The Honor 200 is affordable and elegant
Honor is a fast-growing smartphone brand vying for your attention with its latest 200 series — a range of stylish and reasonably-priced devices with a focus on photography.
The lineup includes the Honor 200 Lite, the Honor 200 and the Honor 200 Pro. I managed to get my hands on the mid-range offering which delivers a lot of the same specs and features as the Pro model but for only £499. At the time of writing, you can also claim a free JBL Charge 5 when you buy the Honor 200.
At this price point, the Honor 200 is going up against top smartphones like the Google Pixel 8a and the Samsung Galaxy S23 FE. The competition is tough but Honor has a trick up its sleeve.
Made in collaboration with Studio Harcourt, the famous Parisian photography studio that has shot everyone from Karl Lagerfeld and Audrey Hepburn to Queen Rania of Jordan, the Honor 200 aims to bring professional-looking portraits to a pocket-friendly device.
But that's not all the Honor 200 has to offer, as I found out when I spent a couple of weeks testing the phone. Here's everything I discovered about its design, display, camera performance, battery and software.
Honor 200 review: design and display
Honor knows how to make good-looking gadgets and the Honor 200 is a great example of that. It has a luxurious and refined design with sleek curves and elegant details, with a discreet waved pattern across the metallic back, a sliver-framed camera module and a glossy frame.
You can buy it in emerald green, black and moonlight white. I tried out the green version which has a blue tint echoing the colours of the ocean.
When I took the phone out of the box, the first thing I noticed was how slim it felt in my hand. It's 7.7mm thick and only weighs 187g so it easily slides into pockets without adding too much bulk, despite having a big 6.7-inch screen.
The display wraps around the sides of the phone with super slim bezels and a hole-punch-style front camera in the middle at the top. Whether or not you like the curved edges of the display will come down to personal preference, most brands have been moving towards much flatter screens in recent years.
Around the frame, there's a volume rocker, power button and USB-C port. There's no headphone jack here.
One sticking point of the Honor 200's design is that, unlike a lot of other current handsets, this one doesn't have an official IP rating so it isn't protected against water or dust and you'll need to be careful about when and where you use it.
The Honor 200 has a large 6.7-inch OLED screen with FHD+ resolution (2664×1200 pixels). It's colourful, crisp and crystal clear. The 4000 nits peak brightness means it's visible even under bright sunlight too.
I used the Honor 200 to snap and edit photos, watch movies from a few of the best streaming services and scroll through online stores and social media. I was impressed with how the screen looked across the board. Even when I was streaming darker shows on the browser like Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+ I could see the screen clearly, thanks to effective HDR (High Dynamic Range) even more low-lit parts of the shot didn't fade into the background.
The Honor 200 display has a 120Hz refresh rate meaning it feels very smooth to scroll and swipe on. That will benefit gamers in particular because the display is super responsive. And it can adapt itself so it won't drain the battery. Despite becoming more common, not all phones have such a high refresh rate, like the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro which are limited to only 60Hz.
To unlock the phone, there's an in-display fingerprint sensor. It worked well in my experience although sometimes it took a moment or two to process. For those who prefer, there's also the choice to use facial recognition.
Honor 200 review: camera
The Honor 200's crown jewel is its camera. Its combination of hardware and AI processing features produce impressive shots, especially for a sub-£500 phone.
The camera system is made up of a 50MP portrait main camera, a 50MP telephoto camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera and a 50MP portrait selfie camera. The structure isn't that different from the Pro model of the phone, it just uses a slightly different sensor. The camera app takes a second to open but once it does the shutter speed is fast, I never missed the shot.
The photos I took on this smartphone are bold, bright and some were worthy of a slot on my Instagram grid. Granted, there was some oversaturation which boosted colours beyond what is realistic, but that means there's plenty of energy in each scene. Whatever I pointed the camera at, the Honor 200 delivered detailed results and made the focus point stand out against the backdrop of the scene.
