Review: Honor Magic 8 Pro

The Honor Magic 8 Pro came to South Africa in March 2026 at a price of R27 999. It is now two months later and it is listed on Takealot for R26 999, and on Vodacom for R25 699.

I’ve had the phone on test but been delayed in posting my review as I took time off last month. In the meantime, Honor is launching its number series, the Honor 600 and 600 Pro this week in South Africa.

For anyone considering the Honor Magic 8 Pro, take note of the specs of both devices and price points, according to what Vodacom is currently listing the Honor 600 Pro for, ahead of the launch.

What’s new on the Honor Magic 8 Pro

The Honor Magic 8 Pro features the new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, a 200MP AI camera and a large 7100mAh battery, compared to the 5850mAh on the Magic 7 Pro.

Honor South Africa confirmed that this unit will receive 4 years of operating system updates and 5 years of security updates, unlike the 7 year promise in Europe. Comparatively, Samsung offers 7 years as standard, South Africa included. The device runs on MagicOS10, based on Android 16.

Like the Magic 7 Pro, it has a large round camera bump at the back. It’s very noticeable and also means it doesn’t or rather can’t sit flush. It’s easier to place it face down on a table otherwise it will be wobbly. This is the norm for most flagships today; the camera bumps are too large, making them look disproportionate.

The handset will only be available in one colour, a “sunrise gold” shade.

It also features an AI Button, like the iPhone, to use to launch the camera but you can customise it based on a short press, double press and long press; quite the pro feature if you’re into shortcuts. The options feel a bit limited though, but include AI screen suggestions, AI settings agent, AI photos agent, Honor AI, AI Memories, or simply nothing.

It is a rather large handset, which is bigger than my iPhone 17 Pro, more like the Pro Max size. But it does feel solid and sturdy in the hand.

Set-up and apps

I typically log into my Honor ID on all Honor test phones; this is useful if you’re into the Honor ecosystem and can tie all your devices together seamlessly. Like with a watch or tablet. etc. But most importantly, it will back up your data and make it easier to access your content across devices.

Much like on Samsung and Apple devices, you can also use it to find your device and remotely wipe it if need be, among other security features.

I’m not a fan of pre-installed apps, and always stick to Google official ones for anything on Android. I don’t know why it pre-installs apps like Trip.com, WPS Office, ReelShort and BlockBlast, for example.

It also creates a “Popular Apps” folder, and pre-populates it with apps that show on the device, but you have to tap to download it. It is completely unnecessary and presumptuous for a device at this price point. There isn’t a way to delete this folder, only to stop it from recommending additional apps.

That said, the Tools folder has some useful apps – like a Device Clone app, Sim 1 and Sim 2 toolkits, voice recorder, a smart remote control for home devices, and AI translate. However, I would likely use Google Translate instead.

I have a YouTube Premium account and once I log into my Android on my Gmail account, I’m good to go and can download some of my most used apps easily.

I’ve mentioned Honor’s Parallel Space before; it’s a fantastic privacy feature that lets you create a virtual second phone space on your device. It lets you switch between your work and personal profiles/life. Useful if you work in an environment that deals with sensitive information and you don’t want people accessing your information accidentally or as a way to separate your personal and work like from each other.

Performance and battery life

The 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, combined with a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset means this phone is not struggling with anything.

I could have as many apps open and multitasking, including an AI transcribing app that I use for work, and it doesn’t stutter. I can be at events or on the go, and switch between a range of apps in the absence of my laptop and the device will handle it all.

It certainly lives up to the Pro in its name. A lot of entertainment apps I use are multimedia heavy and I found that I didn’t need to kill them off in the background, especially for streaming. I watch vodcasts on YouTube on the treadmill and the phone proved cable while accessing all of these resource intensive tasks.

Speaking of videos and multimedia content, the display is great for consuming content. It’s vivid and watching on full screen mode is a fantastic experience. Like if you’re traveling and saved contend for offline mode.

The phone has a massive 7100mAh battery and in all honesty, you don’t need a power bank with this phone. It lasts more than a day. That said, it also supports 100W SuperCharge via the plug in the box. So a quick top up can be done in the morning on the chance that you forgot to charge it the night before.

While its 80W wireless charging speeds are impressive, I’ve not used this feature – in general I find that wireless charging overheats the device so I avoid it.

Honor Magic 8 Pro Cameras

The camera set-up on the Magic 8 Pro is as follows:

• 200MP telephoto (3.7x optical zoom)
• 50MP main camera with OIS
• 50MP ultra-wide camera
• 3D depth sensing camera
• 50MP selfie-camera

The camera has a big focus on night images or low light as the main 200MP and 50MP main shooters are officially called “Ultra Night” sensors. I found the images at night to live up to that, as these shots were taken in complete darkness:

When it comes to landscape shots and ones on optical zoom, the camera took great shots. Especially outdoors in the late afternoon close to sunset, the AI clearly works as the shots didn’t look washed out or over saturated.

These two shots below were taken from the same spot, using the optical zoom for the second one. I love the details you can see on  the swimmer through the water from the zoom. If there is any zoom you should use, it’s optical over digital.

When I took food pics and macro shots, I found the camera to be a bit of hit and miss. My food shots were a bit out of focus and sometimes blurry, and the colour showed a bit different in the images. I take a lot of food pics in general and found that I had to take a bunch before being happy with the final result.

Overall though, the camera is a great companion for anyone traveling and taking pictures in different scenarios outdoors or at night. And you can play with manual controls. Portrait shots were also great.

Final thoughts

The Honor Magic 8 Pro is a powerful device with some of the best hardware you can find in 2026. It handles multitasking well and battery life is excellent. However, with Honor’s release of the Honor 600 Pro and the specs being very similar as listed earlier, it makes the case to get one a bit more difficult when you can opt for the 600 Pro for several thousand Rands less. Another factor to consider is the four years of operating system updates Honor provides, which is not on par with Samsung’s seven years.

The Honor Magic 8 Pro currently costs R25 699 on Vodacom.