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- Bright, colour-accurate AMOLED display
- Outstanding durability
- Class-leading battery life
- Awful ultrawide camera
- Performance is only okay
- Plastic frame feels cheap
The Honor Magic 8 Lite is the latest in a long line of mid-range phones that have failed to emulate the success of the brand’s flagship offerings. While its top-of-the-range phones have consistently achieved appeal, thanks to strong cameras and unique features, the Lite series has struggled to find its niche.
I won’t go as far as to say that the Magic 8 Lite is the ultimate solution to this conundrum – things like middling performance and weak cameras still hold it back – but it feels closer to the mark than previous entries.
In particular, both battery life and durability are far beyond what we usually see from phones of this price – if these are your main priorities, the Magic 8 Lite is a no-brainer. If you prefer a balanced all-rounder or are drawn to powerful performance and versatile cameras, however, there are better options out there for this kind of money.
Honor Magic 8 Lite: What you need to know
There are a couple of big new features here that no other option in this price range offers. For starters, the dust and water resistance has been massively improved since last year, replacing the Magic 7 Lite’s IP64 rating with IP68 and IP69K protection.
The battery is also much larger than before, now with a staggering capacity of 7,500mAh. That’s a huge leap over the 6,600mAh unit used in the Magic 7 Lite and the joint-largest of any phone I’ve ever tested, tying with the far more expensive Oppo Find X9 Pro.
Alongside that chunky battery is the new Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset, clocked up to 2.3GHz and backed by the same 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage space that we saw in the previous model.
The display is a 6.79in AMOLED panel with a resolution of 2,640 x 1,200 and a peak refresh rate of 120Hz. As before, a 16-megapixel selfie camera is located in a hole-punch notch near the top of the display, and on the rear, we have a 108-megapixel main camera and a 5-megapixel ultrawide lens.
Price and competition
While we have those two changes, many of the specs are the same as last year’s Magic 7 Lite. At least, then, Honor has kept the price the same, offering up the sole 512GB model for £400.
That puts it right in the shadow of the Google Pixel 9a, our current favourite mid-range phone. Alongside its excellent cameras, extensive software support and brilliant battery life, the Pixel 9a is also temptingly cheap right now, with the entry-level 128GB model currently discounted to just £346. The 256GB model is far more expensive, however, at £549, and there’s no 512GB version, so Honor has the edge on storage capacity.
You can get the same expansive storage from the OnePlus Nord 5, with the 512GB model costing £389; the 256GB model is much cheaper at £349. Battery life is also excellent here, and performance is fantastic, surpassing even the Pixel 9a. The downside is that you don’t get as much software support, with only four years of OS updates – compared to the Magic 8 Lite’s six.
Design and key features
The most important design change is the new IP68/IP69K dust and water resistance rating, which certifies the Magic 8 Lite as fully dust-tight and able to withstand being submerged in 1.5m of fresh water for up to 30 minutes, as well as being protected against high-pressure, high-temperature jets of water from any direction. It’s the most robust and all-encompassing rating available right now, so it’s great to see it on such an affordable phone.
The design has also undergone a few changes since last year; the edges are now completely flat, which at first glance makes the phone look thicker than the Magic 7 Lite’s tapered sides, but in actuality, this model is smaller in all dimensions. It measures 76 x 7.8 x 162mm (WDH) and weighs the same 189g – quite an impressive feat, given the extra battery capacity.
There are three colourways to choose from, with the standard black joined by a muted forest green model and, my favourite, the Reddish Brown number pictured here. The glossy gold plastic edges may be a little tacky for some, but I love the way the rear of the phone looks, pairing the deep red faux leather with a subtle gold ring around the camera module.
It’s worth noting that this is the only colour with a faux leather rear – both the black and green versions are stuck with a cheap-feeling plastic backplate.
While the flagship Magic 8 Pro launched with Honor’s latest MagicOS 10 software (based on Android 16), the Lite is still using MagicOS 9.0. This is a generally fluid and accessible launcher, but Honor makes it tough to love with an overabundance of AI nonsense and preinstalled apps like Temu and booking.com clogging up the homescreen.
On the bright side, Honor has improved the software support pledge for the Lite model, now offering an excellent six years of both OS updates and security patches.
Display
The 6.79in AMOLED display has a slightly lower resolution than last year’s model, but 2,640 x 1,200 is still plenty sharp, and the 120Hz refresh rate scrolls smoothly. Brightness is improved, too. On manual brightness, I recorded an impressive 788cd/m2, while displaying HDR content on adaptive brightness saw it rise to 1,659cd/m2.
