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Honor Magic V6 review: Two-minute review
Chinese phone giant Honor has been on a bit of a roll recently. In 2026, it’s already given us the exceptional Honor MagicPad 4 and the compelling Honor Magic 8 Pro flagship, not to mention the impressive (albeit slightly pricey) Honor 600 Pro. Its latest foldable, the Honor Magic V6, keeps up this formidable streak and is easily worthy of being considered one of the best foldable phones today.
The big draw here is the Magic V6’s market-leading durability. I’ve taken plenty of foldables for a spin, from the clamshell Motorola Razr Plus to the tablet-style Oppo Find N5, but I’ve always maintained that I would never actually buy one. Why? Because these devices are often simply too fragile. I’m pretty clumsy with my phones and regularly use (and I must admit, sometimes drop) them in the shower or bath, and there’s no way that I’m going to splash out on a premium foldable only to see it turned into a damp paperweight.
The Honor Magic V6 is the first foldable I’ve tested that truly bucks that trend.
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In its review documentation, Honor recommended not to baby the phone — I was encouraged to take it out and about without a case, use it in the rain, and so on. I’ve been doing exactly that and, after multiple months of use, it still looks brand new. With its IP68 and IP69 ratings, it offers the highest level of water protection that I can find on the market right now, comparable to most regular high-end flagships.
Its fold is smooth, quiet, and, after being unfolded multiple times a day for weeks, is still as good as new. Honor says that the inner screen is layered with tough UTG flexible glass and has an SGS Imperceptible Crease Certification, and it really shows. The fold is near-invisible head-on, and only really shows if you hold the phone at very specific angles. This is the first foldable I’ve used where you can truly forget that it’s even there.
All of this is underpinned by a premium design that’s impressively slim. The folded phone is about as thick as an iPhone 17 Pro Max, so it feels great in the hands. Unfolded, it becomes just 4.00mm — the same incredible slimness that we loved with the previous Honor Magic V5. On that note, it’s a shame that Honor hasn’t really changed the design that much for this new iteration, though.
The look is practically identical and, on a more serious note, the V5 often ran hot, and that’s still an issue this time around. It’s especially apparent when you’re putting the top-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 SoC through its paces, so be prepared for some thermal throttling if you’re spending hours in the most demanding games.
Despite these minor shortcomings, the Magic V6 is a winner and another impressive showing for Honor. I’m eager to see what the company has planned next.
Honor Magic V6 review: Price and availability
- Priced at £1,999.99 / AU$2,999 (around $2,700)
- Already discounted by £500 thanks to a voucher
- Available in the UK and Australia, but not the US
The Honor Magic V6 is priced at £1,999.99 (AU$2,999), which is a pretty hefty sum, but roughly in line with competing devices like the $2,099.99 / £1,899 / AU$2,999 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.
Honor gains a major edge when you consider that the V6 offers 512GB of storage as standard (the Z Fold 8 Ultra starts at just 256GB) and factor in the brand’s frequent promotions and freebies.
At the time of writing, for example, the phone is already £500 off on the official Honor website thanks to a voucher, and comes bundled with your choice of an Honor Pad 10 tablet, projector, or AI voice recorder in addition to some earbuds — you can’t really argue with the value there.
Honor Magic V6 review: Specs
Here’s a look at the Honor Magic V6’s spec sheet:
|
Dimensions |
156.7mm x 74.5 mm x 8.75mm (folded) / 156.7mm x 145.6mm x 4.1mm (unfolded) |
|
Weight |
219g |
|
Screen |
Inner: 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 foldable OLED Outer: 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 OLED |
|
Chipset |
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 |
|
RAM |
16GB |
|
Storage |
512GB |
|
OS |
Honor MagicOS 10 (Android 16) |
|
Rear cameras |
50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto lens (3x zoom) |
|
Front camera |
20MP wide, 20MP wide |
|
Audio |
Stereo speakers with Honor Sound |
|
Battery |
6,660mAh lithium polymer |
|
Charging |
80W Honor SuperCharge, 66W Wireless Honor SuperCharge |
|
Colors |
Red, Gold, White, Black |
Honor Magic V6 review: Design
- Very similar to the V5
- Smoother, more premium hinge
- Still a large camera bump
The design of the Honor Magic V6 is practically identical to that of the V5. It is incredibly thin when unfolded, coming in at just 4.1mm, with a durable aluminium chassis. The back material depends on your choice of colorway, with the Red version using vegan leather and the Gold, Black, and White featuring a smooth fibre composite.
Whether you’re using it folded or unfolded, this is a very good-looking phone that feels great in the hands. I took it with me to Los Angeles on two business trips during my testing, and multiple people complimented the device completely unprompted and were eager to learn more about it — something that I can’t say has happened with any other mobile I’ve used.
Like most Chinese flagships, the rear of the phone features a large octagonal camera bump which isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. I do quite like how it looks, though, and appreciate the subtle tactile texture on the ring around it. The bump is also a bit smaller than that of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, which means that it’s less likely to rest under your fingers and get covered in smudges.
Although the aesthetic hasn’t changed, there have been some big improvements compared to the Honor Magic V5 when it comes to the hinge. It’s much quieter and smoother this time around, helping the phone feel more premium and sturdy. When opened, the phone’s inner display looks totally flat, and the crease is totally invisible in most situations. It only shows up at specific angles and when the screen is displaying lighter colors like grey or white.
