Honor V30 Pro review

Triple rear camera setup with an emphasis on video recording

The Honor V30 Pro comes equipped with three cameras offering the standard FOVs - like every flagship phone should. However, two of those cameras are everything but ordinary. The main one comes straight from the Huawei P30 Pro and Mate 30 Pro - 40MP sensor (1/1.7") with Quad-Bayer technology (combining four adjacent pixels into one) outputting 10MP image. The sensor is paired with an f/1.6 aperture and OIS. And instead of using the standard RGB matrix, this particular sensor relies on a RYYB arrangement, which according to Honor and Huwei increases the light sensitivity and improves low-light performance.

Moving on to the ultra-wide snapper, it uses a standard 12MP sensor with f/2.2 aperture and 1.4µm pixels but the tricky part about this one is the 16:9 apsect ratio. Honor is marketing the camera as Cine Lens as it records video in native 16:9 aspect ratio and as you've probably guessed, stills come out in 16:9 as well. The lens itself is ultra-wide but not as wide as other ultra-wide cameras on the market.

The third snapper on the back is an 8MP sensor paired with f/2.4 lens and offers 3x optical zoom. The telephoto camera is also optically stabilized. And all three sensors benefit from the laser AF.

Sitting in the punch-hole of the display are two selfie cams. One is used for your everyday selfies having a 32MP sensor with f/2.0 lens while the second one is 8MP and is used for ultra-wide shots. The aperture is f/2.2.

Camera menus

The default camera app hasn't changed one bit since the previous Magic UI version and it follows the usual design language in other Honor phones. Swiping left and right switches between different camera modes and since they are a lot, Honor has tucked away most of them under "More". The general settings is located in the upper-right corner of the viewfinder.

And the Pro mode "unlocks" all of the settings you'd expect as you can see from the screenshot above.

Daylight samples

When using the main camera for daylight photography, you can expect excellent results. The colors seem true to life, dynamic range is excellent, contrast is nice and well-lit scenes look sharp with plenty of detail. Photos taken during the day are definitely flagship-worthy.

Daylight samples with the main camera

We can't really say the same for the telephoto camera, though. It's not bad by any means but images taken withby the telephoto look fuzzier than on the main camera's and offershave a bit narrower dynamic range. Otherwise you get similar color reproduction (still accurate) and there's plenty of detail too.

Daylight samples with the telephoto camera

The ultra-wide snapper, on the other hand, delivers sub-optimal experience with softer images and slightly worsean unspectacular dynamic range. Colors are still comparable to that of the main camera though.

Daylight samples with the ultra-wide camera

You should keep in mind that this particular camera comes with some caveats. First and foremost, as we mentioned earlier, 16mm lens isn’t as wide as other solutions on the market but since this is a 16:9 sensor paired with a 16mm lens, you get similar horizontal field of view as some other, wider lenses. But the vertical FOV is still less. Another thing we’ve noticed is that there’s some excellent lens correction at play here, but only when it actually works. We found that the lens correction algorithm kicks in around half of the time and we can’t find a correlation with anything. You just sometimes get a proper-looking image and sometimes it has the barrel distortion you may be used to seeing from an ultra-wide lens.

Low-light samples

Once again, the 40MP main camera did just as well in the low-light scenarios. We observed nice colors, adequate sharpness and detail, noise is kept to a minimum, colors are punchy and the dynamic range is downright impressive - even without resorting to Night mode, the HDR algorithm is quite competent. The standard Photo mode handles light sources pretty well too. You really have got to do some serious pixel-peeping to notice any issues at all.

Low-light samples with Photo mode

Turning on the Night mode will make objects pop out more as it brightens the shadows and adds a little bit of sharpness here and there. We recommend using the Night mode in almost every low-light situation as it looks better on the smartphone's screen. What we liked about this Night mode is that it's not as aggressive as other rival implementations making the photos still look natural and not like a 3D rendered scene. Although, we liked the neon lights and the street lamps better without the Night mode.

Low-light samples with Night mode

The telephoto camera during the night is a mixed bag. You can't rely on it without the Night mode as pictures come out noisy, soft, underexposed and struggles with the autofocus. Also, the camera app will sometimes crop out of the main sensor instead of using the telephoto unit but in case you get lucky, the actual telephoto unit coupled with the Night mode produce a usable image. It looks good but getting a proper shot is a challenge. You have to stand still for 5 or more seconds very still so that the software can take enough images and stack them. The OIS in this situation can help a bit so good thing Honor put one on the telephoto.

Low-light telephoto samples: Normal • Night mode • Normal • Night mode

The ultra-wide camera during the night is a mess. It's noisy, soft, and lacks detail. At least colors and dynamic range are looking good. Unfortunately, the Night mode doesn't help as much and on top of that, it crops to a standard 4:3 image with a field of view comparable to that of the main camera. Basically, there's no real reason to use the ultra-wide camera with the Night mode because you will get far better results with the main camera.

Low-light ultra-wide samples: Normal • Night mode • Normal • Night mode • Normal • Night mode

Now let's take the time to compare the phone to some of its competitors in a more controlled environment.

Honor V30 Pro against the OnePlus 7T and Realme X2 Pro in our Photo compare tool

Selfies

Selfies don't come out particularly sharp from the main 32MP camera but we are pretty happy with the overall quality - dynamic range is impressive, colors look natural and exposure is well-balanced. When the light drops, quality deteriorates and pictures become softer. There's also a dedicated Night mode for the selfie camera, which works in really dark environments but you can only expect your face to be seen, the photos still look soft. We found the selfie night mode to work a lot better on the Realme X2 Pro.

Seflies: Normal • Portrait • Normal • Portrait • Normal • Portrait

Low-light selfies: Normal • Night mode

The ultra-wide angle offers similar rendition but it offers less detail and it's a bit on the soft side.

Ultra-wide selfies

Video recording

The phone has the usual video recording capabilities every flagship has. It caps at 4K@30fps and it's one of the few phones to be able to shoot in 4K using its ultra-wide camera, which in this case is called Cine Lens. Honor markets the Cine Lens quite heavily but we found that the standard camera delivers better quality overall.

The 4K footage looks sharp, there’s no noise and dynamic range is good. Colors are quite accurate but we noticed a very strange thing happening to the moving objects - in this case, the cars. You will notice that the cars coming from the distance lack color and look like they are coming out of a black and white movie. But as they get closer, colors progressively start to pop up. We have no explanation why this may be happening but it may be down to some clever noise suppression alghorithm which desaturates smaller details in an attempt to mask noise.

The 1080p video looks similar, of course with less detail, but is also suffering from the color issue with the moving objects.

The ultra-wide camera can go up to 4K, it offers nice colors, good dynamic range and no visible noise. We didn’t spot the decolorization issue like on the main camera. However, it comes out as soft and the autofocus seems to be failing at times.

The 3x zoom video is just a crop from the main sensor and it’s nowhere near a true 4K quality as you can see for yourself. But the 8MP zoom camera most probably can’t record 4K video anyway.

And here's a handy comparison to other rivals in a more controlled environment.

2160p: Honor V30 Pro against the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and Realme X2 Pro in our Video compare tool