We've just finished looking at the rather lovely Honor Magic 5 Lite, the latest smartphone in Honor's repertoire, which launched at MWC 2023. But did you know they've got a new foldable phone on the market?

Well, they have. The Honor Magic Vs also launched at MWC 2023, and is really quite an exceptional device for several reasons, not just the amazing engineering that has gone into the design.

Read on to find out what we think of Honor's new foldable handset, and whether it is a Samsung smasher, leaving the Z Fold 4 in the dust (spoiler: it is).

Unboxing the Honor Magic Vs

This is a foldable smartphone, so the box differs somewhat from the standard smartphone vessel. Flat and square, when you open it, you'll see the Honor Magic Vs in all its unfolded glory. Inside the box, you get:

• Honor Magic Vs smartphone
• 66W charging brick and cable
• Protective case for the rear face
• SIM tray tool
• Device literature

A Beautifully Engineered Foldable Handset

If you want the tl;dr, then the Honor Magic Vs is absolutely gorgeous, with an innovative design, and you should buy it based on that.

More details? OK, I suppose...

The Magic Vs really is a lovely smartphone. Even folded, it is a delight to behold, and unfolded, even more so. The quality and craftsmanship shines with this handset, and Honor's R&D department really should pat themselves on the back for developing a device that is so pleasing to use.

Let's get the usual facts and figures out of the way first. We're reviewing the Black version of the handset, here, which has a high-luster, glass rear face. It has an elegant, premium look about it, but because of the dark color and high sheen, it collects fingerprints faster than Sherlock Holmes.

However, you get a protector for the rear face, which is black matte plastic with a leather grain finish, and attracts no fingerprints at all. Problem solved. You'll definitely want to apply that protector to avoid damaging your handset, anyway.

Aside from black, you can also get the Magic Vs in an attractive Cyan colorway (which appears to have a matt rear face, from the images on Honor's website).

The chassis is made of glass, with a magnesium alloy frame and a titanium alloy hinge unit, so we're looking at hard-wearing materials here, which add to the luxury look and feel this handset possesses.

In terms of dimensions, when unfolded, the Magic Vs is 160.3 x 141.5 x 6.1mm (6.31 x 5.57 x 0.24 inches), and when you fold it up, it measures 160.3 x 72.6 x 12.9mm (6.31 x 2.86 x 0.51 inches). The phone weighs 267 grams, or 9.24oz.

This means it is thinner than the Z Fold 4, yet offers more screen real estate thanks to the footprint dimensions (Z Fold 4 is 155.1 x 130.1 x 6.3mm unfolded, 155.1 x 67.1 x 14.2mm folded).

The bottom edge carries the USB Type-C port, pinhole mic, sim tray, and a speaker grille.

The right edge features the volume rocker and the power button/fingerprint scanner, and you'll find another mic pinhole, speaker grille, and IR sensor on the top edge. The left is where you'll find the hinge, when the device is folded closed.

The hinge is quite an innovation. You can read more about the Honor Magic Vs hinge and what makes it so innovative in our focus article but, in essence, you have a hinge containing only four parts, which is gearless and therefore less prone to wear and tear. It also enables the Magic Vs to fold properly.

When folded, the Magic Vs solves a problem that has plagued folding smartphones since they arrived on the scene; the gap between the screen. Most smartphones prior to the Vs had a gap near the hinge when folded. The Vs folds flat.

This leap in engineering not only looks tidier, but also means the structural integrity of your handset isn't compromised in the same way it would be if it was forming a Z Fold 4-style wedge shape when folded closed. We use wedges to hold doors open or as a shape for cheese, not to make calls or access websites.

The front of the handset carries the 6.45-inch exterior display, with a punch-hole selfie camera top center. Unfolded, you're treated to a stunning 7.9-inch interior display, with another selfie camera positioned in the middle of the right half of the screen.

Folded, the rear face houses the camera island. Honor has eschewed the donut-style array present on its non-foldable handsets in favor of a more traditional rectangular array in the corner, containing the three sensors and with a dual flash next to the island.

So, an exceptionally well-crafted handset in look and build, but what about those specs?

Honor Magic Vs Specifications

The Magic Vs comes with all the specs of a flagship device. It runs Honor's software skin, Magic 7.1, which is based on Android 13. So, nice up-to-date software, and hopefully we'll see an upgrade there when Android 14 comes along; it is currently in developer testing so can't be that far off.

