestures to easily shrink and hide floating windows for easy multi-app management. It’s not really something that fits into my use case, but it was handy having Google Sheets open in a pop-up window to log benchmark results. 

There are also smaller elements that add to the user experience, like enlarged folders on the home screen that provide access to up to eight apps within the folder without having to open it, AI-based shortcuts in the Control Center and the ability to stack multiple widgets on top of one another. 

It’s not all merry though; on the flip side, MagicOS 7.2 doesn’t offer much in the way of customisation, lacking features like Material You, a customisable lock screen and interesting AOD elements that really perfect the high-end smartphone experience. Not all apps open in full-screen mode by default either, despite running just fine when forced to fill the screen. 

It’s made all the more apparent coming from the competing OnePlus Open, which does have all of the above and more, and helps highlight that Honor still has a way to go before it offers the best software experience around. 

Battery life

• Large 5,000mAh battery
• Rapid 66W wired charging
• Fast charger in the box

Despite the thinness of the Magic V2, Honor has managed to include two super-slim cells that total 5,000mAh. It may not be any different to the Magic Vs, but it remains the largest capacity of any foldable on the market right now, 600mAh more than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 5 and 195mAh more than the OnePlus Open. 

I was actually able to see the batteries during my pre-briefing and was impressed by just how thin they are, measuring around 2.7mm thick and the size of a credit card.

All that said, the Honor Magic V2 is a battery beast; despite using the larger internal display often for the likes of reading books on the tube, browsing Instagram and watching TikToks, the phone had no issue lasting all day. On average, I’d get to the end of a 16-hour day with around 30-40% left in the tank. 

A full charge got me through a full day and a half of use, giving up at around 4pm on the second day – a stark change to the likes of the Google Pixel Fold.  

Not content with having the biggest battery capacity among foldables, Honor has equipped the Magic V2 with impressively fast 66W wired charging, although neither the charger nor a USB-C cable comes in the box – a little bit odd considering its premium nature. 

However, using a 100W USB-C PD charger I had handy, I saw impressive charge speeds that delivered 32% in 15 minutes, 69% in 30 minutes and a full charge in 56 minutes. Oddly, Honor says that you need to charge the phone unfolded for maximum charge speeds, but I ran the tests with it folded and saw near-identical results, so it looks like it doesn’t matter for the most part.  

Granted, those speeds may not be any faster than its predecessor, and there are plenty of candybar phones that charge faster, but compared to the 25W and 30W from Samsung and Google’s big-screen foldables respectively, it’s pretty rapid. In fact, only the OnePlus Open charges faster, and there’s only a few minutes in it.

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