Honor 20 and 20 Pro hands-on review

Camera setup

The Honor 20 Pro comes with an impressive - at least on paper - quad-camera setup. The 48MP main sensor gets a lens with industry's first f/1.4 aperture and OIS, EIS and AIS. You can also snap shots in native 48MP mode. The ultra wide-angle camera is 16MP with f/2.2 and 117-degree field of view. The telephoto unit is 8MP with f/2.4 aperture capable of 3x lossless optical zoom and it's stabilized as well. The dedicated macro lens, on the other hand, is limited with a 4cm fixed focus and just 2MP resolution. All is aided by a laser autofocus.

Honor says the dedicated macro sensor is used in more than just the macro mode. It could very well serve as a depth sensor but we are not entirely sure and Honor didn't go into details.

The Honor 20 gets all of the above but swaps out the lens of the main camera with an f/1.8 aperture, loses the telephoto camera and lacks the laser autofocus.

Some software features that are worth mentioning are the AIS Super Night Mode, which stands for less shaky photos thanks to the OIS + AIS combo and better overall image quality as this is something like Night Mode v2.0. Also, 4K video recording is made possible with all cameras and while the ultra wide-angle lens doesn't offer any kind of stabilization, the videos turn out to be less shaky than expected. At least that's what we could see from the viewfinder.

We had the chance to take a couple of shots with the standard 12MP and the 48MP Ultra Clarity modes.

Honor 20 Pro Normal 12MP mode

Honor 20 Pro normal vs 48MP Ultra Clarity mode: Normal • 48MP • Normal • 48MP

We also tried out the telephoto with its 3x lossless zoom and 5x hybrid zoom.

Honor 20 Pro telephoto: 3x zoom • 5x zoom • 3x zoom • 5x zoom

Preliminary testing shows that the ultra-wide angle shoots nice stills as opposed to most ultra-wides on the market.

Honor 20 Pro ultra wide-angle camera

We took the 2MP macro lens for a spin too. It has it's own Super Macro mode in the camera menu.

Honor 20 Pro Super Macro mode

Early verdict

As always, Honor is offering good value flagship and also a bit more affordable version as well - the regular Honor 20. Both come equipped with plenty of flagship-worthy hardware while keeping up with the recent trends of unique gradient color options, punch-hole camera design and multiple cameras all of which are useful, by the way.

All cameras are capable of taking nice shots but further testing and different scenarios are needed for full assessment. We are particularly interested to try out the new AIS Super Night Mode.

However, some corners appear to have been cut. For instance, both handsets settle for IPS LCD panels instead of OLED ones. Sure, at first glance they do look nice but they are no OLED quality for sure. Our lab tests will check how good they really are.

One thing that bothers us, though, is the inadequate market segmentation of both phones. The Honor 20 Pro and the standard Honor 20 have identical screens, offer roughly the same camera experience and come with almost identical hardware. Maybe different sizes and more hardware differences would have been more adequate. Regardless of this fact, the Honor 20 Pro seems like a pretty good alternative to the considerably more expensive Huawei P30-series. Stay tuned for our review.