There are two colour profiles to choose from, with the standard Vivid being better suited to streaming and gaming, while the Natural profile shoots for the most authentic reproduction of either the sRGB or DCI-P3 colour space, depending on the screen’s content. On the latter profile, I recorded an sRGB gamut coverage of 97.1% and a volume of 99.4%, with the average Delta E colour variance score coming back at 0.87. We’re looking for 1 or under here, so that’s right on the money.
Performance and battery life
The 2.3GHz Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset is a solid improvement over the 6 Gen 1 processor used in the Magic 7 Lite. In the Geekbench 6 benchmark tests, the Magic 8 Lite outperformed its predecessor by 18% in the single-core section and 12% in the multi-core.
These scores are roughly in line with the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, but, as you can see below, the Google Pixel 9a and the OnePlus Nord 5 proved far superior, with multi-core scores that are 42% and 57% better than the Honor, respectively.
The Magic Lite series has never been for serious gamers, and that remains the case here: I ran a few laps of Asphalt Legends well enough, but even that proved a little too hardcore to keep the framerate completely smooth. As long as your gaming habits are on the casual side, you’ll get on just fine with the Magic 8 Lite. Anyone else will find better framerates from the OnePlus Nord 5 or Google Pixel 9a.
That hefty 7,500mAh battery wrote quite the cheque in regards to stamina, and the Honor Magic 8 Lite proved more than happy to cash it, lasting for an astonishing 40hrs 38mins in our standard looping video test.
This isn’t quite the best result we’ve ever recorded – both the OnePlus 15 and Oppo Find X9 Pro lasted a few hours longer – but so far, we’ve only seen flagships break the 40-hour mark. The fact that the Magic 8 Lite is in contention with phones that cost more than twice its price is very impressive indeed.
Charging supports up to 66W, but, as with most modern phones, you’ll need to provide the plug. This is the same speed as the Magic 7 Lite, and it’s nippy enough, though with the massive 7,500mAh capacity to fill, it isn’t the fastest to 100%. In my testing, it took 35 minutes on charge to reach 50%, while a full charge took 1hr 22mins.
Cameras
The biggest disappointment with the Magic 8 Lite is that the camera array is the same as last year’s model. The 108-megapixel (f/1.8) main camera is still okay, at least, with optical image stabilisation helping to deliver bright, detailed shots with natural colours.
Things drop off quickly if you want to use the (extremely limited) zoom function, however: the Magic 8 Lite only shoots up to a 10x digital zoom – essentially just cropping in on the main sensor – and results are weak across the board: detail is fuzzy, contrast is soft, and colouring is washed out. In short, it’s barely worth the price of admission.
The processing for night photography appears to be a little better this year, though. Capture was nice and nippy in testing, shooting in just a couple of seconds, and the result is sharper and less bogged down with visual noise than the results I snapped with the Magic 7 Lite.
I have no such silver linings for the ultrawide camera. This puny 5-megapixel lens spits out the kind of mediocre, low-resolution shots that I would criticise on a phone that costs half this price – it’s a wholly pointless inclusion and Honor really needs to do better next year.
The 16-megapixel selfie camera is decent enough, with natural-looking skin tones and strong focus on the subject in portraits, and video recording is serviceable: it once again shoots in 1080p up to 60fps and 4K at 30fps. Both do the job, but the lack of 4K/60fps and any form of stabilisation puts the Magic 8 Lite at a disadvantage compared to the likes of the Google Pixel 9a.
Honor Magic 8 Lite: Verdict
The extent of the durability here is very impressive, and I’m very happy to see Honor improving the software support, but make no mistake, the key draw here is battery life. If you are sick to the back teeth of reaching for a charger during the day and don’t want to pay flagship prices, the Honor Magic 8 Lite should be your next smartphone. Simple as that.
Honor putting all its eggs in the battery basket, however, has inevitably led to other areas feeling neglected: the performance isn’t dire enough to hamper most users, but the lack of camera improvements is a more difficult pill to swallow. There are phones half this price that have better cameras, which is not a good look for the Magic 8 Lite.
If that puts you off, I will say what I almost always say when discussing phones in this price range: you’ll get better bang for your buck from the Google Pixel 9a. The cameras are outstanding, software support is unrivalled, and battery life is excellent – even if it doesn’t quite reach the lofty heights of the Magic 8 Lite.
