The Best Honor Phones of 2023

The Best Honor Phones of 2023

The Honor series of phones has carved its own place in the smartphone industry, producing handsets that target excellent performance on a mid-range budget. We’ve gathered together the best Honor phones to help you find the right device for your needs, by assessing their performance, visuals and more.

If one of these phones is the handset for you, check out our collection of Honor phone deals across a range of storage sizes and styles.

Honor 90

Honor phones consistently demonstrate that great performance doesn’t have to cost a lot. The Honor 90 is another testament to this philosophy, and stands out by offering one of the best display experiences you’ll see in this price range.

The display in question is a crisp, beautiful 6.67” AMOLED screen. There’s no doubt that Honor went all-in here, producing a visual showcase that dazzles when gaming, watching films, or just generally browsing on the device. Having access to a display of this quality, on a mid-range smartphone, is a triumph.

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The Honor 90 also impresses when viewing its display outdoors. 1600 nits peak brightness ensures every detail is crystal-clear, even when the sun is beaming down. This positions the Honor 90 as a truly versatile device, its display performance never diminishing in different viewing conditions.

Processing performance on the Honor 90, likewise, is supremely solid. You’re not getting blockbuster speeds on this handset, but the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 ‘Accelerated Edition’ chipset very much lives up to its name. Games run smoothly from the moment they’re started, and swapping between menus feels seamless.

It’s impossible to not talk about this device without highlighting the significant upgrade to the camera array. The main lens is an astonishing 200MP behemoth, capable of capturing scenes with extremely high pixel density. As a result, when cropping these photos, very little detail is lost in the process.

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This crowning jewel is flanked by a 12MP ultrawide and 2MP sensor, which also impress when taking vast panoramic shots. Combining these cameras together creates a potent array that, particularly in the mid-range bracket, offers a lot of value.

If you’ve considered getting an Honor smartphone but not yet taken the plunge, the Honor 90 is an excellent entry point. Beautifully vibrant visuals and solid performance work together to create a device that challenges what the very best mid-range handsets have to offer.

Honor 90 Lite

For anyone seeking a budget-friendly option in the Honor range, the 90 Lite is a handset to take notice of.

Rather impressively, every element of the Honor 90 Lite has been brushed with a level of quality that belittles its budget price tag. Yes, you’re not seeing top-tier performance across the board, but Honor took note of those features that needed to stand out, and accomplished real quality with them.

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First off is the rich 6.7” LCD screen, and it really pushes this technology to its limit. Contrasts and colours aren’t quite as pronounced as other OLED counterparts, yet the Honor 90 Lite really shone with the level of detail on offer. The 90Hz refresh rate helps maintain a silky-smooth performance when scrolling and viewing videos, which is a significant bonus.

The lack of thick bezels further accentuates this phone’s high visual quality, enabling the pristine display to reach to the very edge of the frame. The Honor 90 Lite isn’t curved like you’ll see on some phones; instead, it has a sharp, rectangular body that looks, and feels, exceptional.

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The Honor 90 Lite’s lower price range also makes it a great way to get into the Android 13 space. General performance on the Honor 90 Lite feels slick, thanks to its custom MagicOS user interface, which makes it incredibly easy to make use of Android 13’s deeper customisation features, such as Material You.

We mentioned at the start that the Honor 90 Lite is a phone deserving of attention, and its overall package proved this to be the case. Superb visuals, smooth performance, and great software features make the Honor 90 Lite a must-have handset if budget is a priority.

Honor 70

We highlighted in our Honor 70 review that this phone excels because of how effectively it balances performance in its mid-range category. There are no elements in the Honor 70 that have had corners cut; everything from its design to the cameras look, and perform, like a premium top-tier smartphone.

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This premium quality starts with the Honor 70’s core design. Its wrap-around, curved 6.67” display ensures every inch is covered by the OLED panel, which can output at a crisp 1080p HD. When this display works alongside the Honor 70’s 120Hz refresh rate, the end result is a smooth, sublime-looking viewing experience.

Photos taken with the Honor 70’s triple-camera array burst with detail on this 1080p screen, whether it’s a landscape shot with the 50MP ultra-wide, or up-close with the main 54MP lens. Processing performance supports the Honor 70’s photography muscle with fast loading times for its editing software, courtesy of the Snapdragon 788G Plus chipset.

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The Honor 70 is a contender for the best Honor phone for good reason. With it, you’re getting a device that performs brilliantly, without the premium price tag that can come with the tech it offers.

Honor X7a

Like other Honor phones before it, the budget-range price of the Honor X7a doesn’t mean a significant reduction in performance or visual quality, instead striking that fine line between the two.

