Honor Magic4 Pro Camera test

The Honor Magic4 Pro sits just below the flagship Magic4 Ultimate model in the Honor smartphone range and uses many of the same components, including the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and a 6.81-inch OLED display with 1312 x 2848 resolution.

In the camera module, the 3.5x tele module is the same as the Ultimate, but both the main and ultra-wide cameras use smaller sensors than the flagship model and lack optical image stabilization.

Let’s see how the Honor Magic4 Pro camera compares to the Ultimate and competitors from other brands in SBMARK camera tests.

Key Camera Specifications:

• Primary: 50MP 1 / 1.56 “sensor, 1.0μm pixel, 23mm equivalent focal length, f / 1.8 aperture lens, PDAF, Laser-AF
• Ultra-wide: 50MP 1 / 2.5 “sensor, 13mm equivalent focal length, f / 2.2 aperture lens
• Telephoto: 64MP 1 / 2.0 ″ sensor, 0.7μm pixel, 90mm equivalent focal length, f / 3.5 aperture lens, OIS, PDAF
• Flashing LED
• 3D time of flight sensor
• Flicker sensor
• 4K at 30 / 60fps, 1080p at 30 / 60fps (tested at 4K / 30fps)

About SBMARK Camera Tests: For scoring and analysis in our smartphone camera reviews, SBMARK engineers capture and evaluate over 3000 test images and more than 2.5 hours of video in both controlled laboratory environments and indoor and outdoor natural scenes, using the default camera settings. This article aims to highlight the most important results of our tests. For more information on SBMARK Camera Test Protocol, please click here. More details on how we rate smartphone cameras can be found here.

Test summary

With a SBMARK camera score of 131, the Honor Magic4 Pro doesn’t reach the same heights as its category-leading cousin Magic4 Ultimate, but it’s still one of the top models in our camera rankings. Compared to the Ultimate, the Magic4 Pro exhibits more exposure and autofocus instability, as well as more low-light noise for both photos and videos. Overall, the texture noise trade-off is less favorable, especially in low-light conditions. The lack of OIS could be one reason for this.

In photo mode, the camera generally provides high-quality images in bright light and indoors. Image quality is still acceptable in low light conditions. The camera exposes well and a wide dynamic range ensures good shadow and highlight detail. However, instability in exposure is sometimes noted. Colors are vivid and pleasing, but slight color casts may be visible, especially on darker complexions. The trade-off between texture and noise is very good in bright light and indoors, but diminishes slightly in low light, with a loss of detail and some color noise becoming visible. Autofocus is generally fast and accurate, but some delays and failures can occur in high contrast conditions.

In bright outdoor conditions, Magic4 Pro produces excellent image quality. In this cityscape scene, the camera captures good exposure and detail, with the noise very well under control. There is a slight color cast. In comparison, the Honor Magic4 UItimate and Google Pixel 6 Pro are more neutral, with the latter adding a slightly warm touch to the mix.

Honor Magic4 Pro, external conditions

Honor Magic4 Pro, crop: good detail, very low noise, slight orange cast

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, external conditions

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, crop: good detail, very low noise, neutral white balance

Google Pixel 6 Pro, external conditions

Google Pixel 6 Pro, crop: good detail, slight noise, warm white balance

By capturing this scene indoors, Magic4 Pro delivers vivid and pleasing colors as well as a wide dynamic range. The Magic4 Ultimate image is very similar, but there are more light clippings on the outside of the Pixel 6 Pro file. The noise is very well under control on the two Honor devices and only slightly visible on the Pixel.

Honor Magic4 Pro, internal conditions

Honor Magic4 Pro, crop: wide dynamic range, low noise

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, indoor conditions

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, crop: wide dynamic range, low noise

Google Pixel 6 Pro, internal conditions

Google Pixel 6 Pro, crop: limited dynamic range, slight noise

In low light conditions, the image quality drops slightly, especially compared to the competition. Exposure remains good, but color noise is often noticeable and detail decreases, possibly due to the lack of OIS and a smaller image sensor. In this comparison, there is a slight pink cast on all three cameras, and the color noise causes inaccurate color rendition.