Portraits are the Honor 200's speciality. Using the AI-powered Harcourt portrait modes, photos of people look as though a professional has shot them in a studio. Sadly, this feature is only available on the rear camera, Harcourt-style selfies are exclusive to the Pro handset.
If you regularly shoot portraits on your smartphone, the Honor 200 will be game-changing (and it'll be useful whenever you need a new headshot for your LinkedIn profile as I discovered). I'm not sure how much you'd use the Harcourt portrait modes to capture memories day-to-day but it's certainly a unique feature that will draw plenty of people in.
Setting the Honor 200 apart from other similarly-priced handsets is the fact that it features a 2.5x optical zoom. It may not sound that impressive but considering most inexpensive devices don't have optical zoom at all and are usually limited to digital cropping, it's another defining feature.
Honor 200 sample photos
Take a look at the galleries below to see some examples of unedited shots taken on the Honor 200.
Honor 200 review: performance and battery
Powering the Honor 200 is the mid-range Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 processor alongside a choice of 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of internal storage. The result? A speedy smartphone that coped well with just about anything I threw at it without heating up or slowing down. It fared well with multiple app windows open at once, long sessions of Candy Crush and heavy camera use.
Thanks to a 5,100mAh battery, the Honor 200 easily lasted me the entire day and usually didn't need charging until the next morning, depending on what I used it for.
To compare the battery to other phones, I downloaded and played a video over two hours at full brightness. In that time, the battery percentage dropped by only 8% suggesting that it would have lasted 25 hours in total, placing it among some of the longest-lasting devices I've tried.
The Honor 200 supports Honor 100W SuperCharge so if you have the kit to go with it you could charge this phone from 0 to 100% in around half an hour.
Honor 200 review: software
MagicOS 8 powers the Honor 200, it's based on Android 14 so will be relatively easy to get used to, although there are some quirks to know about.
As you would expect, you can choose to navigate through the system using gestures or three-key navigation, and your apps are stored in easy-to-access folders on the home screen. Some folders allow you to click directly onto the app tapping the app icon, without going into the folder first. Unlike other Android devices, there's no drawer to see all your apps in one place. I found myself spending longer looking for apps because of it.
My main issue with the software is all the apps that come pre-installed. Google's suite of apps come loaded on the phone, including the Google Play Store, Google Photos and Gmail, but some of those are doubled up by Honor's software. There's another app gallery, a second calendar, an extra photo gallery and another email app. There are also a few unnecessary extras like Ali Express, Trip.com and TikTok. I had to spend some time going through and removing the software I didn't want when I first started up the handset.
Honor promises three years of software updates and four years of security updates for its 200 series phones. That's a typical amount for Android, although recently some manufacturers have been promising a lot more. For example, some of the best Pixel phones and a few of the leading Samsung phones offer up to seven years of updates.
Honor 200 review: verdict
The Honor 200 proves that you don't need to splash out an eye-watering amount of money to get a top-performing smartphone in 2024. This handset is good-looking, fast and takes stunning pictures. If you love snapping portraits, you won't find anything better for the price.
Truthfully there aren't many downsides to this smartphone. My biggest problem is the software, the Honor 200 comes with tonnes of bloatware and Magic OS doesn't run quite as intuitively as purer versions of Android. It's also a shame that there's no water resistance, you never know when a torrential downpour might hit in the UK and sometimes accidents are unavoidable so I'd be concerned that it would eventually get damaged.
Honor 200 review: also consider
Another top Android is the affordable Google Pixel 8a. It won't give you professional-looking portraits like the Honor 200 but it does snap very impressive shots. You'll also get a much cleaner version of the Android operating system with fewer unnecessary apps pre-installed.
If a big screen is a must-have but you'd rather it be flat and the design be sharper, consider the Samsung Galaxy A55 instead. It has a similar price tag to the Honor 200 with a solid battery life and decent performance although the camera is a little more hit-and-miss.
For those who want a simple operating system with minimal bloatware, the Nothing Phone 2(a) is a good option. It's stripped back and intuitive, with speedy performance and a cool design.
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