HONOR Magic V2 Review: So thin, so good

HONOR Magic V2 is expected to arrive in the country soon. It’s currently the thinnest foldable smartphone at 9.9 mm. But make no mistake because despite having a really thin body, the HONOR Magic V2 does come with a lot of interesting and powerful features inside.

Thin but solid

First, let’s talk about the design and its build. Despite the thinness of the smartphone, we were still able to say that the smartphone feels solid to the hand and won’t break easily. It’s the combination of metal and glass on its body which makes the smartphone feel more solid. As for toughness, HONOR is proud that its smartphone can go up to 400,000 folds. That is pretty good for a hinge of a foldable smartphone. In our experience, we do like the feel of closing and opening the smartphone because the feel was consistent and I can use it in different angles.

Closing the smartphone will give you no hinge gaps unlike the older models of Samsung foldables. And the ergonomics of this foldable smartphone is pretty good. It also comes with USB-C and the speaker quality of the smartphone is pretty much good. There’s the volume rocker as well as the home button which serves as the fingerprint scanner of the smartphone too.

The back of the smartphone is made up of matte glass and I’ve noticed that there were not much fingerprints even without a case but mine was easily scratched for some reason and I didn’t know the cause of it. Thankfully, it was just light and not much noticeable.

It’s a fine foldable display

There’s so much to like about the display at first look. One of it is the aspect ratio of the smartphone. Yes, it’s pretty big when unfolded but when folded, the aspect ratio of the cover display is really usable as a smartphone. It actually feels like a normal smartphone due to its thickness. 

And since it’s wider than the Galaxy Fold5, we were able to use most apps and games at a normal aspect ratio and it isn’t awkward to use. The quality is pretty great too and there’s the 120Hz refresh rate which gives you a more responsive display. But that’s not the only thing that I love about it because, there are still surprises inside.

One of the surprising things for me with the HONOR Magic V2 is how good the display is. For the foldable display, it comes with a 120Hz LTPO display with 2500 nits peak brightness. First, I do like how bright it is and I was even able to use it even at direct sunlight and it’s still really bright and vivid.

Next is its crease as it was unnoticeable at first look. While I really don’t have a problems with crease on foldable smartphones at most times as it becomes invisible to me everytime I use it, I still appreciate how HONOR did a pretty fine job with it as I don’t notice it anymore at most times. The HONOR Magic V2’s foldable also supports stylus which is a welcome accessory for those who love to write and scribble on documents.

A long battery life

Another surprise for me for this smartphone is its battery life. The HONOR Magic V2 comes with a 5000mAh battery inside which is already a decent amount for its size and form factor. In our test, we were able to use the smartphone up to a whole day or even up to the next day. 

But of course, the battery would still vary depending on how much you use the foldable display of the smartphone. In my case, I was able to use the smartphone with up two days or even a day and a half on normal usage. A pretty good one for a foldable like this.

For charging, there’s the 66W HONOR SuperCharge which isn’t the fastest in the industry but it’s definitely enough to full charge the smartphone in less than an hour or capable of charging the smartphone in just a few minutes and using it a whole day.

Not the latest processor, but still a flagship performance

The HONOR Magic V2 packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 inside which is already a year old already and a generation away for 2024. But is it bad? Not really. It is still a performer for this year and most games would still run really well on the smartphone at the highest settings at 60fps including games like Honkai: Star Rail and Genshin Impact. 

Aside from that, there’s the large 16GB of RAM and also a 512GB of internal storage which is more than enough and spacious enough whether you want to download games or a lot of your office and work files on the smartphone. Unfortunately, we got the engineering unit of the smartphone and benchmarks doesn’t run on the smartphone. 

If you’re the type of person who uses a foldable smartphone mainly for multi-tasking, casual gaming, and you’re not the type of person who needs to have the most powerful performance on a smartphone then the HONOR Magic V2 would be just fine for you.

A responsive OS

The HONOR Magic V2 runs on MagicOS 7.2. It still does look like similar to HUAWEI’s EMUI but the MagicOS 7.2 does run fine and it’s really smooth in most cases. The smartphone does handle switching from the cover display to the foldable display really well with most of the apps and even games that I’ve used. I can even have an uninterrupted experience on apps when I’m folding the smartphone.

As for its UI, I believe there could be some improvements that are needed here. The large foldable display of the HONOR Magic V2 is meant for productivity and multi-tasking. The aspect ratio is just fine for me for opening two apps at the same time side by side however, the lack of the taskbar similar to the Samsung Galaxy Fold Series means that there’s an additional step when you want to drag and drop apps for multi-window. However, it’s still accessible as you only need to swipe from the side and drag and the drop the app that you want to open.

Other cool features inside

There are also some other cool features that you can expect from the HONOR Magic V2 including HONOR desktop when you plug the smartphone to an external monitor and you can have a desktop-like UI and do multi-tasking on the smartphone in window mode. It also has some apps that are optimized for the foldable display and it delivers a UI that is meant for folded or in laptop mode.

Flagship camera

For the camera of the HONOR Magic V2, it’s actually pretty superb and it does have a  decent cameras inside. For starters, there’s the 50MP ultra wide camera, a 50MP wide camera, and also a 20MP telephoto lens camera inside. Both the selfie cameras on the internal and external screen of the smartphone are 16MP and thankfully, the quality on both are also great as well.

Most of the shots that were took using the smartphone were on point. The colors are great and they’re sharp enough for most of my usage. While they’re definitely not the best out there but it’s definitely one on the top out there when it comes to foldable smartphones.

Verdict

The HONOR Magic V2 is an excellent device if you’re looking for a foldable smartphone. It answered most of the gripes of foldable smartphone doubters — a fully functional external display, a thin and light body that is even thinner than other monobloc smartphones, and an interesting price.

While the HONOR Magic V2 is not a perfect smartphone, the price tag and also its hardware inside is something that you would definitely look at. There’s the excellent build quality including its hinge, a great foldable display, an amazing camera, and a decent performance inside.

While I believe that there might be some improvements needed on the UI and the processor is already a year old, I believe the pros of the smartphone trumps most of its cons. 

The HONOR Magic V2 is definitely a foldable smartphone that you should take a look at and it’s definitely a great alternative to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5.