All the best Honor phones come with dependable hardware but at a price. That price isn't monetary. Instead, you need to remember that not all Honor handsets offer Google Mobile Services - a potentially steep price for some.
Since Huawei sold the Honor brand, things are changing, but you need to be aware of which phones suit your needs. For instance, the Honor 50 has seen a return of Google services with the Magic Pro 4 series continuing that trend.
We're still waiting to see what happens with the Honor Magic 3 series as it hasn't gone on sale in most regions, despite its useful camera-centric features and OLED panel. Fortunately, there are plenty of older Honor devices worth checking out with any of them including Google apps.
If you do consider an Honor phone that lacks Google support, it still has useful features to replace that side of things, such as Petal Search which lets you download Android apps from other sources.
Check out the list below and you'll also see older Honor phones such as the Honor View 20 making the cut, thanks to including the Google Play Store.
Honor's range features phones at various price points, so all budgets are catered for. Honor phones also often have the same specs and features as Huawei devices, but at a cheaper cost so they appeal to budget-conscious users.
The phones are usually targeted at slightly younger audiences so if you're looking for great camera features, you'll love the focus on selfie taking.
Read on while we take you through the best Honor phones, with a breakdown of the pros and cons of each to help you out.
Best Honor phones 2022
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With an eye-catching design, the Honor 70 is immediately beguiling. It might not be perfect but at this price, you get some high-end features for less than you would expect. With a curved-edge 6.67-inch panel, it's attractive to look at with good contrast and rich colors whatever you're doing.
Elsewhere, it has great camera capabilities such as a 54MP main lens and a sensor made by Sony - the IMX800. A 50MP ultra-wide lens backs things up well, although we weren't hugely impressed by its 2MP depth sensor.
Minor issue aside, the Honor 70 continues a strong path with fast performance and similarly fast charging. Great battery life means it'll last all day without an issue too.
Read our full Honor 70 review.
The Honor Magic 4 Pro is the first flagship device from Honor since it parted from Huawei. It offers a premium mirror finish glass design and a gorgeous 6.8-inch OLED screen that means whatever you watch is a delight.
The camera system is similarly impressive with its telephoto lens outperforming the iPhone 13 Pro when it comes to zoom. A top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset means it's fast while wireless charging at 100W means a top-up is just as rapid.
The battery capacity could be a little higher for a premium phone and it's a fingerprint magnet, but other than that, the Honor Magic 4 Pro is tremendous in every way.
Read our full Honor Magic 4 Pro review.
The Honor 50 might lack the finer details to make it sound out from the cluttered crowd but it's still worth considering. Similarly designed to the Huawei Nova 9, it also bundles in a USB-C port for faster charging but removes the ever handy 3.5mm headphone jack.
Its display stands out the most with a 6.57-inch OLED panel that has a FHD+ resolution, 120Hz refresh rate and 300Hz touch input rate. Its always-on display doesn't always work as intended but when lit up, it's very bright and vibrant.
Elsewhere, its main camera works well but it's the selfie camera that provides bold imagery with natural-looking depth effects that further improve things.
Everything else is fairly standard if reliable, but for selfie addicts, this could be a significant selling point.
Read our full Honor 50 review
The Honor Magic 4 Lite is fairly respectable for the price. It offers a sizeable 6.81-inch display that boasts a 120Hz refresh rate. It's a typical LCD display with some poor viewing angles at times, but other than that, it looks good.
In a similar vein, its cameras are quite impressive with a circular arrangement offering a main 48MP sensor, 2MP depth camera, and a 2MP macro lens. A 16MP selfie front is ideal for selfie lovers. Photos are clear but not always accurate when it comes to colors, but it's still good for the price.
Strong battery life and fast performance from the Snapdragon 695 5G rounds off the package making this a decent purchase for many.
Read our full Honor Magic 4 Lite review.
The Honor phone that tops our list right now is the Honor View 20, technically released first in China in late 2018 and then globally in early 2019.
This was one of the first smartphones with a punch-hole front camera cut-out, and also one of the first handsets with a 48MP rear camera, so its certainly a piece of history. But it's also a decent phone in its own right too.
Sure, some may call the phone's back ugly, but others might not mind - and even like it. At the end of the day, it's not like you're going to be looking at it that much anyway.
Read our full Honor View 20 review
Arguably Honor's most 'premium' phone on this list is the Honor 20 Pro, which is certainly at least the top-end version of the 20 line (which, confusingly, the Honor View 20 isn't part of).
The phone has four high-quality cameras on the rear including one of the first macro lenses on a smartphone, and its front-facing snapper is great, too. it's also a good-looking phone with decent specs and features.
Sure, it might be a little harder to get a hold of than its non-Pro version (featured lower on this list), but it's definitely worth looking into if you want a great Honor phone.
Read our full Honor 20 Pro review
The Honor 9 isn't exactly a new phone, but it's still an impressive all-rounder, and it's now decidedly affordable thanks to being a little older. The phone has two decent cameras, and is more compact than other devices on this list, so if you want a smaller phone this might be the one for you.
Sure, it's not the most premium phone in a lot of ways, as it's got a lot more bezel than you'll find on most other Honor and other modern phones. That doesn't matter to everyone, though, so if you don't want to break the bank but want an Honor phone, this is a decent contender.
Read our full Honor 9 review
The Honor 9X is part of the company's X-series of affordable handsets (and is not, in fact, related to the Honor 9 from several years prior).
The phone has a pop-up camera and a large, all-screen display, with a camera array topped by a 48MP snapper and also a fairly large battery. In general, there's a few decent features, but it's really the price that should appeal to prospective buyers, as this is a fairly cheap handset.
Read our full Honor 9X review
If you don't need the extra storage or better cameras of the Honor 20 Pro, you might find the Honor 20 is a good enough phone for you.
The device has the same design build and many of the same features as its Pro sibling, and you're not getting a significantly worse phone despite the lower pricetag.
Saying that, our main pain points from the bigger device are still present in the Honor 20, so if that phone doesn't look right for you, this one might not either.
Read our full Honor 20 review
The 2018 Honor flagship was the Honor 10, which was a decent smartphone (although its ranking below the Honor 9 from the year before should tell you something).
In many ways it's an average Android smartphone, but we liked its fingerprint scanner and found the cameras pretty decent, too. It's also more stylish than most other handsets, even from its heyday.
Read our full Honor 10 review
We were big fans of the Honor View 10 when it was released, and though it's slightly older now, that doesn't mean it's any worse a device – just that its successors are better.
There are some strengths, and some weaknesses to the phone, but overall it's decent for people looking for an all-rounder phone that'll see them through normal use. It's worth pointing out, though, that the price of the Honor View 10 hasn't sunk as low as its contemporaries since release.
Read our full Honor View 10 review
Honor's Lite phones haven't always been the most impressive devices, but they're good enough for people on a budget who don't need all the smarts and specs of the mid-range devices.
The Honor 20 Lite was seemingly just an iterative upgrade on its predecessor, the Honor 10 Lite, but there are a few improvements - enough so to make the phone worth considering over the 10 Lite at the very least.
Read our full Honor 20 Lite review
