HONOR Magic V5 review – The Chinese immediately hit back at Samsung

After a long time, foldable phone fans have reason to rejoice. With this year's Galaxy Z Fold7, Samsung has done everything we've asked of it for the past few years and has caught up with its Chinese rivals. But even the latter have not been left behind. HONOR recently introduced their latest foldable phone, the HONOR Magic V5, which only continues the strong legacy of its predecessor.

What if Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo and others came to our market with all their foldable models. That would be a juicy battle. So basically, we only have HONOR or Samsung available here.

The HONOR Magic V5 has once again taken the title of the thinnest foldable phone. This is basically the end of this race. Its purpose was to make foldable phones as compact as possible, so that they can be easily put in a pocket or bag. And now they are. Further narrowing will not bring any concrete benefits, but rather disadvantages, because overheating is still a problem for foldable phones. Now the focus must be on the cameras and the software experience. Samsung has worked hard on the latter over the years, while HONOR has fallen asleep here.

Unless the HONOR Magic V5 has improved on that? We'll see towards the end of the test.

HONOR Magic V5 price and specifications

• HONOR Magic V5 16/512GB: €1999 (in white and black)

When you purchase between August 28 and September 30, 2025, you will receive a gift, an HONOR Pad 10 tablet, and 356 days of worry-free screen repair warranty.

HONOR Magic V5 – slim as a Victoria's Secret model

It's crazy that we've reached the point so quickly where foldable phones have become as thin as classic phones or even thinner. When opened, the HONOR Magic V5 measures just 4.1 mm thick, and when closed, it's 8.8 mm. It's true that it only took the title of thinnest by two millimeters, but in a competition, little things count. Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold7, on the other hand, can boast that it's a gram lighter. Of course, the thickness doesn't include the camera frame, which on the Magic V5 actually protrudes from the body. But at least it's in the middle, so there's no excessive tilt when it's lying on a flat surface.

It is also important to note that the HONOR Magic V5 has a much larger battery capacity than its closest competitor and also charges faster. This also needs to be taken into account when talking about the engineering of the case.

In short, I can only praise the design.

The body is made of aluminum and reinforced with carbon fiber, the folding hinge has been redesigned and is more resistant to vibration. The new mechanism also allows the device to fold with virtually no gap between the halves. The hinge can be stopped at any desired angle, so you can use the Magic V5 in "laptop" mode or as a stand (for example, for hands-free video viewing), similar to the competition.

The phone also earned an IP58 and IP59 rating for resistance to water, dust, and other foreign objects for the first time. This is very important, as the most common reason for foldable phones to fail is dirt accumulating in the hinge mechanism.

The hinge is said to withstand up to 500,000 open and close cycles. That means you can open and close your phone over 136 times a day, every day, for over ten years, ensuring exceptional long-term durability. The hinge is spring-loaded and automatically closes when opened at an angle of less than 45 degrees, a handy feature that prevents accidental opening.

Light, thin, durable... As if describing a classic phone. This is what I've been waiting for all these years, and now we're finally at this point.

Two screens, two different experiences

The HONOR Magic V5 is equipped with two stunning displays. The outer display is a 6.43-inch OLED display with a resolution of 2376 x 1060 pixels. Its size is almost identical to the screens on standard flat phones, meaning you can easily use it for everyday tasks like replying to messages or browsing the web without having to open it every time. The aspect ratio is also just right, and there is no feeling of content being squeezed.

The internal display is a 7.95-inch foldable LTPO AMOLED display with a resolution of 2352 x 2172 pixels. Both displays boast a refresh rate of 120 Hz, which ensures extremely smooth animations and navigation through the interface.

What about the crease between the screens? It's still there, but it's getting less noticeable and annoying every year. You notice it at certain angles and when you run your finger over it, but only at the beginning of use. After a few days, your brain will forget it's there.

Both displays have an impressive advertised maximum brightness of 5000 nits. Of course, this is a brightness that is only achieved in small parts of the screen and in HDR scenarios. The real maximum brightness (the phone regulates itself) is around 1300 nits, which is still a good result.

Both screens support the optional Honor Magic-Pen. If you like drawing, taking notes, it's worth considering.

