Honor Magic V2 review: The BEST foldable I’ve used!

good news you can now buy the honor magic V2 in Europe and the UK and if you have no idea what this phone is all about you need to watch this video okay so the honor magic V2 which is this phone I'm shooting on right now was first released in China last year and then it was previewed for release in the UK and Europe at the EA trade show in Berlin in SE nember last year and the good news is that you can buy it today you can actually pre-order it and have one very soon if you live in the UK or Europe I have to separate both that's another story and if there's one smartphone category that dominates all others on my channel when it comes to people fighting in the comments it's foldables but no matter what you think about foldable smartphones when I tell you that the magic V2 is the thinnest on the market you're interested aren't you okay let's talk about the specs and the pricing of the magic V2 so it comes in two colors either black like my review unit or purple and it weighs just 231 G and closed like this it's 9.9 mm thick or should we say thin it's powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 it's got 16 gig of RAM it's got 512 gig of storage and it runs magic OS 7.2 which is based on Android 13 there's a 5,000 mAh battery powering everything and that's capable of 66 W supercharging but not wireless charging and I should also note that it doesn't have an official IP water resistance rating the external display is 6.43 in with 2,500 nits of peak brightness and the internal display is 7.92 in with 1,600 knits of peak brightness and both have a variable 120 HZ refresh rate I'll come on to the camera system in a second but the price of this thing in the UK is 1, 699.99 so foldable smartphones are still very expensive and the magic V2 does nothing to dispel that however if you're quick there are some very nice early order Bargains including a completely free pair of bang and olafson headphones but let's get on to that camera system before we get into the camera system on the magic V2 just a very quick word from today's sponsor which has made a massive difference filming this video it's the hover air and their brilliant X1 drone which is designed to offer an easy and fun photography experience without the need for a controller or an app and trust me as someone who flies drones fairly regularly and has to use controllers and apps this makes a massive difference the hover air X1 could not be easier to use you just turn it on choose from one of the five preset flight paths and then just press a button and let it take off from your hand and the enclosure design means it's super safe too so there's no worries about hurting yourself from there the Drone operates automatically depending on the mode you've chosen which includes hover zoom out follow orbit and bird's eye and all of those flight paths have a bunch of settings in the app which includes distance duration and flight angle there's even a custom Dolly mode so if you don't want to pay someone to walk backwards and film you while you're talking to camera you don't have to this worked really really well the great thing about the X1 is that it's designed to be immediately usable whenever inspiration strikes and it achieves that brilliantly it shoots the footage automatically you don't have to press start or stop and once you're finished you go into the app download the footage onto your phone but everything else can be done on the Drone without touching your phone for instance you can press the buttons to cycle through the different flight paths and long press to access the settings for each one It even records sound with built-in noise reduction the replaceable battery supports up to 20 flight paths or 11 minutes of flight time but the real selling point of the X1 is that it starts and stops filming at just the right time so there's no extra fat that you get from other drones you don't have to edit this stuff at all it's just the perfect shot every single time and it's so small as well it only weighs 125 G which which means it fits in small bags and some Pockets to find out more about the hover air X1 just click that link below the magic V2 features a triple camera system on the rear so it has a 50 megap wide a 50 megap Ultra wide and a 20 megap telephoto it's got two front-facing cameras one here and one on the inside they are both 16 megapixels now as always I'll let you be the judge in the comment section of the quality of the magic V2 photos but I'm a big fan they're not oversaturated yet they do still pop nicely they come off the screen as you'd like them to and they're nicely Moody as well I do like Moody photos from smartphones and these ones from the magic V2 really do have some character the only thing I'm not a fan of is the default focal length choices so we have 1X 2.5x and 10x the 2.5x is taken care of with the telephoto lens whereas the 10x is a digital Zoom which can be a bit hit and miss at times I'm really getting used to 5x on Flagship smartphones these days on the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the s24 ultra and I'd love to see that on the next on a foldable but that is a relatively small gripe the images of the phone produces are really really good and I think look every bit the flagship Snapper the wide aperture on all three lenses captures plenty of light and the magic V2 never struggled with fast moving subjects and it is incredibly sharp as you can see on this photo of my dog Eddie at times the photos shot by this phone are very pixel like which really gets my vot as you'd guess there's some interesting AI stuff built into this camera system as well including Auto capture which automatically snaps away when it detects running smiling and jumping on behalf of both humans and animals now I tested this while smiling stupidly and well it it works but I'm not a big fan of automated camera features I'm a bit oldfashioned like that oh and there is a full Pro mode that gives you access to all of the camera features if you want to turn this phone into a DSLR and it does make fantastic use of this foldable design so for in instance I can turn on the front screen so if I'm taking a photo of you you can see what I'm taking a photo of and because it's foldable you can easily prop it up to take photos handsfree particularly if you want to try out that auto detection Smiley thing it shoots up to 4K 60 video which I think looks really good but it's worth highlighting the movie mode which enables you to drop the shooting down to 24 frames per second and gain access to log shooting I didn't get much time to test that but the fact it has that option and the fact that the camera system on this is so feature Rich goes some way to justifying that