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- Bright 120Hz display
- Excellent battery life
- Class-leading software support
- Derivative design choices
- Backup cameras are fairly weak
- Camera button feels redundant
Honor has been angling to be Android’s answer to Apple for a while now, and the Honor 400 Lite is no different. In fact, this budget phone takes the imitation game a step further, adding a distinctly Apple-flavoured camera module and camera button to the mix, making it look more like an iPhone than any other handset I’ve tested to date.
I’m not a big fan of brands copying Apple instead of developing their own identity, though, especially when the phone behind the costume is this good. Strip away the Apple aesthetic from this particular handset, and you’re still left with a powerful, long-lasting phone that has a sharp main camera and the best software support in its price range.
The Honor 400 Lite is a force to be reckoned with in the budget space, so why is it trying so hard to be something it’s not?
Honor 400 Lite: What you need to know
We didn’t get the Honor 300 series here in the UK, so the Honor 400 Lite’s most direct predecessor is last year’s Honor 200 Lite. In that year, some things have remained the same but Honor has also made a handful of small, but notable tweaks.
The display is once again a 6.7in AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1,080 x 2,412, although the refresh rate has been bumped up from 90Hz to 120Hz.
The Mediatek Dimensity 7025 Ultra processor is marginally more powerful than the 200 Lite’s Dimensity 6080 chipset (clocked at up to 2.5GHz, as opposed to 2.4GHz) and this is once again paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage space.
The battery sees the biggest upgrade, jumping from a 4,500mAh cell to 5,230mAh, but charging remains at the same 35W as last year and there’s no charger included in the box.
Finally, the 200 Lite’s 108-megapixel main camera and 5-megapixel ultrawide camera return but the 2-megapixel macro camera has been dropped and the selfie camera has been downgraded from a 50-megapixel sensor to 16-megapixels. Plus there’s that new camera control button low on the right-hand edge.
Price and competition
At £250, the Honor 400 Lite is £30 cheaper than the Honor 200 Lite – a price reduction, which is a rare but welcome sight.
That, along with the improved spec makes it a challenger for the crown of best budget smartphone, but it isn’t without competition. The strongest contenders come from Motorola’s ranks. I’ve not reviewed its new Edge 60 Fusion phone at the time of writing but its predecessor was one of my favourite phones from last year, and it’s easily the biggest threat to the Honor 400 Lite. Originally launched for £350, the Motorola Edge 50 Fusion is now available for just £249 and it’s a brilliant bargain at that price.
Also around this price are the OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite, which started out at £300 but can now be picked up for £219, and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 13 Pro, which is currently going for £230, down from its original price of £339.
The Nothing Phone (3a) is a little more, starting at £329, but if you have the extra cash, I’d strongly recommend choosing that over any of the former options. Aside from the striking design, it has a telephoto camera, better performance and battery life, faster charging and longer software support.
Design and key features
The slim and lightweight build was something that I really appreciated in the Honor 200 Lite, so it’s great to see the same design ethos employed here. The 400 Lite is a little thicker (7.3mm up from 6.8mm) and heavier (171g vs 166g) but is otherwise a dead ringer for its predecessor.
It still measures 75 x 161mm (W x H) and is again primarily composed of plastic. One important change this year is that the 400 Lite now has an official IP65 rating, certifying it as dustproof and able to withstand low-pressure water jets from any direction. The 200 Lite had no official IP rating at all, so this is great to see.
Otherwise, there are only a couple design differences of note: there are two new colours, with a light grey and aqua green joining the standard black that I was sent for review, and the camera module has been completely overhauled.
Gone is the 200 Lite’s bland rectangle unit, replaced here with a rounded square topped by a rounded triangle. It’s undeniably iPhone-coded in its aesthetic, and even somewhat deviously attempts to convey the impression that it has three rear cameras, like the iPhone 16 Pro, where, in fact, the third housing contains the LED flash.
The other big step in the iPhoneification of this phone is the camera button, which is in the exact same place as the iPhone’s and performs largely the same functions. Considering the iPhone’s positioning doesn’t feel optimal to begin with, it would have been great if Honor applied some critical thinking to the execution instead of blindly copying Apple’s homework.
Looking at the software, the Honor 400 Lite launches with Android 15 on board and is promised a fantastic six years of both OS updates and security patches, which is unheard of on a phone this cheap. There are still some issues with the MagicOS launcher that I don’t like – such as the lack of an app drawer as standard – but that extensive support goes a long way to taking the sting out of such issues.