Honor has also taken care of eye health. It incorporates ultra-high frequency PWM dimming technology at 4320 Hz to reduce flicker and eye fatigue at low brightness.

In addition, the software offers ways to filter blue light, dynamically adjust brightness based on the environment, and even an "AI Defocusing" function, which in certain cases slightly blurs the background of the content and thus relieves the eyes during night use. The screens are coated with a particularly resistant NanoCrystal scratch protection, and the inner one has an additional reinforcing layer of carbon fiber, which is supposed to make the glass up to 15x more resistant to drops and scratches compared to regular glass. The system will even notify you if a foreign object (say, sand) gets stuck between the folding screen, so that you can remove it in time.

We have an elite chip, but unfortunately it can still overheat.

That the HONOR Magic V5 is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite is not exactly a surprise. When you pay more than two thousand for a phone, you expect it. As I always say, we are talking about performance that is absolutely overkill for 99 % users. Even if you play Genshin Impact, Zenless Zone Zero, Call of Duty, PUBG or any other game that is considered a heavyweight (by mobile gaming standards), the chip will not even be stretched. In this case, I would prefer to see the option to manually adjust the power so that I can reduce it from the beginning and save the phone from overheating. I know that it does this itself, but I still want to have control, similar to gaming phones. This used to be solved by rooting the phone, which is becoming increasingly difficult, and on HONOR it is impossible.

Overheating isn't a problem with these games unless you plan on playing for more than an hour and a half at a time. And if you're going to be using a controller, for example, which will further throttle the phone.

The bigger problem is with emulators that run more demanding games and an emulation layer at the same time. After 45 minutes of playing Dragon Quest VIII, I had to take a break because the phone got too hot. I also did a 20-minute synthetic stress test (benchmark), but the phone didn't survive because the temperatures were too high. This isn't the first time I've experienced this, but it's still a very rare occurrence, even among foldable phones.

Even when I was rendering a video for the test, I noticed overheating. Especially during mixed use. For example, I took photos and videos for a good half hour, then launched PUBG for a quick few games, but after recording, I noticed that the phone was on edge and that it was slowly slowing down the cores.

The Magic V5 does have a titanium cooling system inside, but it's hard to overcome the fact that there simply isn't much space for heat to dissipate. From my observations, overheating is less noticeable than in previous years.

Many people won't notice this because they won't be using the phone that way. As long as you stick to classic games and classic multitasking, overheating won't be a problem.

There are no dedicated (Turnip) drivers for the Snapdragon 8 Elite yet, so you'll have to experiment a bit with existing versions if you want to play Windows or Switch games.

The RAM is 16 GB (LPDDR5x), which is great for the long term. The drive supports the UFS 4.0 standard, which means lightning-fast speeds and again good news for longevity, because the phone shouldn't suffer from speed after a few years. The capacity is 512 GB, which is enough for me at least at the moment, although I have filled up about 400 GB of available space on my phone, but I'm lazy when it comes to deleting apps/games that I no longer use.

The battery (silicon-carbon) lasts almost always two days (about 8-9 SoT), except in the beginning when I explored every corner of the phone and overdid it with gaming. I thought the larger capacity (5820 mAh) would make a huge difference compared to the Galaxy Z Fold7. Yes, with really intensive use I got an hour and a half more time on average on the HONOR, and with very moderate use they were mostly equal.

But HONOR has another advantage – 66-W fast charging or 50-W wireless charging, which is much faster than Samsung.

MagicOS is not as refined as One UI

The Honor Magic V5 runs on Android with its own MagicOS 9 skin. I won't say that the system has matured since the split from Huawei, because there are still too many similarities between the two. But at least they have added some of their own features, especially those with artificial intelligence and some dedicated to the foldable screen.

The user experience is intuitive, the quick settings and notification menu follow the classic Android logic, and Honor has avoided some of the excesses seen in other Chinese skins. MagicOS is relatively unobtrusive and does not contain excessive software clutter. The few pre-installed apps that you do not need can be easily removed.

They approached multitasking a little differently than Samsung. Running two apps at the same time is the same, one is on the left, the other on the right. If you want to add a third, you can't make a triangle, but the third appears right at the edge and you switch between apps with your finger. It's not a bad implementation, you can further adjust the size of each app, but I would still like them to add other layouts. I personally like two apps at the top and then a third on the bottom half of the screen. You can have additional apps on the reserve in the form of a floating window.