For the screens, the exterior has a 6.45-inch, 2272 x 1984 pixel, OLED display, supporting HDR10+, and with a 90Hz refresh rate. Honor has gone to great lengths to ensure the external display is just as functional as the internal one, so it has a symmetry to its placement that other foldables don't have, with their weird, off-center afterthought efforts.

The interior screen is a 7.9-inch, 2560 x 1080 pixel, OLED panel, again supporting HDR10+, this time with a 120Hz refresh rate. Both screens comply with the DCI-P3 color gamut.

It'll please you to know that the screen also has dynamic dimming, so your eyes won't strain in low light, and features a Circadian Night Display, meaning it filters blue light out at night to help our brain switch off.

Powering the Honor Magic Vs, we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC, with a 3.0GHz Cortex-X2, three 2.5GHz Cortex-A710, and four 1.8GHZ Cortex-A510. The GPU is an Adreno 730. The Vs comes with 12GB memory and 512GB storage space.

The battery is a 5000mAh beast, which should be good for about a day-and-a-half of heavy usage. You can fast charge the Magic Vs using the 66W wired supercharge feature. Note that the Vs is OTG ready, so you can charge other devices with it, and the USB-C port also functions as a DisplayPort. Impressive!

As for cameras, the rear array features the 54MP Sony IMX800 lens that Honor smartphones are now synonymous with, a 50MP UltraWide/micro lens, and an 8MP 3x optical zoom sensor. You can shoot 10-bit 4K video at 60 FPS with the Magic Vs, too. Flagship camera specs right here. The selfie cameras are both 16MP.

For audio, we have symmetrical stereo dual speakers, which are certified by IMAX Enhanced, so should be up to task if you want to listen directly. We'll discuss this later, though.

It is of note that alongside your physical SIM card, the Honor Magic Vs has eSim support. So, if this is a service your carrier provides, then you're ready without ever cracking the SIM tray.

As you can see, this is a very well specced smartphone, on paper. With that in mind, we need to look at the Magic Vs performance.

Benchmarking the Honor Magic Vs

As I always say, it is practical use that matters, but let's crunch some numbers, anyway.

Running PCMark for Android:

• Work 3.0 score: 12427
• Storage 3.0 score: 28911

So, in theory, the Vs should be more than capable of running multiple apps, and performing a range of fairly intensive tasks.

For graphics, I fired up 3DMark for Android. As default, I started with the standard Wild Life test, which the Vs maxed out on. So I ran Wild Life Extreme instead.

• Wild Life score: maxed out
• Wild Life Extreme score: 2797

This is a very respectable score indeed, and it benchmarked higher than 75% of other devices tested with 3DMark for Android. Again, I'm impressed.

Honor Magic Vs: Performance

I'm going to break the performance down into various elements for this review, as there is quite a bit to get through.

Display(s)

Both of the displays work wonderfully. This is likely down to the fast refresh rates and those impressive OLED displays. I found that touch input was responsive and haptic feedback was intuitive, without being overbearing or annoying.

For absorbing media, this phone excels thanks to the large interior screen. I mean, movies and TV shows look exceptional on the exterior screen too, but you have no need to use that for movies when you have such a wealth of internal OLED real estate waiting for you to unfurl it. My usual Amazon Prime test resulted in a 45-minute rabbit hole of watching various movie snippets, all wonderfully reproduced.

Colors are vibrant, and dark tones are all taken care of with the OLED displays; something you'll never achieve with an IPS display. I enjoyed reading graphic novels using the large internal screen via the Kindle app. They look sumptuous without being oversaturated.

I much prefer reading websites via the interior screen to a standard smartphone screen. It offers almost tablet-like screen space, so things look l less cluttered. It's a nice experience.

Likewise, the exterior screen is entirely functional and just as useful, allowing me to deal with tasks like answering WhatsApp messages or doing a quick internet search for something; tasks that don't require me to open the interior screen, and don't really need it.

So Honor's aim that we use the exterior screen, and want to do so, is fulfilled. In summary, both screens display content beautifully.

Software

I've been using Honor devices for some time now, both pre and post-Huawei split, so I am well-versed in the nuances of the Magic software. The Vs runs Magic OS 7.1, which is based on Android 13, so we're up-to-date in this respect.

