Honor Magic4 Pro review

No nonsense triple-camera setup

Honor says it uses Sony's IMX766 50MP, 1/1.56-inch, 1.0µm sensor for the main camera paired with f/1.8 lens, which to our surprise isn't optically-stabilized.

For its periscope 3.5 zoom camera, the Magic4 Pro uses a 64MP, 1/2.0", f/3.5, 0.7µm, OIS unit. Interestingly, 3.5x zoom is often achieved by standard zoom lenses and when we see a periscope camera, we expect at least a 5x zoom. Still, 3.5x loss-less zoom is plenty. Notably, this sensor isn't Quad-Bayer and instead uses a standard Bayer filter, so the advertised 10x zoom is achieved by cropping from the un-binned 64MP sensor in addition to the 3.5x native, optical zoom.

The ultrawide camera is equipped with another 50MP sensor but a considerably smaller than the main one - 1/2.5" and is paired with an f/2.2 aperture, and the lens has a 122-degree field-of-view. That's plenty wide, but Honor notes that the actual field of view is narrower after the lens correction algorithm. It's important to note that this ultrawide has autofocus, too.

The cameras on the back are aided by a group of additional sensors. There's a dToF sensor for scene depth mapping and for laser autofocus in low light. An anti-flicker sensor also helps adjust the shutter speed to eliminate screen flicker when recording videos. The whole system relies on a color spectrum sensor for improved white balance.

The selfie shooter adopts a 12MP, f/2.4, 1.22µm ultrawide camera that is aided by a 3D ToF sensor used for depth information and advanced facial unlock.

The Honor Magic4 Pro's impressive hardware works with just as impressive software optimizations and computational algorithms. Perhaps the most notable one is the so-called Fusion Photography. Depending on the focal length you choose, the system will extract information from more than just one camera. This is supposed to improve dynamic range, sharpness and detail. Here's an interesting graph explaining which cameras work depending on the focal length.

Camera app

The camera app hasn't changed much by design. The UI is rather familiar. You can change between modes using the carousel type selector under the viewfinder, while additional modes can be found in the "More" sub-menu. On the viewfinder, you will find four zoom toggles - 0.6 for ultrawide, 1x for the main camera, 3.5x for the periscope camera and 10x for the hybrid zoom using the telephoto shooter. We didn't like the placement of the toggles in landscape mode, though, as they move to the bottom of the screen, and it's quite awkward to reach them with the thumb. Especially near the edge of the display, where we found it hard to read the toggles.

The additional AI toggle at the top of the viewfinder provides not only scene optimization but also suggests which camera to use depending on the scenario. Also, if you move close enough to a subject, the system automatically switches to the macro mode using the ultrawide camera. Interestingly, the three toggles are there as well, but all represent different crops of the ultrawide snapper for macro purposes.

Camera modes

Talking about camera switching, we observed quite the aggressive switch between the main camera and the telephoto one. Even if the lighting conditions are favorable enough for the telephoto camera, the software will often choose to crop from the main sensor instead. That's annoying, especially when you expect the 3.5x zoom camera to work in broad daylight. Sometimes waiting for a second or two helps, whereas other times, you have to switch between the cameras back and forth to get the right one.

Camera settings

In portrait mode, there are only two toggles - 1x and 2x zoom. As you'd expect, the 2x zoom toggle means the software crops from the main camera, so the telephoto remains unusable in this mode.

Moving onto the video section, Honor continues to improve upon the Magic3 Pro with a series of new features. The Magic4 Pro carries an IMAX Enhanced certification for video recording. This means that you can expect IMAX-like picture quality and rendition with DTS sound.

Movie mode

To make your videos look like you are in a movie theater, Honor has worked with movie producers on creating their own Magic-Log format and 3D LUTs (Look Up Tables) for color grading the Log footage. Combined with the choice of eight LUT presets that come in the phone, you can get some pretty good-looking results.

And that's on top of the standard video recording settings where you can record in 4K HDR, the so-called 10-bit 4K Log mode (this one disables the rest of the toggles, including the LUT modes) and slow-motion videos. The handset is allegedly the industry's first smartphone to record 10-bit, 4K@60fps videos.

Switching to Movie mode would lock the aspect ratio to the more "cinematic" 21:9 and would cap the video resolution and frame rate to 4K@30/24fp.