HONOR Magic8 Lite review – for those looking for a cheap phone with a great battery

HONOR Magic8 Pro is for those with deeper wallets and a desire for the best. The HONOR Magic8 Lite is for users who don't mind image and video glitches, who don't play games or are willing to lower graphics settings, and who don't want to spend more than €400 on a phone.

How do you get from a good €1000 to €400? You have to trim a little everywhere, but not too much. You have to stay in the “good enough” range and not fall into the “too bad” range. You start with the chip, which, besides the screen and cameras, is the most expensive component for the manufacturer. Fortunately, manufacturers have quite a few choices. Qualcomm is a more reliable choice, and consumers are also more familiar with Snapdragon chips. The alternative is MediaTek, which can compete in terms of performance and efficiency (depending on the chip), but they are less well-known, which is why customers trust them less.

Then you tackle the screen and cameras, reduce the RAM capacity, choose a slightly slower drive, less premium materials, and end up in a lower price range.

Surprisingly, HONOR has been very conservative with the cuts in certain areas. They left the display alone and it is almost equivalent to the one on the HONOR Magic8 Pro. They have made the biggest cuts in the performance and cameras. Did they cut too much?

HONOR Magic8 Lite price and specifications

• HONOR Magic8 Lite 8GB/256GB: 399 €
• HONOR Magic8 Lite 8GB/512GB: 429 €

HONOR Magic8 Lite – where does it shine the most?

You don't need to skimp on praise for the best phones, but with phones like the HONOR Magic8 Lite, you have to be much more careful about what you praise and what you criticize, given the price.

The workmanship is above standard in this class. For the second year, HONOR has allowed us to test their phone's durability facts ourselves. I submerged it in hot water, froze it for half an hour, shot it with arrows and a stapler, and partially buried it in sand. Apart from spending 10 minutes cleaning sand from the USB port and needing to replace the factory-installed protective film, the HONOR Magic8 Lite survived the ordeal without any problems. The screen is still responsive, there are no marks on the case, and it charges normally, so I can say that it is a very durable phone and that the IP68/IP69K certificates are well deserved. However, don't do this at home. Last year's HONOR Magic7 Lite considered durability to be one of its strengths, the new version has only improved it.

The HONOR Magic8 Lite looks unremarkable. They changed the camera placement and returned to the shape used in the Magic3 and Magic4 series (Huawei also used it on the Mate 30/40 phones and the new Mate 80). I like the rough frame around the cameras, but that's where the praise ends. Everything else (colors, button layout) is classic. The phone is flat, the curves are only on the edges. The body and back are plastic, the latter also has a coating that protects it very well from fingerprint stains.

The USB-C port is still an older standard (2.0), which means slower transfer speeds and lacks support for video output. If you want to connect the phone to an external display, you'll be left empty-handed. At least the Wi-Fi has been upgraded to the sixth generation, but it only supports two channels (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz). If you have the option to use the 6 GHz spectrum, the HONOR Magic8 Lite won't take advantage of it.

Excellent outdoor durability also affected the battery

If there's one area where the HONOR Magic8 Lite will stand out from its rivals, it's the battery. It has a whopping 7,500 mAh, one of the largest batteries in European phones. Last month, HONOR also introduced the HONOR WIN with a 10,000 mAh battery and a built-in fan (a Mecca for gamers), but it doesn't seem to be making it beyond China.

In very normal use (web, YouTube, an hour of gaming, Reddit, etc.), after about a week, I averaged 14 hours of screen-on time (SoT) on a single charge, which is well above the average I've been getting with phones lately. If you play games for a long time, the time between charges will obviously shorten. But given the chip they've installed, they probably won't attract many buyers who like to play the most demanding games in their free time.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is not bursting with performance, so it is not a big power drain. The chip is/will also be its Achilles' heel when it comes to comparing it to its closest rivals, such as POCO X7/X8, Redmi Note 15 Pro (+), HONOR 200/400, Xiaomi 15T … Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is a noticeable upgrade compared to last year's chip selection, but at the same time it also confirms how underpowered the HONOR Magic7 Lite was. It will lag behind in this area again this year. The aforementioned phones, which are currently in a similar price range, almost all have more powerful chips, some even by several classes, which affects all corners of the user experience, from photo processing, sensor switching speed to the smoothness of animations and application launch. This does not mean that you will encounter severe lags when browsing normally. The experience is just fine, everything works relatively quickly, unless you start to overdo it with the number of apps or when the phone is already a bit hot, then you may notice a slowdown.

