Honor 30 Pro+ review

50MP SuperSensing main camera and 5x periscope telephoto

As per tradition, Honor's flagship gets the latest and greatest from Huawei's camera department, and the main unit here is the quad-bayered 50MP sensor that was introduced with this year's Huawei P40-series. But while Huawei calls it Ultra Vision camera, Honor chose the name "SuperSensing". And as you've probably guessed, it's still the same camera, which is impressive, nonetheless.

The 50MP camera features a huge Sony 1/1.28-inch sensor, which is even bigger than Samsung's 108MP nona-bayer sensor found on the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G measuring 1/1.33" in diagonal. The binned pixel size is marginally bigger too - 2.44µm vs. 2.4µm on Samsung's 108MP unit. The 50MP sensor is paired with an RYYB filter as opposed to the conventional RGGB filter and it's supposed to capture 40% more light. But that's not new, the RYYB filter has been used in last year's P30-series and Honor's View 30-series as well. The new bit is the omnidirectional phase detection autofocus.

So now instead of having autofocus detectors on just a couple of pixels in the middle, there are detectors on each and every pixel. And there's a 8 for each one improving the horizontal details. This ensures not only faster and more accurate focusing on the subject, but also better low-light performance in this regard as well. The aperture of the camera remains the same as on the P30 Pro family - f/1.9.

Another major upgrade over the Honor 20-series is the periscope 5x telephoto camera. The module uses an 8MP sensor paired with f/3.4 aperture while the optics are 125mm equivalent providing 5x optical zoom. Of course, it's optically stabilized because anything beyond 2x is quite a challenge to shoot without OIS. Nice to see the periscope camera making its way to a more "mainstream flagship" phone.

This leaves us with the ultra-wide on the back, which is nothing special. It's just a 16MP unit with f/2.2 aperture, 18mm equivalent and supports autofocus, which is still a rare commodity in the ultra-wide camera world. This camera is also used for capturing macro shots.

Oh, and there's also super tiny 2MP sensor used for depth sensing.

Following the footsteps of the View 30 Pro, the Honor 30 Pro+ also boasts dual front-facing cameras. The main one is 32MP, paired with f/2.0 aperture. The sensor size is 1/2.8". The other one is an 8MP ultra-wide unit with f/2.2 aperture so you can fit more people into your selfie shot.

Camera menus

If you've ever held a Huawei or Honor phone, you will definitely find your way around the camera menus. In fact, the default camera apps on phones these days are quite similar to each other. Swiping left and right will cycle through some of the camera modes while tapping on "More" will bring out a bunch of other, more advanced shooting modes.

Camera menus and modes

For example, here's where you will find the Pro mode, Slow-mo and the so-called High-res mode, which delivers non-binned 50MP images straight from the main camera.

Daylight samples

The stills captured by the main camera during the day are nothing short of flagship-worthy. Colors look vibrant and juicy, maybe a little too much even. Sharpness and detail are excellent and the HDR is doing great even in more challenging scenes where detail in the shadows should have been lost, while the highlights are well-balanced. We didn't notice any noise too.

Main camera daylight samples

However, we did notice that in some rare cases where we have thin straight lines or let's say, edges of buildings, they appear jagged. It might be the result of the upscaling Huawei is doing. Just like the P40 Pro and P40 Pro+, the Honor 30 Pro+ is using a 23mm equivalent lens, which appears a bit wider than a normal 26/27mm, which in turn means there's a distortion towards the corners of the image. To get around that issue, Honor is cropping around the edges of the image and then upscales to 12.5MP to match the advertised pixel-binned 50MP resolution. All of this could have been avoided by just using a 26mm lens but there's probably a reason for the 23mm one.

Main camera daylight samples

Telephoto

The cropping and upscaling practice has carried over to the telephoto as well. It's a 125mm equivalent going by the specs but since it has to be exactly 5x loss-less zoom from 27mm on the main camera, Honor once again crops from the 8MP image and then upscales to 12.5MP resulting in 135mm equivalent focal length, probably for the sake of consistency. We get the crop part but why upscale it all the way up to 12.5MP again? There are obvious traces of upscaling if you look close enough.

Daylight 5x telephoto samples

Luckily, this is our only complaint about the telephoto camera. Other than that, the images look sharp with plenty of detail while the dynamic range and overall color processing is comparable to the main camera.

Daylight 5x telephoto samples

Cranking the slider up to 10x zoom, you get surprisingly usable images. The processing does a little bit of sharpening to make up for the loss of resolution, and the result is good overall. It's still a cropped image from an 8MP sensor and then upscaled to 12.5MP, so don't expect any miracles.

Daylight 10x telephoto samples

Ultra-wide

The ultra-wide is somewhat lacking compared to the main and the telephoto. Sure, we weren't expecting the same quality, but images look generally soft and smudgy. There's also a noticeable color fringing. On the other hand, the dynamic range is wide, it retains the main camera's color reproduction, and has autofocus for cool close-up shots with added dramatic effect. The lens correction algorithm is doing a nice job too although, at 18mm, the ultra-wide isn't very wide, to begin with.

