Honor 90 review: A solid mid-range smartphone at a great price

Honor’s latest product, the Honor 90, aims to push the mid-range smartphone market even further. Going against the grain and, in some cases, outperforming phones twice their price, the deluge of midrange devices continues to impress. Honor is not a newbie to the smartphone market, but its latest model is expected to generate quite a stir.

The Honor 90 is a good mid-range phone that looks great and works extremely well. Its screen, in particular, is stunning, and the battery should last you the entire day and more.

However, there are a few minor issues. At this point, the absence of an official IP certification and the camera’s lack of OIS feel like a missed opportunity. The single-speaker configuration also makes listening to music or watching videos without headphones a very unpleasant experience.

HONOR 90 KEY FEATURES

The Honor 90 is smooth and slim, well-built, light, and balanced, with a universally contoured body that feels excellent in the hand. Its design is also quite exquisite and opulent.

The Honor 90 is available in a variety of eye-catching hues and intriguing finishes. Our review device is in the newly available Peacock Blue color, which is pretty visually appealing. It features a smooth, almost velvety feel on the back and a whimsical “splash” of color that catches light reflections. The Honor 90 is also available in Diamond Silver, as was the case with our hands-on review unit. In contrast, the rear has two different surfaces. It looks stunning in person, with lots of reflections. The two most subdued color selections appear to be Midnight Black and Emerald Green.

Despite being a mid-ranger, the Honor 90 includes numerous high-end features. One of its standout features is undoubtedly the curved 6.7-inch display. It is a 10-bit panel that supports HDR10+ and boasts a stated peak brightness of 1600 nits. It also includes a 1.5K resolution, 120Hz frame rate, 3840Hz PWM dimming, and 400-level dimming control.

The Honor 90 also boasts an amazing camera setup. The phone features a gigantic 200MP, f/1.9 main camera on the back and a 12MP, f/2.2 autofocus ultrawide that can also function as a powerful macro camera. On the front, the Honor 90 features a 50MP ultrawide selfie camera. Both of these cameras feature 4K@30fps video capture and EIS.

The Honor 90’s 5,000 mAh battery with 66W charging and extra capabilities, like as NFC, contribute to its overall well-roundedness. It still lacks certain important features, such as official ingress protection and stereo speakers. It’s nothing big, but it’s worth noting.

HONOR 90 UNBOXING

Before we dive into the details of the Honor 90, let’s have a look at the retail bundle. The phone is packaged in a modest two-piece cardboard packaging. The design isn’t particularly appealing, but we can appreciate how durable it is. There is also a plastic cradle on the inside to protect the phone during shipping.

Honor is incredibly generous with the goodies of the retail bundle. First and foremost, the Honor 90 includes a 66W fast charger and a USB Type-A to Type-C adapter. The charger is proprietary, but the cord appears to be standard, which is good to see. A high-quality soft, clear TPU case is included in the box, allowing you to start using your new phone right away. It should be noted that certain markets will not receive a charger in the box, while others will receive both a charger and a protective case. Check with a local dealer.

CAMERA

On paper, the Honor 90 5G’s camera setup appears to be impressive. The camera features a 200MP Samsung ISOCELL HP3 primary sensor with an aperture of f/1.9, a 12MP ultra-wide and macro lens, and a 2MP depth sensor. The phone’s front-facing camera is 50MP and is used for selfies. There is no OIS support, which is terrible for a phone at this pricing point. However, you do have EIS support.

In daylight, the Honor 90’s primary camera takes good photos with true colors. For comparison, I tested the Honor 90’s cameras with those of the OnePlus Nord 3, which, according to our assessment, is one of the best photography phones in its segment. In daylight, the Honor 90 5G would generate more accurate colors and a wider dynamic range than the Nord 3, which took saturated photographs. Nonetheless, the Nord 3’s 50MP Sony IMX890 camera (in default shooting mode) produced better, more detailed shots than the Honor 90’s 200MP HP3 sensor. In the comparison photo below, the Honor 90 5G was able to accurately distinguish the orange fire extinguisher from the red buckets behind it, whilst the Nord 3 was unable to do so.