Below are some of the games I tested. I didn't include Switch games this time. Most of the games in my archive didn't work properly (missing textures, stuttering, crashes...), so I have no choice but to (like everyone else) wait for better drivers or better chip compatibility with emulators.

Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 is a lightweight, hence the lower numbers in the tests. It will still be able to run most Android games at the highest settings with occasional drops or lower fps than the games support (some even up to 165 fps). But at least it is stable most of the time during gaming and does not get tired (overheat) as quickly as the most powerful chips. The battery was below 40°C after one hour of gaming, and the chip was between 50 and 60°C. 

There is enough RAM (8 GB), except for Windows and Switch games, which quickly use it for their own needs. Like the others, the HONOR Magic8 Lite also has the option of expanding with virtual memory for scenarios when the system memory runs out. The drive is one of the slower ones, but it has enough capacity (up to 512 GB).

The factory-installed Android 15 with the MagicOS 9 skin is installed. During testing, I have not yet been given the option to upgrade to MagicOS 10, which is equipped with the Magic8 Pro. MagicOS 9 is a version that is still too similar to Huawei's system and feels outdated. The saving grace is the UI features, although you will quickly filter them into useful, rarely useful and never useful. There is also quite a bit of software clutter when you first start it. The system offers you a list of recommended applications (mostly unknown games and useless applications), as well as a list of applications that it will install regardless of your wishes. A very annoying practice that many manufacturers in lower price ranges use. Therefore, you will have to do some manual removal of applications. 

HONOR promises 4 Android upgrades and four years of security patches.

The screen shines like the sun, it's also fast and easy on the eyes

If you like to browse your phone by the pool or on the beach, watching videos, then you know how annoying it is when the sun shines directly on the screen and then you awkwardly hunt for the most optimal viewing angles to see what's going on. Since the brightness of the HONOR Magic8 Lite can go up to 6000 candela (nits), reflections will be much less of a problem. They will not be completely eliminated, as this high number only applies to a few % screens (the phone adjusts itself), but most of the time you will be happy with the clarity and sharpness.

The screen refresh rate is 120 Hz, the panel is AMOLED with a resolution of 1200 x 2640. It uses PWM technology with a frequency of 3840 Hz for dimming, which is relatively friendly to the user's eyes.

HONOR Magic8 Lite didn't go to photography school

• Main camera: 108 MP (f/1.8), 24 mm, OIS
• Ultra-wide camera: 5 MP (f2.2), 17 mm
• Front camera: 16 MP (f/2.5), 24mm
• Video up to 4K (30fps)

The camera portfolio lets you know right away that you won't be going to concerts with the HONOR Magic8 Lite and walking home with great photos afterwards, especially if the concert is in the evening or indoors. I think all the lenses are the same as the Magic7 Lite.

The main lens can take decent photos during the day. They're not great, but they're solid for sending to friends and showing off to loved ones. If you look closely, you'll notice irregularities, especially in the colors and dynamic range. You can also notice some noise at the edges.

At night, the situation understandably worsens. The lens is not very good at dealing with the limited amount of light. The quality of the photos drops by at least a class, if not two.

I also encountered strange green artifacts and a filter that can cover the entire photo (example below). I don't know if this is a result of all the endurance tests, a software error, a sensor error, or something else. I haven't been able to reproduce the phenomenon more than twice, so I don't know where exactly the error lies.

The ultra-wide lens is a relic from a forgotten era, or should be a forgotten era, but apparently this lens is still in the warehouses of all manufacturers. I don't see it as often as I used to, but it still manages to sneak onto some phones. You'll notice right away that the colors aren't the most accurate, and there are quite a few grainy pixels. Don't turn it on at night, it's not worth it.

The front camera is sufficient for the occasional video call or vlogging, if you're not too demanding about image sharpness and sound clarity, as the built-in microphones are also only average.

Photo gallery

The HONOR Magic8 Lite is durable, but otherwise average

The range up to €400 offers a huge selection of phones. I've already mentioned a few: POCO X7, X8 coming soon, POCO F7, Redmi Note 15 Pro and Pro+ are also about to be released, then you have last year's mid-range phones (HONOR 400 and 200, Xiaomi 14T and 15T). These are the phones that are available in our market, I haven't even mentioned OPPO, One Plus and other phones that you can get elsewhere.

I don't know if the excellent battery and durability are a good enough reason to choose the HONOR Magic8 Lite over all of these.