Honor V30 Pro review

Punch-hole 6.57-inch IPS LCD panel

Unlike most of the competition - even the one that’s fairly cheaper - the Honor V30 Pro still relies on the IPS LCD technology, just like its predecessors. While most have already shifted to OLEDs, the Honor V30 Pro is not up there. That doesn’t mean that this particular panel is bad, though. Historically, Honor has used good LCDs for its flagship models and the V30 Pro makes no exception.

The 6.57-inch panel features a 1080 x 2400px resolution making up for a tall 20:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of 400 ppi. There's also a big hole in the upper-left corner of the display housing the two selfie cameras. It's up for debate whether this solution is better than a standard notch but in most cases, it should be a less obtrusive cutout.

Anyway, the results from our tests show a very interesting story. The maximum recorded brightness is 533 cd/m2 while at auto-brightness, the Max Auto feature kicked in and posted a lower 505 cd/m2 score. However, there’s a noticeable difference in the screen calibration when the Max Auto feature turns on so we suspect it changes the contrast for better sunlight legibility.

Color accuracy with the default option in the screen calibration menu wasn't the best. With Vivid mode active, the average dE2000 pretty high at 6.7 with blue-ish whites and grays and a tad over-saturated colors in general. You can perhaps tinker with the color temperature to keep the punchy colors and correct the whites. Or you can just switch over to the so-called Normal mode, which gives you a very good dE2000 of 1.5 with just a tad blue-looking whites but nothing too alarming. However, the maximum brightness fell down to 494 nits, which is a significant drop, mind you.

Other than that, we can't miss the opportunity to complain about the halos around the bottom bezel and the punch-hole. Like all LCD panels with a thin lip and cutouts, the Honor V30 Pro suffers from the same glow, which, to be honest, only a few people would notice. And it can only be seen on a bright background like white and gray.

Battery life

The handset boasts a generous 4,100 mAh battery, which has become a standard in today's flagships. Combined with an energy-efficient SoC based on the 7nm+ node, the Honor V30 Pro is a true endurance champion. We got an overall endurance rating of 107 hours with exceptional screen-on-time readings. The 3G talk time and the stand by tests were okay. If the phone had an OLED panel, these numbers could have been better.

Our battery tests were automated thanks to SmartViser, using its viSerDevice app. The endurance rating above denotes how long a single battery charge will last you if you use the Honor V30 Pro for an hour each of telephony, web browsing, and video playback daily. We've established this usage pattern so that our battery results are comparable across devices in the most common day-to-day tasks. The battery testing procedure is described in detail in case you're interested in the nitty-gritty. You can check out our complete battery test table, where you can see how all of the smartphones we've tested will compare under your own typical use.

In addition to the excellent battery performance, the handset also offers competitive fast charging with the included charging brick. The charger itself is rated at 40W and can top up the battery from 0 to 100% in just 50 minutes, while the first 80% can be reached in the first 30 minutes. That's one of the fastest charging solutions around and it's nice to have one like that with such a big battery on board.

Audio quality

We moved on to testing the wired audio output of the Honor V30 Pro. Which in this case involved hooking the USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle from the retail package to the phone's solitary port. So a disclaimer is in order that our findings might not be applicable to those planning to use a different adapter.

When hooked to an active external amplifier the V30 Pro posted excellent scores for everything but stereo separation, which was rather poor. That's still one more weak point than the majority of handsets out there, but on the upside the loudness was downright impressive.

The good news is headphones didn't cause much extra stereo crosstalk so the reading was just below average in the second part. The bad news is volume dropped significantly and was no longer a cut above the competition.

Honor V30 Pro frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.