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Thanks to Honor for sponsoring this video. This is the Magic 8 Pro and on paper it sets a new benchmark for Android phones with it coming with the allne Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, a massive battery at up to 7100 mAh, a speaker system that uses the same high-end drivers for both the bottom and the top speakers for deeper bass, plus a new 200 megapixel telephoto camera with a sensor that promises the kind of low light performance you would normally only expect from a phone's main 1x camera. Of course, that's all just on paper. So, to put the phone to the test, we ran it through a bunch of modules in our lab, testing everything from the camera's low light abilities using our robots and silicone heads to the speed,
the battery, and the speakers, comparing it side by side next to the Galaxy S25 Ultra to see how this thing actually stacks up in the real world. First though, let's take a quick look at what's inside the box, where on this global variant, you get a case, a 100 W power brick, and a 6 amp USBC cable. Although the phone also supports up to 80 watts of wireless charging. Now, design-wise, this thing looks really similar to last year's Magic 7 Pro, except this time it's a bit more refined. The camera system definitely got bigger and thicker than before. I mean, the camera bump is now nearly as thick as the phone's body. And new for this year is what Honor is calling an AI button on the side where in addition to
giving you access to some of Honor's new AI features, it also doubles as a camera control, which speaking of the camera, this is one of the things that makes this phone stand out more so than anything else. Sure, you get a 50 megapixel main sensor and a 50 megapixel ultrawide, and you know, both of those cameras are solid just like last year's phone. But what's special about the 8 Pro is the new 200 megapixel 3.7x telephoto since it gets a big new sensor with more advanced stabilization. So for this first test, we wanted to see how the telephoto sensors compare when there's no motion whatsoever. So both the phones and the subject are completely still here with the only thing that we're changing being the
lighting from 200 lux measured at the subject's face all the way down to just 20 lux. And starting at 200 lux, which is about what you would have indoors, like in a living room, I think both phones are pretty solid. If we pixel peep, you can see that there is more grain on the Galaxy's image compared to the Honor, but I don't think it's that bad. Dropping down to 100 lux, the gap does start to show here with the Galaxy definitely picking up a lot more grain in the shadow areas. And then by the time we hit 50 lux, the Honor's advantage is clear. I mean, the images staying clean and the fine details in the shadows are still intact. And then finally, when we drop down to 20 lux, which is super dim, the difference is
massive. I mean, neither phone nails color here with the Honor leaning warmer, while the Galaxy has more of this green tint. But ignoring color for a moment and just looking at the noise, it is night and day. I mean, the Galaxy's image is covered in grain, while the Honor is surprisingly clean. Now, in the tests that we've done so far, the phones have been fully static. But one of the things that Honor is really touting with this phone is its ability to stabilize your natural handshake to reduce blur. So, we went pretty extreme with it. We had our robot do this large vertical movement where we timed the phones to both take a photo at roughly the same moment to match their framing. And you know, while neither
phone was perfect every single time, the difference in consistency is huge. The Galaxy just showed heavy motion blur across the entire sample. While on the Honor, most of the images look clean, with some of them honestly looking like the phone was standing perfectly still. Now, in addition to the lab tests, we also took both of these phones out into the real world to see how all of this translates into actual night shooting. And starting with this first image of a building at 3.7x zoom, the difference is pretty big. Now, I'm not too surprised since the 3x lens on the Galaxy isn't its strongest lens where you can just see that there's a lot more noise in the Galaxy's image and there's just less
detail overall. But when we switch over to 5x, it's basically the same story. Like even though we're cropping in on the honors image at this point, it still manages to look sharper, it has less noise, and it's preserving more detail. For example, just look at the palm tree. On the Galaxy, a lot of the detail in the leaves are basically gone. While on the Honor, they're still clearly visible. You can even see the color from the neon lights across the street showing up in the trunk of the tree. Now, you could make the argument that the Honor does look a little bit overprocessed here, especially in like the leaves. But at least compared to the Galaxy's image, I definitely prefer what
the Magic 8 Pro is producing. When you push both phones to 10x, the gap actually gets bigger. You'd expect the Galaxy to kind of have an advantage here since it does have that native 5x lens. But even with the Honor cropping in from 3.7x, the image is still sharper, most likely thanks to its resolution where the details are still being preserved. The colors look more natural. And if you look inside of the building, especially at the ceiling, you can see the individual ridges and the structure. Whereas on the Galaxy, those details are kind of blurred. Now, it's important to note that the difference isn't always this dramatic. If you have more light in a scene, like if it's daytime or even in
a well-lit area at night, they're basically the same in terms of like overall quality. And you know, one area where the Galaxy's telephoto actually has the advantage is in lens flare. Since the Magic 8 Pro can produce some significant flaring if you're shooting directly into bright lights, where on the Galaxy, it's just nowhere near as noticeable. Of course, once you switch back to the main 1x cameras, there isn't as big of a delta. They both have pretty big main sensors and as a result both produce excellent photos. And the same goes for the ultrawide cameras. While in low light, neither phone really shines since ultrawides just aren't built for