Ultra-wide daylight samples

Macro samples

We've already established that the ultra-wide camera has autofocus and the main reason for that is the macro mode. It uses the ultra-wide, and the images are pretty good. Nice color, good detail and sharpness is satisfactory. Sure, you can't focus so close to the subject like the dedicated macro lenses do, but the current solution here is the better approach for the time being.

Macro samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

We are once again pretty impressed with the main camera's performance. Even during the night, the phone manages to capture sharp, noise-free (for the most part) images that are rich in detail. The HDR is once again excelling with well-processed shadows and highlights. The images do look a bit dark, though, and lean more to the warmer white balance.

Default photo mode low-light samples

To our surprise, with the Night mode images become soft and traces from the noise-suppression algorithm appear sometimes. Not to mention that you would have to wait from 5 to 7 seconds each time you take a shot depending on the scene. It may not sound a lot, but it's noticeable. The only real benefit is when the scene is extremely dark as it brightens up the whole image and captures a bit more detail in the shadows. For any other situation, using the default photo mode is advisable.

Night mode samples

Telephoto

The telephoto tackles the low-light challenges like a champ! Even in low-light, the photos look not just usable, but pretty darn good. Sharpness is satisfactory, while detail is aplenty for a 5x telephoto camera. The overall processing is comparable to that of the main camera, once again, borrowing some of the good traits like wide dynamic range, nice contrast, and pleasant colors. Also, kudos for prioritizing the telephoto camera instead of cropping from the main sensor. There's only one scenario in which the software chose the main camera in the samples below.

Telephoto low-light samples

Turning on the Night mode would be a mistake as images are indeed slightly brighter but sharpness and detail get lost along the way.

Telephoto Night mode samples

Ultra-wide

The ultra-wide is dragging behind once more in the low-light department. Images are soft, smudgy and a bit noisy with only good color reproduction, contrast and decent dynamic range on its side.

Ultra-wide low-light samples

On the contrary to our expectation, the Night mode improves the ultra-wide shots. It adds some sharpness, brings out more detail from the shadows, brightens up the scene overall, and crushes the noise. In this case, we do recommend waiting a couple of seconds for a much improved ultra-wide low-light shot. We would say that depending on the scene, the ultra-wide's Night mode shots look good for social media posting and without pixel-peeping on the phone's screen.

Ultra-wide Night mode samples

And here's a comparison between the Honor 30 Pro+ and some of its rivals in our photo compare tool.

Honor 30 Pro+ vs Realme X50 Pro 5G and the Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Portraits are sharp with punchy colors while getting close to the real skin tone of the subject and the software offers good edge detection as well. There are the occasional missteps with more complex background but we can let that one slide mostly because the dynamic range and the level of detail are excellent.

Portrait samples

There are also toggles for 2x and 3x zoom portraits which are crops from the main camera. With enough light, the 2x looks good but the 3x images start to show some signs of upscaling.

Portraits: Normal • 2x zoom • 3x zoom

Selfies

The selfies are looking a bit soft for 32MP while colors and overall processing feel a bit washed out. You do get wide dynamic range, though, and another thing we didn't expect was that the ultra-wide front-facing camera is more adequate in taking selfies. There's more contrast to them, colors are punchier, the skin tone of the subject is considerably more close to real-life and pictures look sharper in general as well.

32MP main camera selfies

8MP ultra-wide camera selfies

The main selfie cam gets a dedicated Night mode as well, but we are hard-pressed to find any significant difference between the normal and the Night mode shots except for some added sharpness.

Night mode selfies: Normal • Night mode • Normal • Night mode

Video recording

The standard video recording modes are at hand reaching 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Slow-motion videos go up to 720p@1920fps while at 1080p, the handset can capture up to 240fps. There's a neat slider giving you suggestions on which mode to use depending on the scene.

Let's start with the 4K video. It's looking really sharp, boasts wide dynamic range, there's virtually no noise, and contrast is looking juicy. Colors are also pleasantly saturated. No complaints about the 2160p video quality.

Understandably, at 1080p, sharpness starts to fall but the rest of the good traits remain.

The ultra-wide can also produce great 2160p footage with a noticeable drop in detail and sharpness. And with the current 18mm focal length, we can't really say that you will be benefiting all that much from the offered field of view.

Alternatively, go for the 21:9 video for wider field of view and added dramatic, cinematic effect. The resolution is 2660 x 1080p.

There's no super or ultra steady mode for gimbal-like stabilization but we don't really feel the need to as well. The stabilization in 4K is impressive and probably one of the best in class.

You can also take a look at how the Honor 30 Pro+ stacks against the competition in our video compare tool.

2160p: Honor 30 Pro+ vs Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro and the Realme X50 Pro 5G in our Video compare tool