Verdict
The Honor Magic 6 Lite is an attractive handset with a very fair cost . The battery is excellent and the display is lovely , but it ’s not the quick in its class , and unimpressive video carrying into action lets the side down a little . Still , this phone delivers enough to be well worth the cost .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
honour ’s first discharge of 2024 comes in the form of the Magic 6 Lite , the most affordable French telephone in its sixth generation Magic - series . It retail for just £ 350 in the UK , but like all Honor phones , it ’s unlikely to make its way to the States .
The marque ’s pricier and more able telephone set will be on the way before long enough , but for now , this attractive and budget - favorable equipment does plenty to whet our appetite .
Just like its herald , the Honor Magic 6 Lite does n’t search or feel like a budget machine , and you could easy mistake it for a flagship offering at a coup d’oeil . The independent giveaway is how light it is , mainly due to the function of a polycarbonate skeletal frame , but even that could be viewed as a overconfident both in terms of its portability and durability .
Compared to theMagic 5 Lite , the newer model features a similar pattern but has seen plenty of upgrade on the inside . It now packs a faster CPU , the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 , and a new 108MP independent camera . It also features a encouragement in the RAM and storage department , now come with 8 GB memory and 256 GB storage as standard , at least in Europe .
At this price , though , there ’s mint of competition . The formidablePixel 7acan currently be had for only a little extra , while theGalaxy A34andPoco X5 Prooffer compelling alternative at the same price . I was intrigued to see how the Honor Magic 6 Lite would stack up , so I ’ve been living with it for the past pair of week ; here ’s what I ’ve learn .
Design
The first thing that struck me about the Magic 6 Lite is how fancy it looks , considering its budget - friendly request toll . I was commit the Midnight Black colourway , which has an almost holographical shimmer to the frosted chalk rear panel and is accented with gold trim around its doughnut - form camera array .
The equipment has a luxurious look about it , and it find just as good . The rearward panel is velvety to the touch , and the curved sides make the headphone feel exceptionally slim in the hand .
coalesce this slender excogitation with a lightweight caparison , weighing just 185 g , and almost no camera extrusion whatsoever , and you have a machine that you ’ll barely acknowledge in your pocket . It ’s quite refreshing when you ’re used to lug about a squat flagship smartphone .
The Midnight Black modeling is already quite eye - catching , but if you prefer something a little more colorful , the telephone set can also be had in Emerald Green , Titanium Silver and Sunrise Orange . The latter of which comes with a vegan leather back for a different , but similarly voluptuary , look and find .
The handset is a little slippery without a instance , and there ’s not one included in the box seat , but there ’s a grippy knurled edge around the photographic camera array that middling resemble a watch bezel . I discover that rate my index on this edge aid to keep it secure in my hand . That ’s probably not an intentional feature of the design , but it works even so .
The only affair that really indicate that is a cheaper machine is the plastic frame . It has a polished cultivation and looks like metallic element , but it ’s not nerveless to the touch . On the positive side , though , this should aid in durability . Honor articulate this telephone is efficaciously resistant to 1.5 - time drop from all angles and it has a 5 - star drib resistance rating from SGS to back it up .
The Magic 6 Lite also carries an IP53 rating for rubble and water supply ohmic resistance , which is swell to see , as this was missing on the Magic 5 Lite . That does n’t mean that the phone is to the full waterproof , but it ’s enough to eff that the odd tumble or rainfall shower should n’t induce any issues .
Screen
The Magic 6 Lite has an excellent display ; it ’s one of the bright in this monetary value range of mountains , and it always looks buttery smooth thanks to an adaptive refresh rate that can automatically switch between 60 and 120Hz .
There ’s a jolly pronounced curve on the left and right face of the video display , and how you feel about that will depend on your personal tastes . I tend to prefer a flat display , but it ’s voiceless to refuse how comfortable this phone feel in the paw . Gesture navigation feel much more natural with these curved edges , too .
One of the more unparalleled features of this display is that it put up 1920Hz PWM dimming , something that ’s usually allow for high - goal mobile display . In essence , it reduces flicker from the display , particularly at small luminance levels , with the goal of forbid center fatigue . It ’s not something I ’ve ever had too much way out with , but if you ’re susceptible to flicker , this could be a bit of a game changer .
