The Thinnest Foldable With the Biggest Battery Yet

HONOR has been pushing the boundaries of foldables since the very beginning. With the Magic V3 last year, it took the title of the world’s thinnest foldable, only to be upstaged earlier this year by the OPPO Find N5. But HONOR didn’t take that lying down and came back with the Magic V5, which is thinner – sort of.

There was some talk about how it’s actually not thinner than the Find N5 and the Galaxy Z Fold 7, however, the white version is the thinner one, which is not the one that we have here to review. So while one variant is thinner, the variant we have here is not. It is still 4.2mm. But that’s fine. This is still incredibly thin for a foldable, especially when you consider how large the battery is inside this foldable device – 5,820mAh, which is larger than a lot of slab flagship phones.

We’ve been using this phone on and off for about a month now. So how good is it? Well, let’s find out in our full review.

HONOR Magic V5 Specs

HONOR Magic V5 Review: Design and Build Quality

HONOR’s build quality has always been top-notch, even when they first started out as a sub-brand of Huawei. Of course, now they are their own company, having been spun off shortly after the US banned Huawei, but some of that DNA is still present in HONOR’s devices. Unfortunately, I have to say that the Magic V5 does feel like a step-down compared to the Magic V3 in terms of build quality.

I’m hoping it’s just the Dawn Gold color I have here, but it does feel rather plasticky when I hold it in my hand. The frame feels as premium as ever, so this is mostly in regard to the backside of the device. The Dawn Gold color does look quite nice; it’s a black and gold color that is more black at the top of the phone and more gold towards the bottom of the phone. It is definitely unique.

Now, despite making the Magic V5 incredibly thin, the device still has a very large camera bump. It also has some pretty capable cameras, so it’s almost worth having that larger camera bump. However, unlike the Galaxy Z Fold 7, it does not work on a table anywhere near as much. That’s because the camera unit is centered like a lot of the other Chinese smartphones on the market.

The front of the device does have some pretty thin bezels, though not quite as thin as some slab phones. The gold frame is a really nice contrast to the black bezels however. The power and volume rocker are on the right side of the device as usual, with the SIM card tray and USB-C port on the bottom.

It’s very nice to hold in the hand, the only real issue I have is that the back does feel a bit plastic, and the frame is a bit slippery. Of course, HONOR does include a case in the box that kind of gets rid of those problems.

HONOR Magic V5 Review: Display

When it comes to the displays on the Magic V5, they are also quite good. The cover display is a 6.43-inch 2376×1060 resolution display, which is an LTPO panel up to 120Hz. It’s incredibly bright with a peak brightness of around 5,000 nits. You won’t have any trouble seeing this display outdoors. I’ve been able to use it in direct sunlight without any issues.

The main display is pretty good too, but it is a tad more reflective since it is plastic instead of glass. But this is a 7.95-inch display with a 2352 x 2172 resolution. It uses the HONOR Super Armored Inner Screen, so it is protected up to a Mohs level 4 for scratches.

Color reproduction on both displays is quite nice as well. Overall, the displays are really good here. Samsung does typically still have better displays – after all, they do make their own displays, so that makes sense. But outside of Samsung, HONOR might have the next best display on a foldable device.

HONOR Magic V5 Review: Performance

At this point in the year, we basically know what to expect from the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. We’ve used it on various devices throughout the year, including other foldables like the OPPO Find N5 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. But surprisingly, this is the first time the “normal” Snapdragon 8 Elite has been used in a foldable. As OPPO used a 7-core version, and Samsung has an overclocked version of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. But, to put it simply, it’s fine.

The Snapdragon 8 Elite is very snappy here as you’d expect, and it does also sip battery. I haven’t noticed any slowdowns at all or lagging. Which is good to see, especially with the 16GB of RAM built-in. Even with games, it worked just as you would expect, no surprises here.

Benchmarks

With every device we review, we run a boatload of benchmarks on each device to better gauge how well it works. Not only with the processor, but with thermals and any throttling that it might have.

First up is Geekbench. This test will show us how well the CPU and GPU works in the HONOR Magic V5, and software is a big part of this too.

The scores here are pretty mixed, surprisingly. These all use the same processor, but different configurations of the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Interestingly, the OPPO Find N5 still has the highest GPU score here.

Moving onto AnTuTu, this test scores pretty much everything on the device, from the CPU to RAM and everything in between. Surprisingly, the HONOR Magic V5 scored pretty low here.

Finally, we have our own benchmark for video editing. Since so many use their phones to edit videos, particularly short-form videos. So we load up a video into Capcut, it’s the same 60-second-long video, and then export it at 4K60, timing how long it takes to export. The Magic V5 is able to export in just over 6 seconds, which is pretty good. Most Snapdragon 8 Elite devices are between 6 and 8 seconds.

Thermals

Now moving onto thermals, we have a few tests that we run here to really test out the thermals of each device. First off is running 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This is a very powerful benchmark that will push any device to its absolute limits.

Next up, we play Genshin Impact for an hour at max settings and max brightness, to see how well the device can handle long gaming sessions.

Finally, we record video at 4K60 for 10 minutes, and take the temperature at 5 minutes and again at 10 minutes, to see how well it handles the heat.

So as we can see here, the Magic V5 works pretty well with the thermals. It performs better than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 which does not have a vapor chamber this year. But still not quite as good as the OPPO Find N5, which is slightly thicker and does have a vapor chamber like the Magic V5.