On the visual front, you’re getting a 6.75” LCD display with a resolution of 720p. Whilst the detail this display can produce isn’t as vivid as that on an OLED, games and videos still look superb, thanks in large part to the 90Hz refresh rate on offer helping keep things running smoothly.

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Loading times when using the X7a are also kept as smooth as possible thanks to the Mediatek Helio G37 chipset. This eight-core CPU gives the X7a a lot of processing power to work with be it when playing games, watching streams, or swapping between tasks. The 6GB RAM available gives the Helio G37 chipset an extra performance boost too, by helping with its processing workload.

The photography chops of the X7a are impressive given its budget moniker as well. Its camera is fronted by a high-fidelity 50MP lens, which is capable of capturing detailed photos from a distance, or in close proximity. Alongside it are a 5MP ultra-wide, 2MP macro and 2MP depth sensor, with the 8MP wide selfie camera heading up the pack on the phone’s front. Pixel density of these cameras may not be the highest, but what ultimately makes the X7a an excellent choice for photographers is the variety of shots it can take.

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The verdict on the Honor X7a is very positive. Performance in this price bracket is superb, as is the visual quality on display. With it also being possible to use the X7a for almost a full day thanks to its huge 6000mAh battery, there’s a great deal to love here.

Honor X8a

Moving up from the X7a in the budget to mid-range arena is the Honor X8a. At its core, it shares many of the features found in its sibling handset, such as the LCD display, 90Hz refresh rate and Android 12 operating system, but some significant improvements stand out that shape the X8a into a highly valuable option.

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As mentioned previously, the X8a has great visual parity with other phones in its range; however, if detail and clarity is integral to your phone experience, the X8a includes a 1080p HD resolution, which per-pixel, offers greater fidelity. This is also excellent news for the X8a’s camera suite, as each photo can be showcased with more vivid colours, be it landscape or portrait.

Processing times see an increase on the X8a, delivered by the Mediatek Helio G88 chipset. Gaming, photography, and productivity are all faster, with less stutter when switching on-the-go. It’s in the area of photography that the X8a demonstrates one of its most impressive features: the 100MP main camera.

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Higher megapixel counts are hugely important when cropping images to ensure less detail is lost. So if you’re someone who enjoys taking large landscape photos and scales them down later, the Honor X8a is more than up to the task.

Honor Magic 5 Lite 5G

Rounding out the Magic 5 range from Honor is the Magic 5 Lite 5G. Instantly, this lightweight phone is beautiful to look at: the curved 6.67” OLED screen dazzles, and is joined by a pristine glass rear panel. Honor have gone all-out with the visual quality of the Magic 5 Lite, making it a winner for gaming and watching videos.

Navigating the Magic 5 Lite is also a delight, in large part due to the display’s 120Hz refresh rate, which keeps scrolling and moving between apps silky-smooth. As you would expect from an OLED panel too, contrasts and black levels are exceptional; a huge bonus if you enjoy night-time photography in particular.

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The Magic 5 Lite doesn’t hold back when it comes to performance either. It wouldn’t do much good if its chipset couldn’t back up the excellent visuals on display, but that is not an issue here, thanks to the Snapdragon 695.

Gaming performance is lightning-fast, as is navigating the menus and jumping between apps. What we end up with is a seamless experience from booting the phone up, to turning it off.

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In the camera department, the Magic 5 Lite’s brilliant display really comes into its own. The main 64MP lens can take photos that capture high levels of detail, and on the Magic 5 Lite’s screen, these photos can be shown off with true-to-life colour accuracy.

5G wireless connectivity is the final cherry on top of a very good cake. Light, fast and visually stunning, the Magic 5 Lite comes highly recommended as your mobile companion device.

Honor Magic 4 Pro

The Honor Magic 4 Pro is a standout in the Magic line of phones, particularly impressing with its camera system and design. It boasts an eye-catching circular camera array containing a wide and ultra-wide set of lenses at 50MP, a powerful telephoto periscope camera lens, and a 12MP selfie camera.

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This impressive setup is backed up by a wide selection of photo modes, including Pro video, which provides manual control over shutter speed, white balance, and more. Captured photos and videos are viewable on the crisp 6.8” OLED display with a refresh rate of 120Hz for smooth performance.

The Magic 4 Pro also shines with its brightness levels, capable of reaching 1000 nits, showcasing the bright colours and inky blacks of the OLED panel in all their glory.

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The 4500mAh battery can be topped up with lightning-fast 100W charging, getting the Magic 4 Pro back to 100% in around ten minutes.

If you’re still unsure which Honor phone is right for you, find out more about the brand in our guide to Honor.