dark scenes. When you have some decent lighting, both can deliver some pretty greatl looking shots. So for me, the big takeaway is this. The main and the ultra wide cameras are pretty close between the two phones. But when you jump over to the telephoto camera, especially at night, that's where the Magic 8 Pro really stands out with the bigger sensor and the higher resolution clearly giving it an edge. But obviously, there is more to a phone than just its cameras. So, we have a bunch of additional modules that we put the phone through, and we'll start off with the chips with the Magic 8 Pro being among the first few to launch globally with the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, which at least in 3D Mark
give it a sizable advantage. While the best loop scores for each phone were actually pretty close, by the 20th loop, that new chip on the Magic 8 Pro helped it score a,000 points higher with it being better able to sustain its performance over time. Although it is worth noting that by the end of the benchmark, the 8 Pro is running 7 degrees warmer than the Galaxy. So, it can also be that Honor is just being less aggressive with its thermal limits compared to Samsung here. Now, in terms of day-to-day apps, both of these phones just fly. Like, in a lot of apps, they actually perform roughly the same. And then in a few of the apps, the Magic 8 Pro was actually faster, like loading a
5,000 Roshi in Excel or exporting a video in Lumaf Fusion, while the Galaxy was actually faster in an app like Instagram edits. So, the takeaway for me is both phones are clearly fast enough for the day-to-day stuff with that new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 likely only yielding an advantage when it comes to gaming and maybe efficiency. Which actually brings us to the battery test where on the global unit that Honor provided us, you get a massive 7,100 mAh battery. This is a big jump compared to the Galaxy's 5,000 mAh. And as you'd kind of expect, the Magic 8 Pro was able to outperform over our standard 2-day battery test where after using apps like phone, messaging, browser, and
Instagram, it pulled six points ahead after day one. And then halfway through day two, which consists of more media heavy apps like YouTube, gaming, and Spotify, the Honor had built itself a 23 point lead. Now, I always say that any phone that could reach this app cycle stage has pretty good battery life in my book. But both of these phones are just monsters in this department with the S25 Ultra going for 1 hour and 50 minutes in app cycle before finally calling it quits. At which point the Honor still had 22% left to go with that 22% going on for another 2 hours and 9 minutes before it finally died, officially slotting it second overall in our battery test rankings. Now, it's worth
noting that we tested the global variant that comes with that 7,100 mAh unit. While due to regulation, certification standards, and operator requirements, the EU version comes with a smaller 6,270 mAh battery, which, you know, is still bigger than the Galaxies, but obviously I wouldn't expect it to last quite as long as this global variant. Moving on though, let's talk about the display, which is an area that Honor always puts a bunch of emphasis on. not just in terms of the brightness with them claiming up to 6,000 nits of peak brightness like in a small little window, but also on overall eye comfort. So, in this first display module, we're doing a 20-minute global brightness test
where the entire screen is white instead of a small portion of it. And we measure how well each phone can sustain its brightness over time. Where through the first 12 minutes, the Galaxy is just over 200 nits brighter than the Honor was. But then by minute 13, it started to hit its thermal limits, dimming down pretty aggressively at one point to less than half of what the Honor was at. But then eventually the Galaxy actually recovered once it had time to cool down. So over the full 20inut run, the Honor ended up averaging 830 nits of brightness while the Galaxy was at 973, which puts them fairly close overall. But the Galaxy does get the edge, as it does when it comes to screen reflectivity, where the Galaxy's
anti-reflective coating is still the best in the industry. You can immediately see how much of a difference it makes compared to Honor's more standard coating. When it comes to eye comfort though, this is where the Honor pulls ahead. On the software side, you get features like AI defocus, which is designed to help reduce eye strain. And then at the hardware level, you get things like faster PWM dimming, where the Magic 8 Pro is at 4,320 Hz compared to the Galaxy's 480, which for people who are sensitive to flicker can make a difference. So, you know, overall, I think both displays are excellent and honestly among the best you could get on a flagship. they just prioritize different things. Now, in terms of the speakers, both sound really
good. However, the Magic 8 Pro has the advantage of not only using that same high-end driver for the bottom and the top speaker, so they're not using like a lower quality speaker for the earpiece, but it also has a bigger sound chamber to help the speakers effectively move more air and produce deeper bass. We also ran frequency sweeps with our Class 2 sound level meter to see how these speaker systems perform across the frequency range. And you can see that the Magic 8 Pro is putting out more in the low-end for deeper bass while also having more presence through the mid-range. Moving on, let's talk about the software. And you can't really do that in today's day and age without
talking about all the AI that Honor is packing in here. So, you still get all the photo editing tools from last year like magic eraser, outpainting, and reflection removal, but this year, Honor also added this dedicated AI button where you can customize it to trigger different actions. So, by default, it gives you suggestions based on what's on your screen. But you can also set it to launch a photo agent where you can have the phone handle the AI editing stuff for you automatically. But one of the cooler features on here is what Honor is calling magic color where you can give it a reference photo with a certain style that you like and it'll actually try to tune the camera towards that. So
that way photos you take will match that look or at least get close to it. And then beyond the AI features, the phone is running on Android 16 with Honor's Magic OS 10, which has gotten really refined over the years with the most important thing being that Honor is committing to 7 years of software updates in the UK and European markets. So, you know, overall, the phone has a lot going for it. And you know, at the very least, I think it's a compelling option in a world where Android flagships have gotten really, really good. But anyways, that is it for me in this video. Big thanks to Honor for sponsoring the showcase.
