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The "Lite" model from Honor's Magic series has always been a very interesting device. It's got nothing to do with the flagship, design-wise, but often has some interesting and bold features that can't be found on the "Pro" model. Last year, the Magic 7 Lite came equipped with one of the biggest batteries in the industry, a 7,000 mAh silicon-carbon cell, in a super-slim and durable body.
Time for the successor to try and challenge that crowded midrange market. The Honor Magic 8 Lite is here with an even bigger battery, one of the brightest screens out there, great protection from the elements, and a capable main camera.
The design is now flat, in line with modern smartphone tendencies, and the phone feels like a modern midrange device. The Honor Magic 8 Lite won't be coming to the US, sadly, but if you're in the UK, you can get one for £399, with a wider availability across Europe coming soon.
Honor Magic8 Lite
6.3
Price Class Average
Battery Life
0
7.4
Photo Quality
0
6.1
Video Quality
0
5
Charging
0
8.3
Performance Heavy
0
4.7
Performance Light
0
6.3
Display Quality
0
7.6
Design
0
7
Wireless Charging
0
4
Biometrics
0
6
Audio
0
6
Software
0
6
Why the score?
This device scores 100% worse than the average for this price class, which includes devices like the Honor 400, Motorola Edge 60 and Xiaomi Poco F7 Pro
The Magic 8 Lite features a more modern, flatter design with the signature camera ring on the back. The construction of the phone is solid, even though the back is made of plastic. Speaking of which, it's a very nice-looking green back with a 3D effect under direct sunlight. I don't have an issue with plastic; it's a durable material that doesn't break easily.
And while we're on the durability side of things, the Magic 8 Lite features an IP69 dust and water resistance rating and also 2.5-meter drop resistance thanks to the ultra-hard aluminosilicate glass on the front.
The frame is also made of plastic, but again, it looks and feels quite sturdy; I dropped the phone on my hardwood floor by accident, and there wasn't a scratch on it. Overall, the Magic 8 Lite is a lightweight, stylish-looking device that won't embarrass you in a crowd.
The Honor Magic 8 Lite is available in Midnight Black, Forest Green, Reddish Brown, and Sunrise Gold
The phone is available in three colors globally—Midnight Black, Forest Green, Reddish Brown—with a Sunrise Gold option reserved for the Chinese market. The green version has that 3D effect on the back, which makes it look bent inward, while the red one has a texture resembling leather. All colorways look very stylish, with the Forest Green being my favorite one—it's quite fresh!
In terms of case candy, there's none—Honor has hopped on the minimal retail box train, and inside the slim paper box you'll find just the phone, a USB-C cable, and some paperwork—no charger, case, or anything extra.
There's a 6.79-inch OLED screen on the Honor Magic 8 Lite with a 1200 x 2640 pixel resolution, resulting in a pixel density of around 427 PPI. The bezels around the screen are quite narrow, and this contributes to the 90.9% screen-to-body ratio.
Honor cites 6,000 nits of peak brightness for this phone, and we're about to verify this claim. Normally, companies measure peak brightness on a very small portion of the screen, the so-called APL (average picture level).
We measure it at 20% APL and 100% APL, the former represents a scenario closer to a real-world use, while the latter is the absolute max brightness with the whole screen showing white. The panel is also 120 Hz, so you can get that buttery smooth scrolling all the flagships have. Off to the testing bench.
The CIE 1931 xy color gamut chart represents the set(area)of colors that a display can reproduce,with the sRGB colorspace(the highlighted triangle)serving as reference.The chart also provides a visual representation of a display's color accuracy. The small squares across the boundaries of the triangle are the reference points for the various colors, while the small dots are the actual measurements. Ideally, each dot should be positioned on top of its respective square. The 'x:CIE31' and 'y:CIE31' values in the table below the chart indicate the position of each measurement on the chart. 'Y' shows the luminance (in nits) of each measured color, while 'Target Y' is the desired luminance level for that color. Finally, 'ΔE 2000' is the Delta E value of the measured color. Delta E values of below 2 are ideal.
