The HONOR 100 Pro was not officially launched in the Philippines back during its 2023 premier. Its successor, the HONOR 200 Pro seemed to be likewise skipping our shores, but the brand announced a pleasant surprise last June. Yes, it will have a local release and by the time you’re reading this review, HONOR’s new top-dog should already be available online and in your nearest HONOR retailer. Was it worth the wait, though? Find out below.
Design: 5/5
The HONOR 200 Pro review unit we got came in its Ocean Cyan palette. This specific colorway came with a back panel combination of textured matte and plain glossy in an almost yin-yang fashion, making for a unique take on an otherwise familiar design. Silver HONOR branding marks are present by the bottom left, while silver regulatory marks are on the bottom right. Should you be leaning more towards the minimalist end, a Black color option is also available.
While I am usually not a fan of bulging shooters, the HONOR 200 Pro’s huge camera island looks very premium and just by the look, you can tell that it means business. Its camera and flash modules are arranged in a diamond pattern, with the ultra-wide at the top, telephoto on the middle-left, main portrait on the bottom, and white LED flash on the middle-right.
The 6.78-inch display at the front houses a unique pill-shaped cutout which houses the HONOR 200 Pro’s selfie and front-facing depth cameras. The top edge has an IR blaster, a microphone pinhole, and a speaker; the left is bare; the right has the volume rockers and power button; and the bottom has the SIM tray, another microphone pinhole, the USB Type-C port, and a second speaker.
Overall, the HONOR 200 Pro’s design accurately conveys its status as the company’s current best smartphone.
Hardware: 5/5
This high-end phone sports handsome innards that—while are not the absolute peak of their respective parts list—bring an experience that approximates flagship reliability at a more accessible price point.
Headlining the spec sheet is its triple rear camera setup with a portrait mode created in collaboration with Studio Harcourt, a Parisian art photography studio known for its lineage as a black-and-white portraiture to the stars and the elite. The main rear portrait shooter is a 50MP one with an f/1.9 aperture and a sizeable 1/1.3-inch H9000 sensor. The telephoto rear shooter is likewise 50MP, this time with an f/2.4 aperture, a customized Sony IMX856 sensor, and 2.5x optical zoom. There is also a combination 12MP f/2.2 wide-macro shooter at the back with a 112˚ field of view and 2.5cm focus distance. Both 50MP cameras at the back feature phase detection auto focus and optical image stabilization (OIS). Meanwhile, the front lenses housed in the pill-shaped cutout consist of a 2MP f/2.4 depth shooter and a 50MP f/2.1 selfie shooter.
Driving the processing is the pseudo-flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 released earlier this year. This powerful eight-core, 4nm chipset is currently in the top 10 mobile chipsets around according to technical review sites, ensuring the HONOR 200 Pro will last for many years before showing its age. This Snapdragon chip is led by a lone Cortex-X4 core ripping at 3.0GHz; four Cortex-A720 cores boosting to 2.8GHz; and three Cortex-A520 cores reaching 2.0GHz. An Adreno 735 GPU handles graphics duties, with 12GB of RAM present for multitasking and 512GB of storage.
The 6.78-inch AMOLED display sports a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth animations; 4,000 nits peak brightness for visibility even under direct light; and TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Display and Full Care Display Certifications for your eye health. For audio, the HONOR 200 Pro has dual stereo speakers, one each at the top and bottom edges.
Lastly, there is a 5200mAh battery under the hood, chargeable with the bundled 100W HONOR SuperCharge 6 power brick and USB-C Cable. A slower but still speedy 66W HONOR Wireless SuperCharge feature is also available if you prefer tangle-free refueling.
User Experience: 4.5/5
Seeing as the HONOR 200 Pro is being marketed as “The Portrait Master,” it is only fitting to start the User Experience portion by talking about its camera prowess. Both the main and telephoto shooters take great photos in most lighting conditions. In bright scenarios, overall details are sharp, colors are pleasantly saturated without looking over-processed, and dynamic range is broad enough to retain enough details even in the darkest portions of an otherwise well-lit scene. A Night Mode is present to alleviate any pains when shooting in dim conditions, generating still-pleasing photos with minimal noise—just make sure your hands are steady for the duration of the capture to further help along the OIS.
The ultra-wide camera is likewise good, with sharpness (as is usually the case) falling the further you get from the center.
The aforementioned Studio Harcourt collaboration takes the form of three color profiles emulating the famed studio’s looks. The first is its signature black and white called Harcourt Classic, the second is Harcourt Colour which leans more towards a sepia-vintage look, and the third is Harcourt Vibrant which features standard colors. All modes featured decent subject detection and natural-looking background and foreground blur, with outputs being as detailed and as artistic as you’d expect them to be.