The Magic 6 Lite offers pile of customisation alternative , so it ’s well-heeled to fine-tune the colour interpretation to your preference . You get two preset option , Normal and Vivid , and you may opt between cool and warm colour temperature for each . In addition , there ’s a colour wheel that allows you to shift the mid - tones even further .
This model has an in - display fingerprint reader that was evenhandedly quick and dependable throughout my examination . I did find its positioning a lilliputian uncomfortable , though . It ’s place much lower than I ’m used to , and depending on my grip , it was n’t always the most natural position to manoeuvre my ovolo into .
On the plus side , it also offers face unlocking , so this fingerprint proofreader is n’t always necessary .
Cameras
When it comes to photography , the Magic 6 Lite is home to two solid cameras : the 108MP main camera and the 16MP selfie camera . The other two lens system are far too low resolution to be of much use and are prostrate to producing lap - out colour with muddy point .
Still , if you stick to the two gamy - resolution sensor , the Magic 6 Lite is capable of capturing some good results , particularly in daylight . dark modality concur its own , too , but the lack of ocular image stabilization means you ’ll need a stiff deal to get the most from it .
Images from the main photographic camera looking at sharp-worded with a realistic colour rendition , and there ’s a dear amount of active range , too . The processing is a little too high contrast for my gustatory modality , but this is something that can be well remedied in your preferred image edit app .
Despite the massive megapixel counting , most of the time you ’ll be shoot 12MP snap with nine - to - one pixel binning . There ’s nothing unusual about that ; theSamsung Galaxy S23 Ultraworks in the same way . If you desire to take a 108MP image , you ’ll have to dive into the carte du jour and find the mellow - res manner .
Doing so results in much large file sizes , and a touch more detail , but it ’s improbable to be enough of a quality uplift for most people to choose to apply it . This gamy - res sensing element is more useful for let 3x zoom pic with the principal sensor . It ’s not a fully lossless zoom , but it looks far better than cropping into a 12MP picture and total in handy quite often .
There ’s nothing peculiarly exceptional about the 16MP selfie tv camera , but the resulting images search dear . Again , it ’s strongest in the daylight , and I found that low - light images were quite prone to blur . Portrait modality cutouts are decent , too , and it was only a few wisp of tomentum that trump the algorithm .
It ’s the video results that I found most unsatisfying with this photographic camera system . I ’ve already mentioned the lack of OIS , but the electronic persona stabilization is among the least effective that I ’ve seen on a recent smartphone . It ’s expert at 1080p@30fps and below , but even then , it ’s not impressive . Meanwhile , 4 green video almost looks like it has no stabilisation at all .
The same is true of the selfie tv camera , which maxes out at 1080p@30fps and calculate like a shaky mess if you try out to walk while shooting video . If you apply your phone to take luck of videos , I ’d notify reckon elsewhere .
Performance
The Magic 6 Lite runs on Qualcomm ’s mid - range Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset , so I ’m not expecting bench mark - topping carrying out here , but it should be a decent rise compared to the Snapdragon 695 regain in both the Magic 5 Lite and the Magic 4 Lite .
There ’s only one conformation locomote on sale in Europe , and it come with a goodly 256 GB of computer storage and an sizable 8 GB of RAM . Until recently , these kinds of capability were unheard of in this price bracket , and it gets even better when you gain you may virtually duplicate the RAM capacity , at the disbursement of some entrepot , using Honor ’s RAM Turbo feature film .
Coming straight from testing two of the most powerful handsets available , theVivo X100 ProandRedmagic 9 Pro , I was neural about how sulky the Magic 6 Lite would sense .
gratefully , that ’s not the case at all , and in casual day - to - mean solar day use , you ’d be hard - pressed to tell the difference between this phone and a top - tier flagship . Apps always open up quickly , life never stuttered and the speech sound could multitask with simplicity .
manifestly , there are limitation , in the main with the graphics processing . If you need to run a taxing game like Genshin Impact , you ’ll need to lower the configurations to sensitive to achieve a strong 30fps without slowdowns . But still , that ’s not a bad result , and it ’s definitely more capable than I was require . The phone just heats up in the mental process , either .
I was surprised that the Magic 6 Lite has a built - in game overlayer like you ’d get hold on adedicated gaming phone . It ’s not the most in - depth menu , but it can apportion more resources to your game at the cost of some battery life , as well as apply dissimilar colour profiles and set off mistouch bar .