price and it does make the claim of this being a flagship phone completely Justified foldable smartphones are Marite there's no getting away from it you either love them or you hate them whenever I do a review of the Samsung Zed fold series or the pixel fold comments are just flooded with people either saying it's the best thing ever or they are just way too expensive apart from the price there are three things that bother people the crease the front display display and the size and weight and the magic V2 does an incredible job of answering pretty much all three of those questions firstly the crease it's there whenever you buy a foldable phone it's going to have a crease down the middle of the internal display because it does that the good news with the magic V2 is that you can barely see it unless you really look for it and as I always say if you really look for stuff you're going to find it just use the thing and you barely notice it's there secondly the front display is damn near perfect there are two common problems with foldable smartphone displays the front display the first one is well it's perfectly illustrated by the Samsung Zed fold 4 and five this is the five and it's just way way too narrow typing on that no matter what Samsung fans say is an absolute nightmare the second problem is a weird problem I completely admit because I love this phone but the pixel fold it's a beautiful fr display it's nice and wide nice and usable doesn't have those typing issues but it's so good you barely open this thing up the magic V2 sits squarely in the middle so it's wide enough to type and do pretty much everything on here but it leaves just enough just enough curiosity for you to think let's do this on the big screen but let's talk about the crowning glory of the magic V2 the size and the weight which is just utterly unbelievable it's very hard to illustrate this and unless you hold one of these in your hands but if I put it up against the Samsung Zed fold we do say Zed in this country sorry but Against The Zed fold five it is comically thinner and the pixel fold as well it looks so much bigger so much thicker than the magic V2 now there are some compromises because of this thin frame I think they're because of this it's a bit of a guess but we can we can make an educated guess with this as mentioned earlier there's no official IP rating which is a shame because it gives you a bit less confidence if it starts raining and it has no wireless charging and I know this bothers a lot of people it's never really bothered me I don't tend to charge my phones wirelessly I always plug them in but I get why that could annoy you however Tech is all about compromises and if you want a smartphone a foldable smartphone that is this thin you're going to get a few the good news is nothing else seems to be compromised so the aforementioned camera system is fantastic but the displays as well are typically honor brilliant they're large they're bright neither of them have big bezels including that internal display that is a big complaint that people have for the pixel fold which has these great big bezels here this doesn't as you can see if I open it up here they are absolutely tiny I should also mention that the magic V2 features Honor's pwm dimming circadian night display and dynamic dimming technology which are all designed to ease the strain on your eyes but one of the most satisfying things about the magic V2 is the way it snaps open and when it snaps open it's completely flat there's no slight vshape which is what you get on and this does bother people about other foldable smartphones is that if you open the pixel fold it's still slightly bent there same thing goes less pronounced but the same thing goes roughly with the Zed fold 5 they don't completely open flat this does and it doesn't feel flimsy either it's got this very lightweight titanium hinge which as I say feels very confident this is a review unit as well so I'm not the only person to use this there's no noise there's nothing when you open it or close it this is super impressive stuff if you know me by now you know that I don't do benchmarks or any kind of deep phone testing because I can't be bothered but what I can tell you is that thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in this phone it zips along like a flagship phone should I've talked a lot in the past about magic OS but that plays a big role in this it's one of the most considerate and life footed adaptions of Android 13 I've ever seen multitasking works really well on the magic V2 as well with window management being easy to get your head around and no lag when you're shifting things around so if you want to create a split screen view of two apps like this it's very easy to do so I love the fact you can drag down from the top of the display on a full screen app and then have magic OS reveal which apps are compatible with a split view it is super intuitive I need to mention the parallel space feature as well which is this kind of secluded air area of magic OS where you can store data apps and photos away from the main operating system well it is still in the operating system but it's hidden behind closed doors and if you're using the magic V2 for work purposes that is really useful put simply when it comes to Performance you're not going to feel short changed with this phone and the same goes for the battery life I got two days out of this thing regularly and this brings me on to my big conclusion a fantastic camera system with a very deep feature feature set super performance a fantastic operating system which has some genuinely useful features a truly breakthrough foldable design they can absolutely claim that and two of the best displays on the market I can confidently say that this is the best foldable smartphone I have ever used and if you're on the fence about this category but you're you're edging towards buying one and you have the budget most importantly this could be the one that sways you however if your budget is much further s don't worry because honor has you covered there as well keep watching for a link to my full review of The Magic 6 light

Channel: Mark Ellis Reviews

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Keywords: Mark Ellis Reviews, Mark Ellis, honor magic v2, honor magic v2 review, honor magic v2 unboxing, honor magic v2 fold, honor magic v2 specs, honor magic v2 camera test, magic v2, honor, honor magic v2 price, honor magic v2 camera, honor magic v2 vs xiaomi mix fold 3, z fold 5, foldable phone, honor foldable, folding phone, honor magic v2 vs z fold 5, honor magic v2 vs oneplus open, honor magic v2 benchmark, honor magic v2 global, honor magic v2 uk

Id: lBhLervMle4

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024