For performance, the HONOR 200 Pro notched the following scores in our standard suite of benchmarks: 3,014 in the super demanding 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme 4K UHD test; 15,194 on PCMark Work 3.0; 1,568 on Geekbench 6 CPU single-core; 4,518 on Geekbench 6 CPU multi-core, 8,615 on Geekbench 6 GPU OpenCL; and 1.32 GB/s and 541.65 MB/s on sequential reads and sequential writes on the Cross Platform Disk Test. Just to show how powerful the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset is, the HONOR 200 Pro also notched a “Maxed Out!” rating on the standard 3D Mark Wildlife non-4K UHD test, with the app saying that it was “too powerful for this test.”
For gaming, the HONOR 200 Pro easily handled the high-end games thrown at it. The graphics-intensive Genshin Impact, even with every setting maxed out and 60fps mode turned on, saw buttery performance even in scenarios with long draw distances. The likewise punishing Diablo Immortal also saw the same rendering prowess despite every setting maxed out, high image resolution, and 60fps mode being active. NBA 2K Mobile and Asphalt 9 were likewise easy to run. Lighter titles such as MOBAs and first person shooters are also no problem, with Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, Call of Duty Mobile, and Pokémon Unite all beyond playable.
The large display with HDR support and dual speakers also lend to a great gaming experience, as well as immersive multimedia binging sessions.
Meanwhile, the battery life is pretty average, lasting 12 hours 4 minutes via the PCMark Work 3.0 battery life test with 50% brightness and volume maxed out. In real life, while it certainly won’t last a marathon away from its charger, the HONOR 200 Pro has enough juice to take you out of the house in the morning and back in the evening before needing to be plugged in. As for charging, the 100W HONOR SuperCharger 6 which the HONOR 200 Pro ships with fills the phone up by over 40% in just 15 minutes and almost 80% in just 30 minutes. It also takes less than 50 minutes to go from 0% all the way to 100%, meaning you won’t really feel tethered to the wall unless you’re keen on regularly draining the battery.
Value: 4.5/5
Coming in at PHP29,999, you may ask if the HONOR 200 Pro is worth the price of admission. I’d say the HONOR 200 Pro is well worth the money. Not only are you getting the blazing Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor, you’re also looking at a well-tuned and eye-friendly display, as well as amazing cameras. In fact, renowned technical photography benchmark site DxOMark placed the HONOR 200 Pro within the Top 5 best mobile cameras in its price segment. If you care about getting everything near-top-tier but don’t want to spend upwards of 40 big ones, then the HONOR 200 Pro is for you.
Looking for something a bit more affordable? The HONOR 200 (non-Pro) is also available at PHP24,999. As a bonus, pre-orders of the AI Portrait Master HONOR 200 from July 17 to 26, 2024 get a FREE JBL Soundgear Frames worth PHP9,499!
The HONOR 200 series is available at any HONOR Experience and Partner Stores, as well as online via Shopee, Lazada, and the TikTok Shop.
Specifications
- Display: 6.78-inch, 2700 x 1224 px, FHD+ Quad Curved AMOLED with 120Hz refresh rate, 4000 nits peak brightness, 1.07-billion colors, DCI-P3 wide color gamut, HDR10 support, 3840Hz PWM dimming, TÜV Rheinland Flicker Free Display Certification, and TÜV Rheinland Full Care Display Certification
- Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8s Gen 3
- OS: MagicOS 8.0 (Android 14)
- RAM: 12GB RAM
- Storage: 512GB
- Camera: 50MP f/1.9 with a 1/1.3-inch H9000 ultra large sensor, PDAF, and OIS (main portrait rear); 50MP f/2.4 with Sony IMX856 sensor, PDAF, OIS, 2.5x optical zoom, and up to 50x digital zoom (telephoto rear); 12 MP f/2.2 with 112˚ field of view and 2.5cm ultra-short focus distance (ultra-wide and macro rear); 50MP f/2.1 (main front); 2MP f/2.4, (depth front)
- Connectivity: 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, NFC, OTG, USB 2.0 Type-C, dual nano-SIM
- Battery: 5200mAh, 100W HONOR SuperCharge 6
- Others: In-display Optical Fingerprint Scanner, Face Unlock
- Dimensions: 163.3 x 75.2 x 8.2 mm
- Weight: 199g
- Colors: Ocean Cyan, Black
What’s Hot
- Amazing cameras with Studio Harcourt’s signature color tuning.
- Pseudo-flagship level Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 processor
- Fast wired and wireless charging
- Dual speakers
What’s Not
- Unspecified IP-rating
- Can be slippery without a case
Bottomline
HONOR’s new top dog ticks everything you’ll need in a high-end phone.
Reviewed and Photos by Chris Noel Hidalgo
Also published in GADGETS MAGAZINE July 2024 Issue