There ’s a single utterer at the bottom of this phone , next to the USB - vitamin C porthole . It has a in effect amount of item and there ’s some weight to the audio , but it ’s not especially loud and it begins to distort at max book . Being a single speaker , you do n’t get any stereophonic system separation , so I ’d advocate using earphone or a Bluetooth speaker if you want the best audio experience .
Software
The Honor Magic 6 Lite ship with MagicOS 7.2 , based on Android 13 . Right out of the logic gate , it ’s a short dissatisfactory to see that we ’re not on the latest Android version here , when most rival have already made the jump to Android 14 .
Honor promises two generational updates along with three years of security patches . Not the worst , but when you believe that one of those generational updates will be Android 14 , it begins to sour the mass .
MagicOS is a fair heavy skin . If you ’ve used a recent Honor headphone , you wo n’t be in for many surprises , but if you ’re new to it , it might take some get used to .
There ’s some Apple influence here , and plenty of law of similarity with Xiaomi ’s MIUI , too . The notification tone and spry options card are disjoined and can be accessed by abstract from either the left or correct side of the show . This can be jarring if you ’re come from most other Android devices , but I detect that I got used to it within a twosome of days .
The app draftsman is also disable by nonremittal , so all of your apps will look on the dwelling house screen , like an iPhone . Do n’t worry , though ; a few taps in the configurations bill of fare can change it back to a more familiar Android experience . On the whole , MagicOS is very customisable , and there ’s a good hazard you’re able to tweak and adjust anything that does n’t expect or react the fashion that you ’d prefer .
You do get some preinstalled bloatware , as you do with most phones at this cost point , but it ’s far from the worst I ’ve encounter . On first boot , you ’ll see a urge apps booklet and a few preinstalled apps like Netflix , Booking.com and TikTok . gratefully , they ’re all easy to remove , and you’re able to houseclean everything up in just a few minutes .
What impressed me the most with this software package was how swimmingly it ran . I ’m not sure if there ’s some sleight of mitt go on with the animations , but whatever Honor has done to make this midrange chip find so snappy and responsive is by all odds knead .
Battery life
The Magic 6 Lite business firm a large 5300mAh battery , and , perhaps unsurprisingly , this results in some first-class battery life . Honor says it can ply over two sidereal day of use on a charge , and in my normal usage , this is a title that holds lawful .
In the couplet of weeks that I have been testing the handset , I ’ve very rarely go to bottom with less than 50 % go forth in the armoured combat vehicle , even on days with heavy screen - on time due to navigating with Google Maps .
What would have been nice to see , though , is faster charging support . The Magic 6 Lite charges slow than its herald , maxing out at just 35W , and there ’s no wall adapter included in the box , only a USB - A to USB - C line .
By my tally , it takes about 95 minutes to turn on from altogether flat , whereas a 50 % charge will take just over 40 minutes . It ’s not dreaded , by any mean value , but it ’s definitely lag behind the speedy charging offered by much of the competitor .
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Should you buy it?
I think the Honor Magic 6 Lite is one of the best - look telephone set in its Mary Leontyne Price wall bracket , and its gigantic barrage fire life makes it very commodious to dwell with .
While the image faithfulness is n’t defective , the video stabilization is among the worst I ’ve fare across in late time . Video taw will get good event elsewhere .
Final Thoughts
The Honor Magic 6 Lite offer a lot for its asking price , and the fact that it looks the part sweetens the trade further . You get more random memory and computer storage than most brands offer at this price point , a lovely display with high - frequency PWM dimming , a mammoth battery and a substantial primary television camera .
It ’s not complete , though . The poor picture performance and lacklustre auxiliary television camera are disappointing , and the same goes for the outdated operating system and wearisome charging speeds . mediate - of - the - route graphical performance will be a twist - off for dandy gamers , too .
If the camera operation is a gamey precedency , you ’ll have a better meter with theGoogle Pixel 7a , which can be had for about £ 30 more at the time of writing . However , you wo n’t get quite such an telling display , and you ’ll be halve the store . If display quality and battery life are high priorities , the Honor Magic 6 Lite is hard to ticktock at this price .
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FAQs
The Magic 6 Lite is IP53 - certified , which means it is protected from special dust ingress and water system spray less than 60 degrees from erect .
Yes , the Magic 6 Lite has space for two Nano SIM posting in its removable SIM tray .
Yes , the Magic 6 Lite has 5 G support , it also works with 4 gram , 3 G and GSM .
Test Data
Full Specs
