The Honor Magic 5 Pro was finally unveiled at this year's edition of MWC Barcelona, and we got our hands on the new device ahead of the big reveal (head over to our Honor Magic 5 Pro review for our full verdict).
The fast-growing Chinese manufacturer has emerged from the shadow of its old parent company, Huawei, with a mission to compete against the likes of Samsung and Apple in the premium smartphone market – and the Magic 5 Pro could well be the phone to help Honor do just that.
Honor made its first premium move last year with the excellent Honor Magic 4 Pro – the brand's first bona fide premium smartphone to launch outside of China – and its follow-up device, stylized as the Honor Magic5 Pro, debuted at MWC 2023 alongside the foldable Honor Magic Vs (head to our hands-on Honor Magic Vs review for our first impressions of that device).
So, in light of the phone's official announcement, we’ve put together this one-stop-shop guide to all details worth knowing about the Honor Magic 5 Pro. Below, you’ll find information on its camera setup, design and performance features, as well as confirmed details about its price.
Honor Magic 5 Pro: Price and availability
Honor officially unveiled the Honor Magic 5 series at MWC Barcelona 2023, with the Honor Magic 5 Pro going on sale at Honor, Three, Amazon, Argos, Very and Currys from April 28 in the UK.
Pre-orders for the device began on April 19 from Honor or Three, with Honor offering £80 off the phone's £949.99 retail price if you applied code AM5PRO80 at the company's official online store (this offer may still be live). The phone likewise hit shelves in Europe on April 28 for €1199.
For comparison, the Honor Magic 4 Pro also retailed for £949.99 at launch, and went on sale at a similar time (May 13, 2022). The Honor Magic 5 Lite is also available to buy from £329.99 / €369.
As with its predecessor, the Magic 5 Pro is unlikely to become available in the US. Huawei sold Honor in 2020 to avoid seeing its one-time sub-brand placed on the US import blacklist, and while there’s no legal reason why Honor can't sell its latest flagship across the Atlantic, it’s not something we’ve seen the burgeoning brand do as of yet.
Honor Magic 5 Pro: News and specs
The Honor Magic 5 Pro arrives boasting a veritable smorgasbord of premium specs.
For starters, its predecessor's "Eye of Muse" design for the rear cameras remains, as does the same 6.81-inch LTPO display topped with quad-curved glass. However, in keeping with the brand's new human-centric design philosophy, the Honor Magic 5 Pro's 120Hz display is certified circadian-friendly, which essentially means it's not too taxing on the eyes. By mimicking the dynamic dimming of natural light, the Honor Magic 5 Pro reduces eye strain by 18% (compared to other premium smartphones), giving you 30 minutes more sleep, Honor says.
Sound too good to be true? We thought so, too. But Honor consulted with Dr. Glen Jeffery, Professor of Neuroscience at UCL, to back up its claims regarding the Magic 5 Pro's sleep-friendly credentials, and Jeffery concluded that "Honor's novel technology may be able to help side-step [sleep disruption]. By regulating blue light in the Magic 5 Pro and Honor 90, Honor is taking an important step in this direction." Impressive stuff. Head over to our hands-on Honor 90 review for our early verdict on the latter phone, which uses the same display technology.
Under the hood, the Magic 5 Pro's Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset marks a step up from the Gen 1 processor found in the Magic 4 Pro. Honor has also added new Wi-Fi and Bluetooth infrastructure to its new flagship, which should boost Wi-Fi performance (and reduce latency) significantly. See the full Magic 5 Pro spec sheet below:
This is a device that has been designed based on insights about YOU. #UnleashthePowerofMagic with the all-new #HONORMagic5 Pro. From the floating display to computational photography to super large battery, and more! #HONORMWC2023 #MWC23 #Snapdragon pic.twitter.com/4m4fiWfBdAFebruary 27, 2023
The Honor Magic 5 Pro gets a hefty 5100mAh5 battery, too, that supposedly yields over 12 hours of battery life with heavy usage (for comparison, that's more than the S23 Ultra and iPhone 14 Pro Max can manage).
On cameras – which is where this phone will likely make headlines – the Honor Magic 5 Pro packs a 50MP wide lens, a 50MP telephoto lens, a 50MP ultra wide lens, and a 12MP ultra wide lens on the front.
The key differences between the Magic 5 Pro and its premium competitors, though, are the former's various special photography modes. One of them is AI motion-sensing capture, which allows you to snap impressive stills from motion-heavy movements like dancing, jumping or the shuffling of a deck of cards.
Honor worked closely with Qualcomm to achieve such a high level of processing power, with the latter boosting the cache interval by more than six times – from 240 to 1500 milliseconds – to enable AI Motion Sensing on the Magic 5 Pro.
Check out AI motion-sensing in action via the tweet below:
The #HONORMagic5 Pro is blowing our minds with its AI feature – look at how it automatically captures a moment of breaking a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS™! Uncover what else it can do to #UnleashThePowerofMagic at #MWC23! @GWR #GuinnessWorldRecords pic.twitter.com/d0fy7FVZWNFebruary 13, 2023
We'll be testing out AI motion-sensing capture (and the rest of the phone's photography features) once we've spent more time with the Magic 5 Pro in the coming months. In the meantime, head over to our aforementioned review to see how the phone has fared in our testing thus far.