We discovered that the Nord 3’s 8MP ultra-wide lens captured more visually pleasing (although with enhanced colors) and detailed photographs than the Honor 90 5G’s 12MP wide-angle images. The same 12MP lens can record macro images, resulting in clearer close-up shots than the Nord 3’s 2MP macro lens.

The Honor 90 allows you to take high-resolution 200MP photos. This allows you to capture detailed photographs that you may crop and blow up to frame at home. However, this reduces brightness and dynamic range. The camera can shoot in 4K video resolution, which is excellent. However, EIS has a limited ability to stabilize videos.

I found the Honor 90’s cameras to be slightly uneven and difficult to operate in low-light situations. The lack of OIS functionality makes it difficult to shoot stable shots in low-light conditions. While the color science was mostly appealing in daylight, it fell short in low light, with the Honor 90’s cameras saturating colors and failing to distinguish between purples and reds. In the comparison below, you can see that the Honor 90’s image has unnaturally green grass, and flaring lights, and fails to appropriately capture the purple color of the poles. The Nord 3 excels at capturing true colors, natural lighting, and details in low light, thanks in part to OIS.

DESIGN AND SCREEN

The Honor 90’s standout feature is its 6.7-inch 2664×1200 AMOLED display, which is simply stunning. It’s obvious from the moment you turn on the Honor 90 that this is where the majority of the phone’s budget has gone, and it’s certainly one of the greatest screens you’ll find on a phone in this price bracket.

With a peak brightness of 1600 nits, the Honor 90’s display is not only easy to see outside, but it also has vibrant colors that make it ideal for consuming material on the go. I’ve been watching Andor episodes on this machine, and I’ve never had to squint to see anything on screen.

The display bends more sharply at the edges than it did on the Honor 70, which might cause issues with some apps by cutting off the odd icon or bit of information (though this was a rare occurrence, admittedly).

What is striking, however, is the screen-to-body ratio, which is a whopping 93.3% thanks to the exceptionally thin bezels that make the display feel almost entirely end-to-end, especially since it curves slightly over the corners.

Honor has also made several announcements on the Honor 90’s dimming and refresh capabilities. The Honor 90’s specs sheet mentions 3840Hz PWM dimming, which seems fancy enough, but it means that it can refresh at a rate that is significantly less hazardous to the eyes than most phones.

I had trouble wrapping my head around this until I saw it next to my iPhone 14 under a high-speed camera lens. This works in tandem with the phone’s eye-comfort mode, which gradually reduces the amount of blue light as the day progresses to reduce its impact on your circadian cycle, which is a great feature.

Given that this device has a screen nearly the same size as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, I expected it to be heavy, but the Honor 90 manages to avoid that by weighing only 183g. This made using the phone one-handed a breeze, which is unusual for a handset this size, and it made me feel like I wasn’t being punished for taking advantage of the larger-than-normal display.

HOW’S THE PERFORMANCE?

Under the hood, the Honor 90 is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 ‘Accelerated Edition’ chipset, which is relatively obscure in the mobile space. The Xiaomi 13 Lite and the Chinese version of the Oppo Reno 8 Pro also employ the base Snapdragon 7 Gen 1, and the Honor 90, unexpectedly, performs similarly.

The Honor 90 can easily handle the demands of surfing, streaming, and gaming, and while I did notice the occasional drop in performance when many power-hungry apps were open at the same time, the ordinary user is unlikely to put the phone through such harsh tests.

For those wondering, the Honor 90’s Geekbench 6 scores – 1120 single-core and 3206 multi-core – are equivalent to the Google Pixel 7, which is a powerful device but not one of the greatest gaming phones available. The same is true with Honor’s latest mid-ranger.

Buy it if...

• The exterior is luxurious, with an eye-catching style.
• The OLED display is very bright and color-accurate, and it supports HDR10+.
• The camera system is versatile, with autofocus on the ultrawide lens and generally reliable quality.

Don't buy it if…

• No splash protection rating.
• A solitary, not particularly skilled speaker.

FULL SPECIFICATION