Huawei P10 Plus review

The kind of phone you’ll like, but never love

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Verdict

There’s a lot to like about the Huawei P10 Plus, but like is as far as we’re going to get with this phone.

The dual camera is great, but so is the LG G6’s. The screen is beautiful, but Samsung’s are better. The design – and all the colors – are perfectly nice, but so are Apple’s - have you heard about the red one? - and its latest phones are water-resistant. 

There’s nothing here you can’t find on another phone, either for less money or with better extras.

Who's this for?

It’s difficult to know who to recommend this phone to. Our best guess would be Huawei enthusiasts with deep pockets and a passion for photography.

It takes excellent pictures and they look beautiful on-screen, no doubt about that, but other photo-centric phones offer a better overall software experience or a lower price point.

Should you buy it?

Probably not. If you’re looking to spend around £700 on a big phone, wait and see what the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus have to offer.

Or, if you need a new phone now now now, weigh up whether you’d rather have the priority Android updates of the Pixel XL, the waterproofing and app ecosystem of the iPhone 7 Plus, the bargain price of the OnePlus 3T, or the all-round fine-ness of the Huawei P10 Plus. It’s a hard one to recommend.

The Huawei P10 Plus is an impressive phone if you ignore the price, but the following three handsets offer more for the money, or a similar amount for a whole lot less.

iPhone 7 Plus

Sold on a dual-camera phablet but not 100% sure about Android? You might prefer the big Apple. The price is comparable, you’ll get apps and updates sooner, but the trade-off is less impressive hardware under the hood – it has just half the RAM, for instance.

Google Pixel XL

Google’s own-brand phablet is guaranteed to get Android updates first, so if that’s a key concern, pick this over the P10 Plus. The screen is the same size and resolution, but the Pixel XL has a third less RAM and just the one rear camera.

OnePlus 3T

If you want every bit of that 6GB of RAM, the OnePlus 3T offers a much cheaper way to get it. You still get a 5.5-inch screen, albeit at a lower resolution, and there’s no microSD card slot if you run out of storage. That said, it’s not much more than half the price.

First reviewed: March 2017

Holly Brockwell