Honor Play in for review

This is the Honor Play - a phone Huawei's sub-brand is selling as gaming-oriented, but which we think is much much more.

First - here's our unboxing and key features video.

The Honor Play has a lot of things going for it, but here are the main ones - a solid, well-made body, a large 6.3-inch IPS LCD, Huawei's current best Kirin 970 chipset and GPU Turbo, its latest EMUI 8.2 and a large 3,750mAh battery.

First, let's look at the display. It has a notch, which you'll either loathe or care nothing about, but is otherwise lovely to look at.

The screen packs a 1080x2340px resolution and is very punchy and sharp. Colors are nice and vibrant and we'd happily take this LCD over most on the market.

Honor Play

The bezels are nice and tight too. And we have to say that this is one of the best-equipped phones in terms of preloaded wallpapers. It has a heap of great options.

The camera on the back doesn't sound impressive on paper but it still offers portrait mode and AI enhancements.

You get a 16MP f/2.2 + 2MP f/2.4 configuration on the back and a 16MP f/2.0 selfie camera with large pixels. We'll do a proper showing of the camera in our full review so stay tuned.

The Honor Play uses a metal back plate instead of glass and is built like a tank. It feels very sturdy in the hand and has a nice textured metal surface that enhances the grip.

Moreover the Honor Play feels smaller than its 6.3-inch display would have you expect.

Honor Play

The Kirin 970 ticking inside the Honor Play ensures that everything runs smoothly throughout the UI. Huawei's Kirin 980 is around the corner but we wouldn't advise against buying a Kirin 970-equipped phone, especially at this price.

The Honor Play starts at CNY 2,000 (€265) for a 4GB/64GB model and goes up to CNY 2,400 (€320) for the 6GB model. That's not a lot of money for the level of phone you'd be getting.

Of course that's China and while the Honor Play is available in India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Vietnam, Philippines and Thailand, it hasn't yet landed in Europe and North America, which limits its appeal a bit.

Stay tuned for our detailed written review, coming soon.