Honor 200 Pro Review: Stunning Portrait Photography on a Fine Phone.

The Honor 200 Pro offers outstanding specifications at an affordable price. The phone’s Studio Harcourt portrait effects are its most notable feature, but it also has a lot to offer elsewhere. The Honor 200 Pro features the largest battery in its class, charges quickly, and plays like a pro.

Last year, we were thrilled by the Honor 90’s specifications, which made it a strong challenger in the upper mid-range market. This year, things are a little different. Instead of simply introducing the Honor 200, the company has offered a Pro variant to the European market for the first time.

This implies that the Honor 200 Pro competes in a completely new market category, facing off against lower-tier flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S24, Google Pixel 8, and Xiaomi 14, rather than mid-rangers like the Pixel 8a and Galaxy A55.

To compete with these heavy hitters, you must have some serious specs, and the Honor 200 Pro does just that. A high-quality display, a fast processor, a large battery, and a slew of high-resolution cameras are all available here.

The most unusual component, however, is Honor’s collaboration with Studio Harcourt. The brand collaborated with the famed Parisian picture makers to create filters that capture the studio’s unique portrait style. It may not seem like a big deal, but the outcome may surprise you.

HONOR 200 PRO KEY FEATURES

The Honor 200 trio was first introduced in China a while ago, but we are now bringing the Honor 200 and Honor 200 Pro to worldwide markets, in addition to the previously announced Honor 200 Lite. Today’s review is of the Honor 200 Pro, a phone that appears to be far too nice to be limited to China.

The Honor 200 Pro was released six months after the Honor 100 Pro, which followed the Honor 90 Pro. In Europe, Honor had only the vanilla Honor 90 available, so the 200 Pro should be a significant update.

The Honor 200 Pro features a new chipset, a brighter display, and new sensors for the primary and telephoto cameras. It also has an IP65 rating for dust and splash resistance. The Honor 200 Pro features a premium 6.78-inch OLED panel with 1224p resolution, 1B colors, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a little pill-shaped notch. The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 CPU, which has lots of RAM and storage.

Of course, the Honor 200 Pro’s most interesting feature is its camera package. There are three images on the back: a 50MP primary with a new bespoke big sensor, a 50MP 2.5x telephoto, and a 12MP AF ultrawide. Portrait selfies are crucial to Honor, which is why the front configuration includes a 50MP camera with a 2MP depth sensor.

The overall specification sheet is completed by a 5,200mAh battery capable of 100W wired, 66W wireless, and even reverse wireless charging. The Honor 90 Pro and 100 Pro use Qualcomm’s most powerful processor, while the 200 Pro has a more simplified “s” version of Gen 3. It is indeed unusual, especially given that the 8s Gen 3 should be less powerful than the 8 Gen 2 inside the Honor 100 Pro. Naturally, we will look into this in our performance department. Aside from this oddity, we believe nothing is truly missing from this phone. Let’s start unboxing!

HONOR 200 PRO UNBOXING

The Honor 200 Pro comes in regular-sized paper packaging. It includes a 100W power adapter with a USB-A connection, a 6A-rated USB-C-A cable, and a clear silicone cover.

The phone also includes a pre-installed screen protector on top of the screen.

CAMERA

The Honor 200 Pro’s cameras are a primary focus, and the collaboration with Parisian portrait photographers, Studio Harcourt, is the most intriguing aspect of this system. In portrait mode, you may choose between three Honor 200-specific effects, but they only work on the primary and telephoto cameras. Unfortunately, Harcourt-style selfies are not on the menu this time.

Harcourt Classic recreates the studio’s well-known black-and-white portrait style, and the results are far more amazing than I anticipated. To create a highly stylized image, the effect adds an artificial shallow depth of field and intensifies lens flares. It is most successful with humans, but it also works well with animals.

If you like a more colorful image, you can also acquire Harcourt Colour and Harcourt Vibrant, which have similar effects. I enjoy the warm tones and old vibes that Harcourt Colour provides, but I found the Vibrant choice less appealing. The latter provides more standard color processing, and the ultimate result does not look as unique.

Aside from these new filters, you’ll receive some reliable hardware for everyday shooting. The main sensor is a rather big 1/1.3-inch sensor with 50MP resolution, and it is accompanied by a 50MP 2.5x telephoto and a 12MP ultrawide with macro focus capabilities. The main sensor is the most outstanding, particularly in low-light circumstances, but all of the lenses produce excellent images in daylight. As is typically the case, the ultrawide performs poorly at night, thus it should be avoided after dark.

You can expect rich, brilliant colors that match across all cameras, as well as a high degree of detail, even when utilizing the lower-resolution ultrawide. Digital zooming up to 5x produces decent results, but as you go above 10x, the image quickly degrades. The camera allows you to zoom up to 50x, but I wouldn’t recommend going that far.

