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The best Honor phones compete with the best phones from Apple, Samsung, and Google, but Honor's limited presence in certain markets means its devices are often (wrongly) overlooked by prospective smartphone buyers.
For instance, the company's latest premium offering, the Honor Magic V5, boasts some of the best display, performance, and battery credentials money can buy, while the budget-friendly Honor 400 Lite delivers a handful of flagship-level features for a refreshingly affordable price.
Best Honor phones
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Below, you'll find full write-ups for each of the best Honor phones in our list. We've tested every model extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.
The best Honor phone overall
Launched in China at the end of 2025, we've now had a chance to test the Honor Magic 8 Pro in the UK, and it has thoroughly impressed reviewer Dash Wood.
"The Honor Magic 8 Pro is an excellent flagship with an attractive overall design, incredible battery life, and top-of-the-line specs. Throw in the strong camera performance and Honor’s promise of long-term software support, and you have the ideal all-round smartphone package," concluded Wood.
The Honor Magic 8 Pro doesn't necessarily set a new benchmark when compared to the devices on our best phones list in terms of specs. But in daily use, the phone’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, 12GB of RAM and base 512GB of storage provided a solid foundation for multitasking, with real-world use proving effortless, and gaming remaining smooth even with heavy workloads. Anecdotally, the phone never stuttered or lagged during testing; even during demanding gaming sessions, like playing Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, maintaining smooth frame rates and reliable performance, with our hands-on testing confirming it stayed cool under pressure.
The 6.7-inch OLED display stands out with its 2808 x 1256 resolution panel offering excellent brightness and responsiveness. Wood praised its smooth 120Hz refresh rate, along with the screen's rounded corners and subtle curve to its edges.
On the camera front, the Magic 8 Pro impresses with its versatile triple-lens setup anchored by a 200MP main sensor. While the camera app’s processing can be aggressive, it generally delivers bright, detailed images suitable for most conditions. And our reviewer found the cameras performed well when snapping photos in challenging environments.
Battery life is another highlight. The 7,100mAh cell (or 6,270mAh in the EU) offers strong performance, routinely lasting a full day even with intensive use. Our tests saw the Magic 8 Pro reach the end of the day with charge to spare; if you want to avoid battery life worries this is a big plus in the Magic 8 Pro's favor.
However, what could cause you to pause on the Honor Magic 8 Pro is you might find the AI button and related features undercooked and unavailable outside of China. Wood noted the AI Settings Agent as an example stating: "On paper, it's a chatbot that can adjust your phone settings by turning off Bluetooth, enabling your hotspot, and so on when asked by voice or text. A cool idea, but in practice, it's slow, buggy, and can't parse complex commands at all."
Overall, the Honor Magic 8 Pro earns this top spot by being a great all-rounder phone, delivering a lot of performance, a superb display, flexible cameras, and real battery staying power. If you can overlook its software quirks and the evolving state of its AI tools, it’s a superb alternative to some of the bigger names in our selection of the best Android phones.
Read our full Honor Magic 8 Pro review
The best mid-range Honor phone
If you like the look of Honor's flagship phones but would rather avoid paying their four-figure prices, then Honor's latest middle-of-the-road option, the Honor 400, is well worth considering instead.
Flanked by the cheaper Honor 400 Lite and the more expensive (and decidedly not mid-range) Honor 400 Pro, the Honor 400 offers plenty for its £399.99 price tag, not least a truly stunning 6.55-inch AMOLED display, which blows the screens on comparably-priced phones out of the water.
The phone's Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset is also plenty capable if you're not expecting to use the Honor 400 as a power-hungry productivity tool, and in our testing, its sizeable 5,300mAh battery delivered more than a day of use.
Naturally, being a mid-range phone, there are some compromises. The Honor 400 offers no wireless charging, and while its cameras are undeniably impressive, Honor has jettisoned the Honor 200's 50MP telephoto lens from its successor, meaning you'll have to make do with AI-enhanced zoom shots.
For such an affordable price, though, the Honor 400 offers a more complete package than many other mid-range Android phones on the market. As a value proposition, it's a winner.
Read our full Honor 400 review
The best budget Honor phone
At £249.99, the Honor 400 Lite is the cheapest phone currently available from Honor directly, and a decent pick for those who want iPhone-style features on a budget.
For that exceptionally low price, you'll get a vibrant 6.7-inch FHD+ OLED display, a long-lasting 5,230mAh battery, and flagship-level hardware tools like a dedicated AI Camera Button. You will, however, have to settle for occasionally sluggish performance and limited camera capabilities.
That's not to say the Honor 400 Lite can't take great pictures – as we noted in our review of the phone, its main 108MP camera is a competent shooter under ideal conditions. But serious photographers will need to look elsewhere (check out our list of the best camera phones) for real versatility.
The phone's MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra chipset also falls in the 'not great, not terrible' category. You won't have any trouble scrolling and streaming on the Honor 400 Lite, but it can't handle graphically demanding games or intense productivity applications. If you're hoping to use either, you're better off with similarly priced models from Samsung or Motorola.
Mind you, for £249.99, you can't expect the world, and the Honor 400 Lite overdelivers on the design and display fronts (seriously, it looks scarily similar to the iPhone 16 Pro Max). So, if that's what you care about most, you won't be disappointed with this phone.
Read our full Honor 400 Lite review
The best foldable Honor phone
The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 might be the most well-known foldable on the market (and for good reason), but the Honor Magic V5 is a truly special phone, and if it were available to buy in the US, it would surely rank prominently on our list of the best foldable phones.
Not only is it one of the thinnest devices money can buy, but it's impressively light, too, at just 217g (for reference, 2024's Honor Magic V3 weighed 226g). Even more importantly, the Magic V5 is incredibly comfortable to use, with our reviewer noting, "besides thinness, I noticed that the Magic V5 goes further than its contemporaries in providing a more comfortable experience [...] the outer corners of the phone are also rounded off, which makes the unit very comfortable for one-handed or unfolded use."
The Magic V5 also utilizes Honor's proprietary eye-friendly display technology to deliver two of the most impressive foldable screens yet, while its long-lasting 5,820mAh battery should abate any worries surrounding foldable battery life (we managed a full day of use in testing).
The phone sports dual IP58 and IP59 dust and water resistance ratings, too – that's better than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 but not quite as dust-sealed as the IP68-rated Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold.
Throw a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset into that mix, and the Honor Magic V5 is a supremely capable foldable handset. Sure, Honor's Magic OS software continues to lack polish (especially when compared to that of its mainstream rivals), but if you value design over all else, the Magic V5 is pretty much the best foldable money can buy right now.
Read our full Honor Magic V5 review