Display
The new 120Hz display is a big bonus, and it helps to make everything feel silky smooth when scrolling through menus, web pages and hopping between apps. It’s brighter than last year, too, reaching a strong 768cd/m2 on manual brightness and topping out at 1,148cd/m2 in adaptive mode with a torch shining on the light sensor. Those are excellent results for any phone, let alone one costing under £300.
As far as the colour presentation of this screen goes, there are two profiles to choose from: Vivid dials up the saturation to make your games and movies pop, while Natural aims for authentic reproduction of the sRGB space. In the latter, I recorded a gamut coverage of 96.5% with a volume of 97.7%. The average Delta E colour error score came back at 1.42, which is a little off the target value of 1 or under but is still a massive improvement over the Honor 200 Lite’s 2.02.
Performance and battery life
The Honor 400 Lite’s octa-core 2.5GHz Mediatek Dimensity 7025 Ultra chipset may only be marginally faster than the Honor 200 Lite’s chipset on paper, but it showed a decent uptick in performance in testing.
In the Geekbench 6, for instance, the 400 Lite scored 25% better than its predecessor in the single-core part of the test, and was 20% better in the multi-core element.
We don’t see the same kind of leaps on the gaming front, however, with the 400 Lite joining its older sibling firmly at the rear of the pack. The OnePlus Nord CE 4 Lite is only a little bit better but you need only look at the Nothing Phone (3a) to see what kind of gaming performance you can get for a bit more money.
And despite having a significantly larger battery than last year, the Honor 400 Lite only lasted around an hour longer than the 200 Lite in our looping video test. That’s still an excellent result for such a cheap phone, however, and only the Herculean efforts of the Nothing Phone (3a) beat it here.
Once depleted, the 35W charging brought the battery back to 50% in 32 minutes, with a full charge taking around 1hr 15mins. That’s a fair way off the fastest charging phones but for a handset this cheap, it’s perfectly acceptable.
Cameras
iPhone comparisons aside, the new camera button is a decent enough addition, but I still found myself using the on-screen controls more often than not during testing.
When I did use it, however, it mostly worked well. Tapping once opens the camera app and tapping again takes a photo. You can also apply slight pressure to the button to lock the focus before capturing your shot, tap and hold to start recording video or slide your finger along it to zoom in and out.
I found the latter function a little hit and miss in practice, as it didn’t always register when I was sliding my finger along it. Other times, my finger caught the sensor by accident and made the camera erroneously zoom. The good news is that Honor has at least included settings to disable the camera button functions you don’t want.
When I was done playing around with the camera button, the 108-megapixel (f/1.8) main camera proved as adept as it was last year, capturing bright and detailed images in good lighting. There’s no stabilisation but you do at least have PDAF (phase detect autofocus) to help you quickly lock onto your focal subject.
You feel the lack of stabilisation a little with night shots. The night mode takes quite a while to capture the image – roughly four seconds – and the resultant hand shaking can leave images a little blurred. Otherwise, though, it captures pretty decent low-light shots with reasonable brightness and vibrant colours.
In my Honor 200 Lite review, I argued for the removal of the 2-megapixel macro camera, so I shouldn’t complain now, but combining the addition of a dedicated camera button with the stripping back of available cameras feels a little odd.
It’s not that I miss that macro camera, it’s just that the button feels largely unnecessary when your camera experience is so streamlined. With just the main camera (that doesn’t zoom past 10x anyway) and the ultrawide to utilise, was a dedicated camera button really necessary?
The 5-megapixel (f/2.2) ultrawide shoulders the burden of being the only additional camera well enough, with a colour tone that’s roughly in line with the main camera, but the images produced are quite washed out, leaving them looking quite flat.
Video is where this phone really suffers, though: it’s still stuck at the bare minimum 1080p/30fps, with (again) no stabilisation of which to speak. The selfie camera has been downgraded from last year, too, dropping from a 50-megapixel unit to a 16-megapixel (f/2.2) one. Focus is still reasonably sharp and skin tones look natural but you can see the lower pixel count in the smoothing out of facial details.
Honor 400 Lite: Verdict
I’m not a fan of Honor doubling down on the Apple cosplay. It feels like a lack of confidence in the product, which is madness because, as far as budget phones go, the Honor 400 Lite is one of the best.
Performance and battery life are better than last year, the main camera is still a decent shooter, its IP65 rating means it’s more robust and that new 120Hz display makes everything feel lovely and smooth in use. Plus, of course, the software support is fantastic.
I could have done without the superfluous camera button and the backup cameras aren’t up to the same standard as the main one, but otherwise, it’s extremely well-rounded. For £250, it’s a good amount of phone, and delivers the kind of value for money Apple fans can only dream of. It would, however, be nice to see Honor move away from imitation and commit to establishing its own identity with the next generation.
