Honor Magic8 Pro review

Design, build quality, handling

The Magic8 Pro's design sees very little change compared to the previous generation. In fact, if it's one of the plain colorways (white/black), you'd have to look long and hard to be able to tell the models apart. Sure, the camera island is now slightly smaller and the flash has been relocated, and there's a new button now, but none of these really register at a passing glance.

So, about that new button then - the "AI button". It's on the right side of the phone, where the aluminum frame is also home to the volume rocker and the power key. It's got all the actions you can think of - not only does it have mechanical click, but also some form of pressure sensing, and it can also register swipes. You get some relatively basic customization in settings but the gist is that it can be used to launch some of Honor's AI features, and (perhaps more sensibly) open the camera app and take pictures while in it.

All the buttons on the right • AI button

On the topic of controls, there's the underdisplay fingerprint that acts as expected - it unlocks quickly and without incident, and it's well placed too.

The Magic8 Pro is a member of a rare breed - it's an Android phone with a 3D face scanning capability. That too worked without issues in our experience. Unlike the face unlock on the other side of the OS divide, here you can flip a toggle and have the phone go straight to the homescreen, no swipe required.

The display has a slight curvature towards all of its edges - arguably a great balance between the premium feel of a curved display and the otherwise superior ergonomics of a flat panel. There's a preinstalled plastic protector on top which can feel a little scratchy when swiping in from the side though.

You're not really supposed to need it - the NanoCrystal Shield display glass should be good enough on its own, but more protection is more protection.

Speaking of materials, the back of the Magic8 Pro isn't actually made of glass, but rather a type of fiber-reinforced plastic. It doesn't feel cheap or anything and it's about as slippery as a similarly finished glass panel (same aversion to fingerprints too. It's very likely more shatter resistant than glass, but it will tend to scratch more easily than glass - for example, if you go at it with a knife to double check what it's made of. There's something inherently wrong about a plastic back on a high-end phone, we reckon, particularly if you're a little predisposed to snobbery.

We mentioned a white color option at the beginning, but that one appears exclusive to China in addition to the other three globally available options. These include the black variant, featured more prominently on these pages, the Sunrise Gold below, and a Sky Cyan option.

The global Magic8 Pro features eSIM capability for both of its 'slots'. You can use two eSIMs at the same time, two physical nano SIMs, or one of each type - not more than two total. The Chinese version doesn't support eSIM, as best as we can tell from a continent away.