Huawei nova 11 Pro review

Camera system mostly unchanged

The nova 11 Pro brings few changes to the camera system that we saw on the nova 10 Pro, and that's not necessarily a bad thing because the old model had a very unique setup, particularly in terms of selfies. Indeed, the 11 Pro features the same 60MP ultrawide camera on the front, joined by a 50-ish-mm equivalent portrait module. The rear, meanwhile, has lost what we perceive to be an unneeded 2MP depth sensor but retains the 50MP primary unit and the 8MP autofocusing ultrawide.

The primary front camera is based on a 60MP sensor with 0.6µm pixels. It's placed behind a 17mm equivalent lens with an f/2.4 aperture, and this camera supports autofocus. The other selfie camera uses an 8MP sensor paired with a 52mm f/2.2 lens for 2x optical zoom. Autofocus is available, too.

On the back, the primary camera uses a 50MP sensor with 1.0µm pixels. The lens has a 24mm focal length and an f/1.9 aperture, which is a minor specs change from the previous generation's f/1.8. A more important actual change is the addition this time around of a laser autofocus module. There's no OIS here, though.

The 8MP ultawide camera on the nova 11 Pro's back features a 16mm f/2.2 lens. While 8MP doesn't sound like much, this camera's autofocusing capability does make it a more versatile module than the numbers would suggest.

The camera app is the same one you'd find on all Huaweis, and is operated essentially like any other camera app - swiping left and right switches different camera modes, a 'More' pane keeps the extra modes in one place, the zoom selector is nearby while quick toggles at the far end operate the flash, filters, and AI mode. Yes, Huawei's AI camera recognizes and tunes settings for a ton of scenes and is nowhere as aggressive as it used to be with phones in the past.

There's a Pro mode, too, where you can adjust parameters yourself, but only for the primary camera on the back. Those include ISO (50 to 409,600), shutter speed (1/4000s to 30s), exposure compensation (-4 to +4EV in 1/3 stop increments), and white balance (presets and specific light temperature). You can also choose the metering mode (matrix, center-weighted, and spot) and the focus mode (single, continuous, and manual). If the phone thinks you messed up the exposure, an icon will pop up to warn you. By the way, Pro mode is available for video as well, and the maximum ISO there is 6,400.

Camera UI

Daylight photo quality

Daylight photos from the nova 11 Pro's main camera came out quite nice. Detail is excellent and, much like on the nova 10 Pro, has a very organic look that makes intricate random textures appear natural and not overprocessed. Noise is pretty much nonexistent.

Dynamic range is great, and the tonal extremes are developed well while also maintaining high overall contrast. The auto white balance generally returns accurate results, and colors have the right amount of pop, without going overboard.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x)

Some extra saturation can be obtained if you shoot with the AI toggle on, which will typically give you extra punch in the greens. We wouldn't say it's needed, but then again it's not an overly extreme saturation boost, so both options are valid.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), AI camera on

The 50MP high-res mode has two sub-modes - an AI one, and a regular one. The AI mode takes 3 seconds per shot and uses image stacking to try and squeeze some more detail out of a scene. Depending on how closely you look, you might be able to spot marginally better resolved detail than in the regular 12.5MP images, but ultimately we don't think it's worth it.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), 50MP AI

The regular 50MP mode is even less so - as best as we can tell, these are simply the 12.5MP images upscaled to 50MP.

Daylight samples, main camera (1x), 50MP

It turns out that the nova 11 Pro can extract more detail from that sensor, just doesn't quite bother with it for the 50MP modes. Looking at 2x zoom shots we're seeing very good results given the lack of a dedicated zoom camera, and these look a lot better from up close than the high-res shots above. Oddly enough, white balance tends to be off on the 2x zoom shots, with a fairly consistent lean to green. That's our only complaint here, and it's easily fixable after the fact.

Daylight samples, main camera (2x zoom)

The ultrawide has a markedly different color rendition, particularly noticeable in outdoor shots where it renders skies in a distinctly cyan hue, unlike the much more true-to-life presentation of the primary camera. Other than that, it does capture solid images with good detail considering the relatively low resolution. Dynamic range is also respectable. A much appreciated feature is AF that lets you draw the viewer's attention to a nearby subject.

Daylight samples, ultrawide camera

Close-ups

There's also a Super macro mode that offers three levels of magnification (0.8x, or native; 1x, or matching the main camera's FoV; and a rather extreme 2x), but uses the ultrawide camera for all of them. The middle option is what we consider a reasonable compromise between per-pixel image quality and coverage. Indeed, these look great at fit-to-screen magnification and are perfectly acceptable when viewed up close.

Close-up samples, ultrawide camera

Low-light photo quality

Low-light photos from the nova 11 Pro's main camera are very good. In the default Photo mode there's some behind-the-scenes Night mode action, and we're getting well-exposed shots with good development of the shadows and competent highlight restoration. Colors remain vivid, with perhaps a touch extra warmth with certain types of street lights, but nothing too objectionable. Detail is good overall, and noise is nowhere to be seen.

Low-light samples, main camera (1x)

We observed next to no difference between Photo mode and Night mode shots on the nova 10 Pro, but there's a slightly bigger distinction on the 11 Pro. While still very subtle, the differences include better shadow development and some extra sharpness in some scenes in Night mode. Perhaps it's worth switching to that when you're presented with a particularly dark or contrasty scene.