The Color accuracy chart gives an idea of how close a display's measured colors are to their referential values. The first line holds the measured (actual) colors, while the second line holds the reference (target) colors. The closer the actual colors are to the target ones, the better.
The Grayscale accuracy chart shows whether a display has a correct white balance(balance between red,green and blue)across different levels of grey(from dark to bright).The closer the Actual colors are to the Target ones,the better.
The display results are quite peculiar. It turns out Honor caps the brightness of the Magic 8 Lite in some way, as the 20% APL result is actually a little lower than the 100% APL. This doesn't matter much, as 1,850 nits of brightness across the whole display is pretty good. I didn't have any trouble reading the display even under direct sunlight.
In terms of color reproduction, minimal brightness, and white balance, the phone is on par with the competition. There's an optical fingerprint scanner under the display, and it works just fine.
Honor Magic 8 Lite Camera
Where's my telephoto?
There are only two cameras on the back of the Honor Magic 8 Lite | Image by PhoneArena
Honor Magic8 Lite
PhoneArena Camera Score
BEST 158
117
PhoneArena Photo Score
BEST 165
123
Main (wide)
BEST 87
66
Zoom
BEST 30
19
Ultra-wide
BEST 26
16
Selfie
BEST 30
22
PhoneArena Video Score
BEST 155
110
Main (wide)
BEST 83
63
Zoom
BEST 27
11
Ultra-wide
BEST 24
16
Selfie
BEST 28
21
There's a dual camera system on the back of the Honor Magic 8 Lite, which is a bit of a disappointment at this price range. Most competitors offer a third camera; some—like the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro—even come with a periscope telephoto.
The main camera inside the black ring on the back of the Magic 8 Lite is a 108MP Samsung ISOCELL HM6 sensor under a lens with an aperture of f/1.75. The size of that sensor is 1/1.67", and its equivalent focal length is 24 mm.
The second camera is an ultrawide, and it uses a very small 1/5.0" sensor with just 5 MP and an f/2.2 aperture. The front camera is 16 MP. As you can see from our Camera widget, the performance is not spectacular, with the ultrawide dragging the score down a lot.
Let's check out the samples.
Surprisingly, the main camera snaps decent shots. They're 12MP binned images from the huge 108MP sensor, and there's plenty of detail, and the colors look vibrant, albeit a bit too saturated for my taste. The white balance and dynamic range are both quite decent given the price point of the phone, too.
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There's nothing to write home about the samples taken with the ultrawide camera; the images are somewhat soft with not a lot of detail, which is not surprising given the 5MP sensor. There's no dedicated telephoto camera, so the zoom samples are crops from the main sensor. These are fine at low magnification but are progressively getting more blurry and overprocessed the higher you go.
Video Quality
The Honor Magic 8 Lite caps at 4K, 30 fps, and at that resolution the video looks pretty decent. There's no excessive noise, and the details are pretty good too. However, the video looks a bit dark and soft, the dynamic range is not very wide, and crushed shadows are a frequent phenomenon.
Honor Magic 8 Lite Performance & Benchmarks
Midrange written all over
No benchmark records, but no thermal throttling either | Image by PhoneArena
There's a Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset inside the Honor Magic 8 Lite. It's a refreshed version of the original Snapdragon 6 chip, an octa-core midrange silicon built on a 4nm node. This chip is paired with 8GB of RAM, which is on the lower side by modern standards. Let's see what the synthetic benchmarks tell us.
The CPU scores of the Magic 8 Lite are very close to that of the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 inside the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro and the Redmi Note 14 Pro+. There's just a tiny bit of performance gain, compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 inside the Galaxy A36 5G.
The same goes for the GPU scores—the phone is on par with the competition, and there's no thermal throttling or drop in performance over time. It's not the fastest silicon out there in terms of raw performance, but the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 manages to run everything smoothly in day-to-day tasks, and it's very power efficient.
The Honor Magic 8 Lite is available with two storage configurations—256GB or 512GB onboard memory.