Honor has also integrated some handy gestures, such as swiping with two fingers in the middle to quickly switch an app to half-screen, or pairing two apps to then launch them together in split-screen mode.

Switching between the external and internal screens is smooth. For example, if you start writing a message on the external screen and then open the phone, the app will immediately expand to the large screen. For example, if you use YouTube in half-open mode, the lower screen will serve as a controller. In short, they have improved a lot compared to previous years, but they are still missing a few details.

With the next updates, I would like to see them allow me to make two separate wallpapers for the front and inner screen. They could also allow more personalization of widgets, icons, status bar and other elements. As with Huawei phones, notifications are a lottery. It depends on battery optimization of course, but I have had problems with the visibility of notifications several times. For example, new WhatsApp messages were often not visible until I clicked on the application.

Bottom line, the main features I expect from a foldable phone work well. If you want to delve into every detail (like Samsung does with GoodLock), you'll be a little disappointed.

A trio of cameras that are good but not superfluous

The HONOR Magic V5 is equipped with a photography suite called the “Falcon Camera System.” The main camera has a 50-megapixel sensor with optical image stabilization (OIS) and an f/1.6 aperture. The system is complemented by a 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera and a 64-megapixel periscope telephoto camera with OIS, which allows for 3x optical zoom and 100x digital zoom, although this is more of a toy than something truly useful.

For selfies and video calls, there are two front cameras, one on each screen. Both the inner and outer selfie sensors are 20 MP, which means that when closed, you can use the cover screen as a mirror and take a classic selfie, and when open, you have the inner camera for video calls or conference calls. The front cameras pleasantly surprised me. The upgrade to 20 MP is noticeable, the photos are much more vibrant, bright and with less noise.

If you want the best selfie, you can take advantage of the rear cameras with the help of an external screen that serves as a preview.

In good lighting conditions, the main 50 MP sensor captures extremely sharp images with lots of detail and dynamic range. Color reproduction is quite natural, and Honor offers three different color profiles in the camera app: neutral (for the most realistic tones), vivid (more saturated colors), and authentic (a warmer, more analog look). I mostly liked the authentic mode the best, there was no excessive "artificiality" and smoothing of the subjects.

The ultra-wide camera is pretty good most of the time, but in low light I noticed that it doesn't always accurately identify the shades and colors in the scene. Overexposure of dark objects is also a common problem, as is noise around the edges.

Telephoto lets you play with zoom. The 3.5x optical zoom is great for portrait shots and getting closer to distant subjects. Even at 10x digital zoom, the shots are still usable (except at night), as the high resolution of the 64 MP sensor and advanced algorithms preserve a lot of detail.

Extreme magnifications (50× or 100×) are more for fun than serious use.

Night photography is also fine, unless you've made the switch from a classic flagship phone, then you'll notice a class or two of worse shots.

For portrait photography, Honor has partnered with Paris-based studio Harcourt, renowned for its black and white portraits. This collaboration is reflected in special portrait filters and background blurring algorithms. The Magic V5 offers several portrait effects, the most notable of which is Harcourt Classic, which is essentially a black and white mode that adds a touch of classic Hollywood elegance to photos, with deep tones and beautiful facial lighting.

The cameras also have minor issues with detecting fast-moving objects. Although they have a feature specifically for such scenarios, focus tracking is still inconsistent.

The camera system is powerful for a foldable phone and competes well with the best in the field, although it doesn't reach the level of the best cameras in classic phones. I would give Samsung a slight advantage in the main camera, but HONOR wins in macro, telephoto and ultra-wide.

Would the HONOR Magic V5 be on my shortlist?

I don't see why not. If I were buying a foldable phone, I would have a tough task ahead of me. On the one hand, I love Samsung's system and level of personalization, and also the very good main camera, but on the other hand, it's not as important to me as, for example, fast charging. I never charge my phone overnight and I like being able to charge my phone in 15 minutes for a whole day's use.

Both foldable phones are so good that you'll get a great product either way. Consider what's most important to you and whether you're already too engrossed in the Samsung ecosystem to risk switching.