Honor Magic4 Pro, low light

Honor Magic4 Pro, crop: chroma noise, low level of detail

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, low light

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, crop: slight noise, more detail

Google Pixel 6 Pro, low light

Google Pixel 6 Pro, crop: luminance noise, more detail

In this night shot with the flash off, the camera produces good exposure and a fairly wide dynamic range. The texture / noise trade-off is also good, but not as good as on the Ultimate and Pixel.

Honor Magic4 Pro, flash-off, good exposure – fairly wide dynamic range

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, flash-off: good exposure, fairly wide dynamic range

Google Pixel 6 Pro, flash-off: good exposure but limited dynamic range

In bokeh mode, our testers observed some instabilities in depth estimation and, compared to the Ultimate, texture rendering is often lower. But target exposure is accurate under most conditions tested.

Crop: instability in depth estimation, low texture

The zoom performance is excellent overall, offering a very wide field of view on the ultra-wide camera up to a long range telephoto lens with decent performance. Ultra-wide images are generally good, with acceptable detail, well-controlled noise, good exposure, and pleasing colors. Only in low light did our testers observe a decline in quality, especially in terms of detail. At telephoto settings, the camera works well at close and long distances, but the blending artifacts mean that performance is lower at medium telephoto zoom. Overall, exposure tends to be accurate, with a wide dynamic range, but colors can sometimes be slightly desaturated.

In this scene, we can see that Honor Magic4 Pro’s ultra-wide camera offers a very wide field of view. It’s not quite as wide as the Ultimate but considerably wider than the Pixel. The exposure is good and the color is beautiful and vivid. The level of detail is acceptable, similar to that of the Google Pixel and better than the Ultimate.

Honor Magic4 Pro, ultra wide

Honor Magic4 Pro, crop: wide field of view, vivid and pleasant colors, high level of detail, low noise

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, ultra wide

Honor Magic4 Ultimate, crop: very wide field of view, slight blue cast, lower detail level

Google Pixel 6 Pro, ultra wide

Google Pixel 6 Pro, crop: narrower field of view, high level of detail, slight noise

When zooming into the distance, details are almost at the same high level as Ultimate at close and long range, except in low light or when the distance to the subject is very long. At medium range, the level of detail is lower than the Ultimate, especially in high-contrast scenes. Resolution instability can be observed at all telephoto settings, but is especially noticeable at medium range.

Honor Magic4 Pro video clips are accurately exposed with a fairly wide dynamic range in bright light and indoors. In low light, the exposure is slightly darker than Ultimate, and a limited dynamic range causes shadows and highlights to be cropped. White balance is accurate on the outside, but our testers observed orange and pink casts indoors and in low-light conditions. Fine details are not rendered so well and the noise is more visible than some rivals. In video mode, we also observed some instability in autofocus, but on the plus side, video stabilization is quite effective, despite some differences in sharpness between frames in low light.

Video clips recorded in bright light generally have accurate white balance and pleasant colors. The target exposure is accurate and the dynamic range is quite wide. Compared to the Magic4 Ultimate, the main difference is a loss of fine detail and greater autofocus instability. Video stabilization is quite effective for both static and motion recording.

When recording video indoors, the white balance casts may be more visible than the Ultimate, but the color rendition remains good. Target exposure is accurate, but our testers observed some highlight clipping in difficult scenes. The overall dynamic range remains fairly wide indoors but not as wide as on the Pixel 6 Pro. Again, autofocus instabilities are more noticeable than on the Ultimate, which occasionally results in focus errors.

Noise is more visible than on the Google Pixel 6 and Magic4 Ultimate in low light conditions. The exposure is also a bit darker than the Ultimate.

This graph shows temporal visual noise versus light level (in lux). Visual temporal noise is measured on the visual noise graph in the video noise setting.