Honor Magic4 Pro review

Daylight samples

Main camera

The main camera delivers outstanding daylight photos. In fact, even indoors, the camera offers consistent performance with no apparent noise or loss in sharpness. Detail is the thing we found most impressive, no matter the distance. Just notice the fine detail on the buildings, the cat's nose or the foliage on the samples below.

Dynamic range is also excellent as we struggle to find clipped highlights or crushed shadows. We did notice a slightly darker exposure on some of the images, resulting in a contrasty look and slightly darker than usual shadows. But nothing to be obsessed about.

12.5MP daylight samples

As far as color reproduction is concerned, this one's rather subjective. Clearly, the colors are oversaturated, but this is probably best for most users if you ask us. The images are directly instagrammable with a good amount of contrast as well. Juicy colors always make images look nicer.

If we need to get nit-picky, the handling of the field-of-view would be our only complaint. We've seen a similar implementation by Huawei, so it's no surprise that we see it here as well. It turns out the advertised 23mm focal length by the main camera is achievable only by switching over to the 50MP mode. Otherwise, the standard Photo mode gives you 27mm equivalent focal length, which wouldn't bother the vast majority of users, but someone with experience may notice this.

We are unsure why Honor is doing this, but we assume it's because of the lens. Using the entire sensor produces samples with soft edges so trimming the final image isn't such a bad idea.

12.5MP daylight samples

Still, it has to be said that the resulting photos still have a resolution of 12.5MP - the sensor's binned output - so there must be some minor upsampling as you can't crop the sensor and still get the same resolution. But we didn't notice any impact on the overall quality.

Speaking of 50MP, here are a couple of samples for you to pixel-peep. Of course, detail is better in the said mode, but you will be sacrificing pretty much everything else. Sharpness deteriorates, dynamic range is narrower, and noise can be spotted in the shadows and on uniform backgrounds.

50MP daylight samples

3.5x telephoto camera

The telephoto camera's overall rendition is in line with the main camera when it comes to color, exposure and even dynamic range. The overall quality of the 3.5x zoomed photos is excellent. Some of them need a touch more sharpness, but the level of detail resolved is impressive on its own. Even indoor shots don't seem to be an issue for the camera, except that they are just a tad softer.

3.5x daylight telephoto samples

However, our main complaint about the telephoto camera is the software's tendency of often switching to the main cam despite our intentions of taking a zoom photo with the periscope cam. The camera software would often do that no matter the lighting conditions - even in good light. Users who lack the experience to notice the switcheroo may wonder why the image quality is inferior to what they are used to in many of their shots. Here are a few examples of the degradation that results when that occurs.

3.5x zoom: Crop • Native

A simple solution to force the camera to switch back to the telephoto with optical zoom is switching back and forth between cameras or just moving the handset around a little but we were surprised by this inconsistent behavior.

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide's performance is great during the day as it resolves quite a bit of detail, offers punchy colors and if the conditions are right, sharpness is great too. However, even the slightest drop in ambient light results in a noticeable drop in sharpness.

As one would expect, dynamic range isn't on par with the main camera's and Honor appears to have countered that by going for a slightly darker exposure. You won't see any clipped highlights, but details in the shadows can get lost in more challenging scenes.

It is also a bit hard for the camera to focus on closer subjects, so we recommend taking several shots at slightly varying distances to make sure everything is sharp.

Ultrawide camera daylight samples

Macro

There's a dedicated Macro mode for close-up shots using the ultrawide camera. The results can vary as we struggled to determine the right focusing distance by using the viewfinder. Otherwise, you can enjoy highly detailed macro photos with plenty of color and sharpness. There are also three toggles 2x, 1x, and 0.6x - all of those are just different crops from the ultrawide camera, though.

Macro mode samples

Low-light samples

Main camera

At night, the main camera is just about average for its class, which in other words means it's good. In some aspects, it's doing better than the competition, while in others, a software update might be needed. Dynamic range, for example, is outstanding. Notice the light sources and the detail in the shadows. Overall detail could be better as the noise suppression algorithm seems to be smearing some detail in the shadows forming soft patches here and there. It's not enough to ruin the picture but can be easily spotted if you know what to look for.

Colors, contrast, exposure and white balance seem to be on point, too. There's little left to complain about, really. Sharpness, on the other hand, is just about right, leaving a little room for improvement.

