Honor 200 Pro Review: The Portrait Of A Modern Phone

This week saw the global launch of the Honor 200 and Honor 200 Pro smartphones globally. Previously available in China, I’ve spent time with the Honor 200 Pro to find out how it stands out from the competition.

It may sound like it from the title, but the Honor 200 Pro is not a flagship handset. It gets close, and at £700 here in the UK, it’s going up against the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy S24 and Google’s Pixel 8—in other words, it’s the lowest end of the highest tier in the market definitions. There are several features that are worth noting that should help you decide if the Honor smartphone is the one you want.

A Smaller Dragon Inside

First up is the choice of the chipset. The Honor 200 Pro comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8S Gen 3. Unlike other manufacturers, the “S” designation does not represent a mid-cycle upgrade (the 8 Gen 3+). Instead, it should be seen as the 8 Gen 3 for the mid-range instead of the flagship.

While the single-core performance of this chipset is broadly similar to last year’s 8 Gen 2 or Google’s Tensor G3, the multi-core performance is lower. If you push your phone to the edge, you will notice the 200 Pro falling short, although it will cope admirably with your day-to-day needs.

Search And Share With Artificial Intelligence

Honor continues to use MagicOS built on top of Android 14. The 200 Pro will receive three years of software updates and four years of security updates, notably shorter than its S24 and Pixel 8 competition. The current version comes with Honor’s latest AI software.

The usual ‘recommended app or action’ tools can be found here; you have AI Suggestions for apps you may want to open next, Magic Capsule to show relevant notifications and AI-suggested toggles for settings you can access from the Control Centre.

Yet it is Magic Portal that feels the most AI out of all the tools. You can select text or images and drag them to the hot spot at either edge of the display. The 200 Pro will use AI to present you with a list of applications that can use these snippets—dropping text into a notepad or a document, sharing an image on a social network, or searching with the content.

More Than A Photo Filter

Pairing up camera hardware with new AI routines is a common approach many manufacturers take in 2024. Honor is not bucking this trend, and all the expected tools can be found here; I’d pick out the AI Motion Sensing process that takes the best pictures possible during “action” moments.

As with most Honor handsets, the camera is tuned to offer more vibrant colors and pop in the pictures, adding relatively heavy contrast in image processing.

Honor has decided to push portrait mode in this handset. Pairing up with Studio Harcourt, the Honor 200 Pro offers three “bespoke professional portrait modes” that can be used to enhance your pictures. These replicate the look and feel of the studio. While I am unfamiliar with their work (at least by name), these three filters (Harcourt Vibrant, Harcourt Color and Harcourt Classic) all offer a different flavor to pictures taken.

I’d argue that the Harcourt Classic mode sells the camera system by reproducing the black-and-white style of Harcourt Studio. Yes, these can be tweaked from regular images and through post-processing, but most users will want a one-and-done option when they take a portrait, and this is it. Curiously, it’s not available through the selfie camera, which feels like a missed opportunity.

Overall, though, the Harcourt additions to the camera suite are the high point of the handset and deliver imagery that belies the price point of the 200 Pro.

The Honor 200 Pro, for all that it wants to be a premium smartphone, isn’t quite there. Yet, it still delivers more than the various midrange handsets that purport to deliver a powerful flagship-like experience. It’s a rather narrow window to land in, made all the more awkward with Honor’s choice to focus on the portrait mode of the main camera.

If you think of this as an all-rounder, it’s easier to consider the competition. But as a specialist phone? There are very few cameras that are this focused on portraits. If that’s you, Honor has put together a package that is as near flagship as possible, at a good price, and offers you the camera you want.

Now read my review of Honor’s actual 2024 flagship, the Magic6 Pro…