Honor Magic Vs review

90Hz inside, 120Hz on the front, nits aplenty

A foldable is all about the bendy display inside and the one on the Magic Vs isn't half bad. A 7.9-inch OLED, it's got a 1,984x2,272px resolution in a 10.3:9 aspect ratio (382ppi pixel density). Refresh rate is a bit of blemish in the specsheet - it maxes out at 90Hz, which is a notch below the 120Hz capability of the likes of Galaxy Z Fold4, Mix Fold 2 or the Oppo Find N2.

The Magic Vs' outer display, on the other hand, does refresh up to 120 times a second - same as all the others. With an aspect ratio of 21:9 and a 6.45-inch diagonal, it offers a size advantage over the Find (5.54"), as well as better proportions than the Galaxy (23.1:9), though you could say the Mix Fold 2 wins on both counts here (6.56", 21:9).

Both displays feature 1920Hz pulse-width modulation for brightness control, so they should look flicker-free to even the most flicker-sensitive eyes. 10-bit color and HDR10+ support are also on both spec sheets.

We measured a maximum brightness of 594nits on the internal display when adjusting the slider ourselves, with a healthy boost to 876nits when we placed the unfolded Magic under bright light - the increase is there whether you have the Adaptive brightness on or not.

Those aren't record-breaking numbers - the Galaxy Z Fold4 maxes out at 1000nits, the Mix Fold 2 can do 1054nits, while the Find N2 shines as bright as 1216nits. Still, we wouldn't say the Magic's results are bad; it's just that the others can be a bit brighter. For what it's worth, the Honor is substantially brighter than the somewhat related Mate X2 and Mate Xs 2.

There are no excuses to be made on the cover display. We got 1287nits under bright ambient light, which is a class-leading result, by some margin. The 549nits in 'regular' conditions is about what you can expect from any OLED, pretty much.

The Magic Vs has two modes in its Color mode menu, with additional Warm and Cold bias presets as well as a color temperature wheel for custom tweaking.

In the default Vivid mode, on the internal screen, we got wide color gamut and better-than-average color accuracy for our DCI-P3 test swatches with a relatively minor blue shift. The Warm preset gently shifted things towards green, but wasn't better or worse going by the numbers. The Normal mode is tailored for sRGB content and we recorded excellent color accuracy for the sRGB patterns.

The results were similar on the cover display in Vivid mode, with only a slight drop in color accuracy in Normal mode. Overall, respectable color accuracy performance from both panels.

The Magic's advertised HDR10+ compliance is confirmed by hardware-checking apps, and we did get HDR streams in YouTube. Netflix wasn't as cooperative, though this could very well change once the phone hits the market and the streaming service whitelists it. Even as is, we got FullHD streaming in Netflix thanks to the Widevine L1 certification.

The refresh rate menu gives you a total of four options. Standard limits things to 60Hz, while medium sets the cap at 90Hz for both displays. High is what will get you 90Hz on the internal screen and 120Hz on the cover display. In most situations these are hard settings - there is no activity-based downswitching.

Dynamic mode is something inbetween Medium and High, in that it will keep things at 90Hz most of the time, but will bump to 120Hz on the cover screen for some applications. It still won't switch to 60Hz when idling.

Dynamic mode will be more inclined to switch down to a lower refresh rate once you go inside an app - browsers, in particular, get capped at 60Hz in Dynamic mode, but get the full possible refresh rate for each screen when in High.

Additionally, and that deserves some praise, the Magic Vs unlocks the refresh rate for games that support high frame rates, and in High mode, you're getting each screen's maximum refresh rate.

Honor Magic Vs battery life

The Magic Vs runs off of a 5,000mAh battery - the largest capacity of all current foldables - the other large ones are in the 4,500mAh ballpark. Admittedly, a couple of larger-screen options do exist (the Mix Fold 2, and the two-year-old Mate X2), but the Honor's bendy display is bigger than those on the Galaxy and the Find, so the extra mAhs wouldn't hurt.

In our testing, we measured 11:33h of Wi-Fi web browsing on the large display with the phone running at a constant 120Hz. In video playback, we clocked 14:20h, this time at a fixed 60Hz refresh rate. The call time was solid too, at 31:24h. Factoring in a mostly average standby draw, the Magic Vs' Endurance rating worked out to 85h.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating denotes how long the battery charge will last you if you use the device for an hour of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. More details can be found here.

Video test carried out in 60Hz refresh rate mode whenever possible. Web browsing test done at the display's highest refresh rate whenever possible. Refer to the respective reviews for specifics. To adjust the endurance rating formula to match your own usage - check out our all-time battery test results chart.

We ran the screen-on tests on the cover display, and we got 15:55h on our web browsing script and 20:37h of looping our test video - again, at 120Hz and 60Hz respectively. Better than average results for the Honor there.

Charging speed

The Magic Vs is rated for 66W charging and comes with a 66W adapter badged Honor SuperCharge.

Using that adapter, we clocked 50 minutes from empty to 100%, and we were looking at 85% 30 minutes into the process (50% in the first 15 minutes too). We haven't yet tested Honor's just announced Magic5 Pro, but the Magic4 Pro takes 30 minutes from flat to full, so the foldable can't quite match it.

The Magic Vs does compare favorably with its bendy peers though, particularly in the first half hour. Naturally, the Galaxy Z Fold4 doesn't look good in charging speed comparisons.

There's no wireless charging on the Magic Vs, unfortunately. That only leaves the Galaxy foldables and a couple of vivo X Folds that support it, after the Find N2 dropped it too.

Speaker test

The Magic Vs' speaker system consists of two units, one on each end of the handset's top half (when folded). The top speaker outputs through a grille in the frame as well as through an earpiece slit, so it serves double duty.

A bit unusually, the top speaker gets the right channel when you're holding the Magic in portrait orientation, be it in phone or tablet mode - most other implementations assign the left channel to the top speaker. In landscape, the phone will send the correct channel to each speaker to match the orientation of the phone in space. In any case, either speaker will also output some of the opposite channel's sound at a much lower volume.

Speakers

In our testing, the Magic Vs earned a 'Very Good' rating for loudness, making it the loudest of the large-sized foldables and louder than most phones in general too. We'd also say the Magic sounds better than the rest of its kind, with only the Mate Xs 2 delivering better bass and only slightly cleaner vocals.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.