HONOR Magic V5 Review: Battery and Charging

HONOR currently has the largest capacity battery in a foldable, though that is unlikely to hold up for very long. This device has a 5,820mAh capacity battery, which is absolutely incredible for a device that is this thin. But HONOR does need to optimize a bit more, because the battery life is good, but not as great as the OPPO Find N5, in my experience. It is good enough to get me through a full day, which is good. However, OPPO can usually get me through two days without any problems.

Charging is also quite good. It does sport 66W wired charging and 50W wireless charging. So when you do need to recharge, it won’t take long to get a full charge once again.

Benchmarks

We also have benchmarks we run for battery and charging here. For the Battery test, we charge the phone to 100%, set the display to about 200 nits of brightness, and run a YouTube video until it hits 1%. For the HONOR Magic V5, that time was 13 hours and 9 minutes. Which isn’t that great, actually, and it shows me that video playback isn’t as optimized as it should be. That is about half of the time that the OPPO Find N5 and Galaxy Z Fold 7 had.

On the charging front, we plug it into the included charger or one that can max out the charging speed for devices that don’t have a charger in the box, and time it from 1% to 100%. For the Magic V5, that time is around 47 minutes. That is quite good for the size of this battery.

HONOR Magic V5 Review: Software

HONOR is shipping the Magic V5 with somewhat outdated software, actually. It launches with MagicOS 9.0.3, which is based on Android 15. A little surprising since Android 16 launched a few months ago, and even the Galaxy Z Fold 7 launched with Android 16 back in July. HONOR is beta testing MagicOS 10, based on Android 16 on some devices, so that update should be coming sooner rather than later. Somewhat surprisingly, the Magic V5 will be getting seven years of OS and security updates, much like Samsung and Google. So this phone will be supported for quite some time.

There’s no shortage of AI features packed into this phone — and I mean a lot. Honor has basically thrown the entire kitchen sink of AI tools at the Magic V5. You’ve got smart photo cropping and resizing, along with a surprisingly capable video editor that can whip together collages or full-blown social media clips automatically. Sure, you can still download CapCut or whatever app you prefer, but the fact that this is built-in is a nice touch. Honor even went as far as adding an AI Image-to-Video feature, which can turn a static picture into a five-second clip. You get three tries for free before you’re nudged toward a subscription.

On the more futuristic side, Honor is tackling one of the scarier aspects of modern tech: deepfakes. The Magic V5 includes a real-time AI deepfake detection tool for video calls. Flip it on, and it’ll scan the incoming feed for any inconsistencies or tampering. It’s not hard to imagine this becoming a must-have feature in just a few years, and Honor is ahead of the curve here.

And for those of you still upset that Samsung ditched the S Pen on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Honor has you covered. The Magic Pen works on both the inner and outer displays, supports 4,096 levels of pressure and tilt detection, and offers proper palm rejection. Unfortunately, this is a battery-powered stylus so it does need to be charger, which is thanks to using Bluetooth. It is also not include in the box and does cost and extra nearly $100.

That’s the software on the HONOR Magic V5. It’s not the best software out there, but it is still somewhat good.

HONOR Magic V5 Review: Camera

Like with a lot of the phones coming out of China, HONOR’s Magic V5 does have a very capable camera unit. This includes a 50-megapixel primary sensor, a 50-megapixel ultrawide and a 64-megapixel periscope 3x telephoto. These are all very capable sensors, and actually pretty impressive for a foldable that is as thin as the Magic V5, though the camera bump is pretty massive.

Starting off with that main camera. It does take pretty good shots, as you might expect. I did take this on a recent trip to New York City and got some great shots. Even in low lighting, it still does a pretty good job at making out some great shots, and it doesn’t blow out the lights either, which is really great to see.

Moving on to that telephoto camera, it also does very well with great lighting. There’s a good amount of bokeh in a lot of photos. This picture I took of my Peak Design backpack had some really incredible bokeh, and it was at 70mm (or 3x).

Now, where things do start to fall apart is with Zoom. HONOR does sensor crop to get to 6x on its 3x sensor, which does take some pretty good shots. This is actually quite normal on a lot of Chinese phones; OPPO and OnePlus do this a lot as well. Past 6x, you’re looking at digital zoom with some AI built in. In my experience, it’s still good up to about 10x-15x; past that, it’s really not usable. And only necessary if you’re trying to see something that is far away.

In my use, I rarely ever use anything past the 6x on a lot of cameras. I might use the 10x option, but even that is somewhat rare. So the camera as a whole is pretty good here. Having larger sensors does definitely help HONOR when it comes to the competition (mainly Samsung). So if you’re looking for a foldable with a really good set of cameras, this might be a good option.

Should you buy the HONOR Magic V5?

Now for the big question: whether you should buy the HONOR Magic V5? To be honest, before writing this review, I was pretty underwhelmed by this phone. Especially with all of the hype HONOR has had around the device since announcing it in China a few months ago. However, the more I thought about it from an average consumer angle, it’s a pretty good device. It’s not the best, though there’s really no foldable out there that does everything the best, but for those in countries where this is an option, it’s a really good option.

If you’re coming from the Magic V3, or any recent foldable (I’d say from 2024 onwards), it’s probably not worth upgrading. But if you haven’t used a foldable before, it might be a good time to upgrade.

You should buy the HONOR Magic V5 if:

• You want the thinnest foldable with the largest capacity battery.
• You want a foldable with a pretty good camera performance.

You should not buy the HONOR Magic V5 if:

• You live in the US (while many bands do work, it’s not supported 100% and quite expensive to import).
• You want good multi-tasking software on a foldable to take full advantage of that larger display.