Low-light main camera samples

To our surprise, the Night mode contributed little to the overall quality. In fact, if you look close enough, the Night mode is detrimental to the image quality as it outputs considerably softer images. Some of them may even look as if they are out of focus.

Considering the extra wait time for taking a night mode photo and the lack of a significant improvement in dynamic range with only a little more detail here and there, using it isn't very recommended.

Night mode main camera samples

3.5x telephoto camera

Aside from the random switch between the main camera and the telephoto, the latter seems to deliver more than adequate performance. It's unrealistic to expect a level of performance equal to the main camera, of course. Still, sharpness seems to be good, the level of detail is still rather impressive, and the dynamic range is excellent. There's a surprisingly low amount of noise, too.

3.5x telephoto low-light samples

Using the Night mode is again hard to recommend as it doesn't contribute to the overall quality. At least it doesn't make images softer here.

3.5x telephoto Night mode samples

Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide camera's nighttime performance is in stark contrast to its daylight capabilities. Just like every ultrawide camera, this one struggles after dusk, but its performance here is a bit underwhelming for a flagship camera.

Images come out fuzzier than they should, soft even. Other than that, they retain nice colors and a good dynamic range.

Switching on the Night mode adds a little bit of detail and a touch of sharpness if you close enough, although the final result is far from ideal.

Low-light ultrawide samples: Normal • Night mode

Here's how the primary camera on the Honor Magic4 Pro stacks against the rest of the competition in the controlled environment of our Photo Compare Tool.

Honor Magic4 Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Oppo Find X5 Pro in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

Although a bit soft, portraits are somewhat pleasing. Even in more challenging conditions, the dynamic range is good, and the level of detail is satisfactory. You also get punchy colors, natural color skin and a somewhat convincing faux bokeh effect. There's a toggle for 2x zoom portraits, but that's just a crop from the main sensor. This results in a loss of detail and mainly sharpness. Overall rendition remains the same.

Portrait samples: 1x • 2x

Selfies

To be frank, our initial expectations of the selfie camera were low, given that pretty much all selfie ultrawide cameras we've tested offered subpar performance. However, the shooter here produces some of the finest selfies around. There are three toggles - 0.6x, 0.8x and 1x. They are all, once again, just crops from the ultrawide camera. We've tested the two end ranges - 0.6 and 1x.

Selfies: 1x • 0.6x

As you can see, the results are pretty impressive. The camera maintains roughly the same quality even in slightly dimmer lighting conditions. There's no noise, colors are punchy, the subject's skin is natural-looking, sharpness is impressive, and the level of detail is admirable.

The 0.6x mode produces slightly softer images, but that's hard to notice if you aren't pixel-peeping. Dynamic range is just flawless - the subject's face remains perfectly exposed no matter how bright or dark the background is.

The bokeh effect is quite convincing, too. In fact, we can say it's better than the one the main camera offers. Perhaps the 3D ToF sensor on the front helps a lot.

Portrait selfies

Video recording

Honor has added a couple of professional-grade presets and settings for you to play around with. We've covered those in the previous section, so we will be talking just about video quality here.

Starting off with the 4K footage taken with the main camera. The overall quality is impeccable - excellent sharpness and detail, wide dynamic range, great contrast and no noise. Color reproduction differs from the stills and is more conservative here, so colors will appear pretty close to natural.

Switching over to the ultrawide camera results in a significant loss in detail and sharpness, although that's par for the course. Ultrawide videos are always of lesser quality. Dynamic range is also a tad narrower, and if you look close enough, there's color fringing towards the edges of the frame. Still, we would say that the video quality is more than decent.

Interestingly enough, the standard toggle for zoom videos is 5x and not 3.5x. Still, the 5x video is a crop from the telephoto camera. You get a decent-looking video with a somewhat narrower dynamic range and reduced sharpness. Overall quality is still pretty good. Perhaps going for the native 3.5x magnification will deliver a more desirable quality.

The Honor Magic4 Pro doesn’t support 8K video recording, which in our opinion isn’t a big omission given that there’s little to no benefit from 8K footage unless you have an 8K TV.

Once you are done with the real-life scenarios, take a look at our video compare tool to see how the Honor Magic4 Pro stacks against the other phones we've reviewed.

2160p: Honor Magic4 Pro vs. Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Oppo Find X5 Pro in our Video compare tool