I found the selfie camera to be somewhat underwhelming. It’s not bad, but given that this phone is billed as the “portrait master,” I expected better. It boasts a big 50MP resolution and a reasonably wide field of view, which is ideal for group photographs, but there is no autofocus and you cannot utilize the amazing Harcourt effects. It can capture decent photos, but it falls short of the selfie camera on the Honor Magic 6 Pro.

On the video front, the main and telephoto cameras can shoot at up to 4K 60fps, while the selfie and ultrawide cameras can shoot at 4K 30fps. Stabilization is rock solid, particularly at 30fps, transitions between lenses are smooth, and there are other additional settings available, such as full manual controls.

DESIGN AND SCREEN

The Honor 200 Pro’s distinguishing feature is its enlarged camera hump. This is said to be inspired by the shape of the Casa Mila in Barcelona, but it also looks like the camera array on the front of the Meta Quest 3 or an airplane window.

I thought it was ugly at first, but it’s grown on me. There’s something futuristic about it, and it helps to distinguish this phone from its competitors, who typically have square or round camera housing.

The phone sports a velvety matte glass back that feels quite similar to the rear of the Vivo X100 Pro. It’s resistant to fingerprint smudges, which I enjoy seeing, but it’s slippery. It’s unsafe to wear this one without a case, but you don’t have to because the box contains a basic, transparent TPU covering.

The back is curved around the corners, as is the glass on the front, making the phone feel extremely small. There’s a glossy polished metal frame around the edge, and the bezel surrounding the camera has a matching finish, which looks rather nice.

I have the white model in for testing, which has a marble-like pattern on the back that resembles a luxury kitchen worktop. It’s also available in black, although that version lacks the design for a more understated look. If you want to make a statement, go with the cyan variant. That model has a dual-texture finish split by an S-shaped curve down the back, and it is very noticeable.

The phone is dust and water-resistant to IP65 standards, which means it can survive low-pressure water sprays from all directions and is unaffected by the dust. So, adverse weather and vacations to the beach are fine; just don’t entirely submerge this phone.

The Honor 200 Pro features a brilliant 120Hz OLED display with curved corners and a resolution of 1224 x 2700 pixels. I prefer a flat display, but the Honor Magic 6 RSR surprised me and quickly became one of my favorites due to its sharper radius on the edges, which means that the majority of the space you interact with is flat. I was hoping for the same thing here, but it’s not the case; this display feels more like a standard curved handset.

Still, some people will undoubtedly enjoy it, and it does a good job of making the phone feel slimmer. I just find myself scrolling on the edge of the screen more frequently than I’d want.

Aside from some minor curvature issues, this is an excellent display. It can produce up to 4000 nits in certain settings and easily competes with the spring sunshine. The resolution is adequate; text appears sharp, and videos are crisp and detailed.

It can switch between 60Hz and 120Hz based on what you’re doing, saving you battery life in the process. It’s not as stunning as the Galaxy S24’s 1-120Hz LTPO panel, but it rivals the Pixel 8 in this regard.

HDR material looks stunning on this phone, with rich colors, sharp highlights, and excellent shadow detail. You also have reasonable control over color reproduction. It’s not the most in-depth we’ve seen, but you get two major settings with adjustable color temperature and white balance.

There are also several eye care functions built in. The most amazing feature is the extremely rapid PWM dimming speed of 3840Hz, which outperforms some of the most expensive handsets on the market. There are also low-blue-light options and adaptive tone controls to keep your eyes feeling fresh.

HOW’S THE PERFORMANCE?

The Honor 200 Pro is powered by the latest Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset, which is expected to offer some of the flagship Gen 3 experience at a lower pricing point. In day-to-day use, I believe it meets that purpose; the phone feels speedy, and apps open swiftly with little stuttering or delay.

In comparisons, the difference becomes more visible. The Honor 200 Pro lags behind last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phones in graphics performance, but occasionally outperforms them in computational duties. So it’s not quite top-tier, but it’s still a better gaming machine than the Exynos-powered Galaxy S24 or Pixel 8, for example.

I had no trouble playing graphically intensive games like Wuthering Waves at high settings, so in the real world, the 8s Gen 3 has more than adequate capability for most people. When you give the phone a heavy job, it heats a little, but it always feels pleasant to handle. Honor’s new super-sized vapor chamber is certainly functioning properly.

Buy it if...

• Glass design is unique, and it is IP65 rated.
• Excellent OLED screen with HDR10.
• Fast wired and wireless charging can also be reversed.
• Excellent photo and video quality across all cameras.
• Great photos and selfies.
• Android 14 combined with MagicOS 8 is an extremely powerful combination.

Don't buy it if…

• Longer zoom would have been preferable.
• Bokeh in portrait mode can be hit-or-miss.
• A pill-shaped notch.
• Unreliable auto Night mode implementation (yet still excellent Night mode images).

FULL SPECIFICATION