Let’s take a look at HONOR’s new phone. No, it’s not their flagship phone – but the one with AI Aesthetics. Yes, that’s what they call it. I have no idea where the AI part comes into play.
But hey, this phone is actually a very competitive phone. In today’s video, I’m going to share with you the reasons why I think the HONOR 200 Pro should be on your list.
Design
So, let’s talk about the design. There are two colors available, Ocean Cyan which I like the color, and also Moonlight White which I actually prefer the marbly texture. We can even touch and feel the matte finish.
The front and back of the phone are curved into the frame, and I actually like the grip of this phone. Plus, the corners of the phone are also rounded – making it very comfortable to hold.
Again, I’m not sure which part of this design is “AI Aesthetics”, but I personally do like the design despite the marketing buzzword.
Screen
Now, the screen of this phone is rather simple. It’s a 6.78-inch OLED screen with a 2700×1224 pixels in resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. Slightly higher than usual 1080p, and as mentioned earlier – slightly curved display too. Yeah, it’s mostly impossible to use a tempered glass screen protector for the HONOR 200 Pro. However, HONOR did pre-install a piece of hydrogel screen protector on the phone.
Now, the screen quality of the HONOR 200 Pro isn’t exactly the best. It can achieve 100% sRGB color gamut, but only 86.17% of DCI-P3. And yes, this is already in the Vivid color profile.
Its maximum brightness, we can get around 1150 nits – and that’s actually quite okay for a smartphone of this range in 2024. Still, I’ve seen better screens for phones in this price range.
There is this huge capsule-like notch at the top of the screen. Whether you like it or not, it depends on the functionality – and we’ll talk about it later.
Also, the under-display fingerprint scanner is placed very low, making it not ergonomic to use at all.
Performance
Now, one of the most interesting thing about the HONOR 200 Pro is the chipset. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 that was announced about like 2-3 months ago. Now, there are many controversies around the 8s Gen 3 – but as shown in our gaming test, it’s functionally quite good.
Since the MagicOS doesn’t have a built-in FPS reader, I absolutely have no idea what FPS it is running. Then comes War Thunder – that game has an fps meter built-in and I realized the performance is worse than the 8 Gen 2 and the 8 Gen 3.
Looking back now, I understand why many people say the 8s Gen 3 is controversial. Its name is within the premium “8” series and has the moniker “Gen 3”, but in fact, the Adreno 735 GPU in the 8s Gen 3 is worse than the 8 Gen 2.
Battery life
How about the battery life then? The 5,200mAh battery in it – no idea what’s the watt-hour value since they don’t disclose that information, but the battery life in our standardized test – only lasts for 11 hours and 37 minutes only. Yikes, that’s worse than the other Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phones that we tested last year.
Charging speed
As for the charging time, it’s surprisingly good. It comes with a proprietary 100W charger in the box, and it takes about 45 minutes to charge completely. Not the fastest, but decent.
What’s interesting is that when I plugged in my Ugreen charger, it charged the HONOR 200 Pro in the almost exact charging curve, only about 3 minutes longer than the stock 100W charger.
This is because the HONOR 200 Pro can support up to about 50W-ish via USB-PD. Though, this only shows that the 100W charger only boosts up at the beginning of the charging cycle, and overall only speeds up about 3 minutes of overall charging time.
Software
Now, the software is a rather simple one. It’s running on MagicOS 8.0 on top of Android 14 – and honestly, I think it just looks and feels more or less like MagicOS from many years ago. The settings menu is a bit complicated as many things are just scattered all over the place.
For example, if I want to change any app’s power consumption settings, I have to find it in the individual app but not the battery setting menu.
And here is where some AI features start to come out. For whatever reason, this Magic Capsule feature is considered an AI feature. The supported apps is – as far as I know – first-party apps and Spotify being the exception.
There are some other features like the Magic Portal that looks cool in theory, but I think they’re rather limited in terms of compatible apps.
Camera
Okay, let’s talk about the cameras. The camera bump is in a unique oval shape. It could be compressed to be even smaller – but it’s still okay. Both the main and telephoto cameras are 50MP sensors which does sound good.
To have a look at all the pictures taken with the HONOR 200 Pro, watch our video at the top of this review.
Few more things to mention
Okay, a few more things to mention – this phone is using a USB 2.0 port at the bottom, and also no display output over its USB-C port.
It does have a dual nano SIM card slot and an IR blaster, but there is no microSD card slot and no audio jack.
Should you buy the HONOR 200 Pro?
Okay, should you buy the HONOR 200 Pro? That’s the question that we want to know as well. At RM2,699, I think this is a rather competitive price as many other Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 phones are around this price point too.
Honestly speaking, this phone is at a decent price and offers enough to justify the price. Is it a good value? I’d say it’s pretty good.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
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