Honor Magic 8 Lite Software
The software experience involves a pretty clean Android 15 with Honor's MagicOS 9 on top. It's pleasant software with minor tweaks here and there - such as the Magic Capsule, which some might find similar to Apple's Dynamic Island.
There's a touch of AI as well, the usual Honor AI tools we've been seeing in the past couple of generations. Magic Portal allows you to swiftly choose text and images and transfer them to another application. Additionally, you may create subtitles for movies, music, and other media, receive writing assistance, and translate text and audio in real time.
If you hold down the power button, however, you'll summon Gemini, Google's almighty AI agent. Honor upped its game with the software updates and started to offer seven years on the flagship Magic Pro series. There's no official number for the Lite yet regarding major OS updates, but judging from the previous generation and the Honor 400, we should get 5 or 6 years of support, which is pretty great.
The battery revolution is happening as I type this. There's a silicon-carbon cell inside the Honor Magic 8 Lite, with the impressive capacity of 7,500 mAh. You can check out our explainer article about this new tech, but basically, it's a process that adds silicon in the graphite anode to improve the capacity of a lithium-ion battery.
And the results are clear as day. The Honor Magic 8 Lite tops our battery life chart with an impressive 11 hours and 25 minutes battery life estimate. Thanks to the efficient and modest chipset, this phone can do three days on a single charge with moderate use.
Looking at the results above, the almost 24 hours of non-stop browsing is very impressive, and the 19 hours of YouTube will for sure left you dazed and confused - don't do it in a single run. Jokes aside, this phone obliterates the competition when it comes to battery life. Samsung, Apple, and Google should pay close attention - they're lagging behind at the moment.
Decent wired charging, but no wireless charging on board of the Magic 8 Lite | Image by PhoneArena
The Honor Magic 8 Lite supports up to 66W of wired power, and with a proper charger, you'll be able to fill the massive 7,500 mAh battery from zero to full in 72 minutes, or just over an hour. Sadly, there's no wireless charging support, as Honor has chosen to get rid of the coils in favor of a bigger battery. I personally would take a bigger battery over wireless charging any day of the week.
Honor Magic 8 Lite Audio Quality and Haptics
Two stereo speakers make up the Magic 8 Lite's audio system. It's the usual pair of an earpiece and a bottom-firing loudspeaker. Surprisingly, the sound is quite loud, and there's something Honor calls a 400% audio boost. The last tick when you increase the volume gives you this boost, making the overall sound even louder.
It's a nice feature to have, especially if you find yourselves in noisy environments frequently. The sound quality is decent up to the 400% boost but becomes quite harsh in the high frequencies when you push the phone to the absolute maximum.
The haptic feedback is a bit soft and not particularly focused. You feel the vibration fizzing away through the body of the phone. It's not very strong either, but it gets the job done.
Should you buy it?
If you need a three-day phone, you should check out the Honor Magic 8 Lite | Image by PhoneArena
The global launch of the Honor Magic 8 Lite is still some weeks away, but the early UK premiere gave us a glimpse of this interesting mid-ranger. There are some really strong selling points to this phone, the most important one being the amazing battery life. If there's such a thing as a three-day phone nowadays, the Honor Magic 8 Lite is it.
The display is very good as well—bright, vivid, and crisp. You get pretty clean software with a sparkle of AI and Gemini on a button, plus a decently long software support (to be verified).
Now, there are some drawbacks as well. The camera system is not spectacular, and while you can get some good shots with the main camera, the ultrawide is uninspiring. There's no wireless charging, and some people might be put off by the plastic frame and back.
If you can live with the aforementioned drawbacks, the Magic 8 Lite can be a decent choice.
Mariyan, a tech enthusiast with a background in Nuclear Physics and Journalism, brings a unique perspective to PhoneArena. His childhood curiosity for gadgets evolved into a professional passion for technology, leading him to the role of Editor-in-Chief at PCWorld Bulgaria before joining PhoneArena. Mariyan's interests range from mainstream Android and iPhone debates to fringe technologies like graphene batteries and nanotechnology. Off-duty, he enjoys playing his electric guitar, practicing Japanese, and revisiting his love for video games and Haruki Murakami's works.
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