Low-light comparison, main camera (1x), Night mode

Per-pixel detail isn't great when shooting at 2x zoom in the dark, but viewing these images at fit-to-screen levels masks those deficiencies, and lets you enjoy the good tonal development and vivid colors.

Low-light samples, main camera (2x zoom)

Night mode does improve the shadows further, so it's again the better option for darker scenes.

Low-light comparison, main camera (2x zoom), Night mode

The ultrawide camera has no dedicated Night mode capability, but it does manage to put up a decent performance with whatever under-the-hood low-light processing Huawei has baked into it. The dimmest of scenes will be quite soft if you look at them at 1:1, but better-lit scenes will have good detail. Dynamic range is also more than adequate given the hardware, and colors don't suffer from desaturation in the dark. Overall, not bad.

Low-light samples, ultrawide camera

Once you're done with the real-world samples, head over to our Photo compare tool to see how the Huawei nova 11 Pro stacks up against the competition.

Huawei nova 11 Pro against the Galaxy A54 and the Motorola Edge 40 in our Photo compare tool

Portraits

The nova 11 Pro offers you three magnifications in its Portrait mode - the main camera's native 1x, and then also 2x and 3x. In summary, quality is excellent at 1x, okay at 2x, and barely passable at 3x, though shooting distance and perspective do improve the longer the zoom level. In that sense, the 2x mode is possibly a reasonable compromise. The subject detection is good, but the blur level is a bit excessive, readily revealing its artificial nature. While there are different blur effects, there's no effect strength setting, unfortunately.

Portrait mode samples, 1x

Portrait mode samples, 2x

Portrait mode samples, 3x

Selfies

The nova 11 Pro is big on selfies; there's no denying that. The 60MP primary front camera delivers on the promise and captures excellent photos, whether at the native field of view (labeled 'W' in the viewfinder) or in the 1x crop mode. Detail is excellent; skin tones are pleasing, dynamic range is very good. The autofocus capability, meanwhile, means that you can count on sharp faces regardless of shooting distance.

Selfie samples, W

Selfie samples, 1x

The 2x portrait camera offers a shooting distance just close enough that you might be able to fit your entire head when shooting at arm's length (if you stretch out a little) in landscape orientation. It captures nicely sharp detail and manages to throw backgrounds a little out of focus for some natural separation.

Selfie samples, 2x

One weird observation here was that white balance tended to vary for the same scene between landscape and portrait orientation, with vertical shots often ending up cooler.

Selfie samples, 2x, vertical orientation

Video recording

The nova 11 Pro records video up to 4K30 with all four of its cameras (including both selfie units). 4K60 is a no-go, but 1080p60 is an option on all but the rear ultrawide camera. Stabilization is available on all cameras (except for the 2x selfie one, apparently) and is always on and cannot be disabled.

As usual, you get to enable the more efficient h.265 codec or use the default h.264. That said, the nova 11 Pro does tend to use very low bit rates in some instances anyway, even when h.264 is the codec of choice. Our 4K30 balcony scene, for example, is encoded with a bit rate of 17.5Mbps - that's a typical 1080p30 value. On the other hand, when shooting handheld for our stabilization test in the park, we did get a vastly more sensible 40Mbps bit rate, though that scene is, indeed, packed with intricate detail.

Anyway, the 4K footage from the main camera could be better when it comes to detail - it's quite soft, actually. Color rendition is good, though, both in terms of white balance and saturation. The contrast is pretty high, and that doesn't play well with dynamic range, making the roll-off at the tonal extremes look pretty harsh - an unremarkable performance here.

2x zoom clips make the softness all the more apparent, even without pixel peeping.

The ultrawide isn't much better overall. The detail is quite soft; there's some fairly prominent noise, and shadows and highlights can be a bit rough, once again.

In the dark, the main camera behaves quite well, given the circumstances. It doesn't get any sharper, of course, but it doesn't get a lot softer either, and that's good enough to make it stand up well to competition for low-light capture. Dynamic range is average, so you can expect clipped highlights and haloing around light sources, but areas of more balanced light are rendered well. There is some loss of color, but it's not too dramatic, and saturation remains okay.

The ultrawide's clips in the dark are quite soft and noisy, though perhaps usable in a pinch.

Stabilization is okay on the nova 11 Pro, but could be better. It will do a good job when you're pointing the phone in one direction, and it will pan smoothly, but the walking shake does still show up fairly prominently in the footage.

It's mostly the same story on the ultrawide, only it adds some focus hunting to the list of things to worry about.

Selfie video capture is one of the nova 11 Pro's standout features - both because of its 4K30 capability on both cameras and the fact that it has two cameras in the first place, one of them ultrawide. Despite all those promising premises, the results aren't too exciting. Detail is only so-so in both the native FoV (called 'W' for 'wide' in the viewfinder) and the 0.8x 'zoom' setting. Dynamic range is fairly limited too, but at least colors are fairly accurate.

That last bit doesn't hold true on the 2x camera, which exhibits a strong purple cast. That's in addition to the fact that no matter how lanky you are, your arms are unlikely to be long enough that you'd be able to fit your mug in the frame at the 52mm equivalent focal length.

Here's a glimpse of how the Huawei nova 11 Pro compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Huawei nova 11 Pro against the Galaxy A54 and the Motorola Edge 40 in our Video compare tool