New Honor users might notice some slight differences to stock Android. For example, Honor moves the Network symbol to the left of the screen in the status bar, which might throw some users off initially. I mean, you only need to divert your gaze to the left an inch or so, but it is important to know that these changes are there.

Another software feature Android doesn't have, but Magic OS does, is the lock screen lock toolbar, activated by swiping up from the lock screen. However, we use this same gesture with facial unlocking so that the toolbar overlay can get in the way sometimes. This is present on other Honor smartphones, not just the Vs, and I find it equally inconvenient there, too.

Other than these two niggles, though, I'm happy with the software. Having become accustomed to Honor's proprietary Magic OS skin, I felt very comfortable using the Magic Vs. It runs smoothly when I am using it, even with multiple apps open at once, and scrolling through apps etc doesn't result in any lagging or stuttering on the screen.

Magic OS 7.1 brings with it some nice productivity software features, too. For example, you have the Smart Multi-Window feature, which allows you to open three app windows on the internal display simultaneously. I mean, with all that screen space, you should probably use it for more than just reading graphic novels...

The software is okay in my opinion, with some excellent new software features, although newbies to Magic OS might find they notice the odd difference here and there.

Battery

Honor has ensured you have plenty of power to keep your phone running all day. The 5000mAh battery should give you between one and one-and-a-half days, in theory, and depending on your usage. Don't forget that the more powerful your handset, the less time you'll get out of your battery.

The OLED screen almost certainly helps with battery life though, as it doesn't draw power to display black tones, whereas an LCD screen will power all pixels on the screen, regardless of whether it needs to. Use your phone in dark mode with dark themes, like I do, and you'll probably notice a minor improvement to battery life with any OLED handset.

In all, with regular use doing a multitude of daily tasks, including email, messaging, taking photos and recording video, playing word games, streaming some music, and using social media, the battery gave me around one-and-a-quarter days before it started asking for juice. The 66W charge sees to that pretty quickly, though (and knocks spots off the Z Fold 4's hilariously slow 25W charge).

So, for a phone where you're switching between screens a lot, and with regular usage, the battery holds well in my experience.

Camera

I'm happy to say that the Honor Magic Vs does an excellent job of taking photos and recording video. The camera utilizes Sony's IMX800 sensor, first seen in the Honor 70 last year.

I'm glad it is still present, as the main camera takes some lovely images, as you can see from the above examples. Likewise, the UltraWide/macro sensor works like a charm. I was very impressed with the macro, because of the level of detail retained in the resultant image.

Thanks to the AI camera tech that Honor employs, the camera even holds up in low-light situations. Night mode is very good, but on zooming in, you do notice a little smoothing of the image. However, for a photo taken in a dark room (the headphone/speaker shot above), you can see how good the results are from the night mode. The 3x optical zoom also works nicely. Even the selfie sensors are pretty neat!

Video is great, too, and the electronic image stabilization can steady video from the shakiest of hands. Mine are pretty trembly, and I achieved some nice smooth video holding the camera still. Likewise, walking around filming is nice and steady.

Audio

Normally, smartphone external audio is pretty sloppy, offering shrieky, tinny treble in spades, while the mids are drowned out by the shrillness, and the bass is nowhere to be heard at all. This isn't the case with the Honor Magic Vs, which boasts the best external speakers I have listened to on a smartphone.

This is a bold statement, yes, but—hilariously—I was blown away by the sound effects in the 3DMark Wild Life testing. Before I even listened to any music through the speakers, or watched any movies, I was sitting mouth agape, blown away by the benchmarking taking place before my eyes and ears. If I could insert a laughing emoji, I would insert it here, but alas, I'm not Bing's AI, and we have standards.

Frivolity aside, the IMAX certification is well deserved, as the dual stereo speakers offer excellent sound throughout frequency ranges, and I admit to being genuinely surprised by how good the speakers are.

Should You Buy the Honor Magic Vs?

Are you looking for a folding smartphone? First look at Samsung's Z Fold effort, laugh about how it looks like a wedge of cheese, and then do yourself a favor and buy a Magic Vs instead.

It looks terrific, has incredible engineering on the foldable aspects and the innovative hinge, has two stunning screens, plenty of chops in the processing department, and the camera is brilliant. If you don't love it, I will eat my entire collection of hats.

Honor once again shows it is a tenacious brand, that isn't scared to take risks and kick sand in the faces of big smartphone brands like Samsung, and for that, you gotta love 'em.