Honor keeps things refreshingly simple when it comes to buttons with the Magic V6. There’s a small volume rocker and a power button on the right-hand side, and that’s your lot. They’re well placed for one-handed operation and feel pleasantly clicky. My only real gripe is the fingerprint reader built into the power button, which sometimes feels unresponsive and requires a few attempts to successfully unlock.
Honor Magic V6 review: Display
- Both screens are bright and attractive
- Crease is barely visible
- Comes with pre-applied screen protectors
Both of the displays found on the Honor Magic V6 are excellent. The 6.52-inch OLED outer screen has a 2420 x 1080 resolution, with a fantastic 2,000 nits peak brightness (or up to an absurd 6,000 nits with HDR) that ensures that it stays visible in even the harshest lighting conditions. It uses Honor’s Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield coating, which is decently scratch-resistant and has managed to keep the screen pristine throughout my testing.
It certainly helps that the outer screen also comes fitted with a screen protector out of the box, though I opted to remove it early on as it picked up a lot of marks very quickly. (The inner display also comes with a screen protector, though be warned that this is an integral part of the display that should not be removed by the user. It thankfully seems much more durable than the outer one). Despite the rectangular candy-bar shape of the folded phone, the outer screen uses rounded corners, presumably to give it symmetry with the inner one.
That inner display is a 7.5-inch foldable OLED panel, surrounded by impressively thin plastic bezels. It’s almost as bright as the external one, with a 1,300-nit peak brightness (or up to 5,000 nits with HDR). It’s decently high resolution at 2352 x 2172 and doesn’t look noticeably less sharp than the external one in use, so you can transition between them seamlessly. Honor also deserves some credit for just how closely calibrated both of the displays are: they’re practically identical in terms of color and together just feel like a natural extension of the same panel.
Both the inner and outer screens feature an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate, too (avoiding a jarring transition between different refresh rates when switching between the two), which is fantastic for smoothly scrolling apps and social media websites.
Lastly, you absolutely don’t need to worry about an ugly crease spoiling your view with the Honor Magic V6. There is still a fold that you can feel if you really examine it with your fingers, but it’s practically invisible in regular use unless you hold your phone at specific side-on angles or look very closely on a totally blank screen.
I’ve been folding and unfolding the phone constantly throughout my testing, and it hasn’t become more visible either, which is a great sign for long-term durability.
Honor Magic V6 review: Cameras
- Good camera setup
- Not quite as strong as the Magic 8 Pro
- Plenty of software features
The cameras of the Honor Magic V6 aren’t quite as strong as those of the Honor Magic 8 Pro, but they’re still very capable compared to the rest of the wider foldable category. The rear camera offers a three-lens setup, with a 50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, and 64MP telephoto lens.
Photos are bright and poppy by default, which is great for capturing the mood of summer days, and they offer a good level of detail — even when dealing with busy scenes and foliage. The main sensor offers 3x optical zoom, which works fantastically, alongside a much less consistent 100x digital zoom. This setup performs well in low-light conditions and those with challenging lighting setups, like concerts with bright strobe effects.
There are plenty of software features to try out on the Magic V6, including AI-powered color filters and different photo watermarks. The ability to display the photo that you’re taking on the front screen is also brilliant for group settings.
Both the front and inner display have the same 20MP wide sensor, which does a good job with selfies, even if the results are a little overprocessed. The Honor Magic V6 also has strong video shooting capabilities and can capture 4K video at 60fps.
As good as it all is, though, I do think the results are overall less impressive than the images I’ve taken with the Honor Magic 8 Pro and its 200MP main lens.
Honor Magic V6 review: Camera samples
(Image credit: Dashiell Wood)
Honor Magic V6 review: Performance
- Flagship chip
- Can run hot
- Good RAM and storage
The Honor Magic V6 is powered by the flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the same chip found in the Honor Magic 8 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, Xiaomi 17 Ultra, and other high–end smartphones. With this SoC, it should come as no surprise that the performance of the Honor Magic V6 is incredibly strong across the board.
In daily use, you’re not going to notice any hitches or slowdown when navigating system menus, browsers like Google Chrome or Firefox, and social media apps. It’s paired with 16GB of RAM, which is more than enough for serious multitasking. I normally rely on my phone for productivity tasks like note-taking, transcribing, and document editing while I’m out on business trips, and my flow was never broken by sudden reloads when flicking between multiple apps — even ones that I hadn’t opened for some time.
Gaming performance is also excellent. It almost goes without saying that casual titles like Plants vs Zombies 3 or Warhammer Combat Cards – 40K (two games I must admit I’ve been spending an embarrassing amount of time playing recently) are totally flawless. More demanding titles, like my go-to Zenless Zone Zero, will run beautifully at the maximum settings preset as well.
The Honor Magic V6 does have a problem with temperatures, though. Extended gaming sessions will cause the phone to heat up quite a bit, leading to eventual slowdown. I also found that it struggled massively during the recent UK heatwave, feeling red hot in my pocket and struggling to run even Google Maps smoothly in direct sunlight. Given the phone’s thinness, I think it’s reasonable that it runs hot at times — but if you want a dedicated gaming device, you would be better off looking outside the foldable market.
Only one configuration of the Honor Magic V6 is available, offering 512GB of storage out of the box. It’s a bit of a shame that there’s no 1TB model for proper power users, but this 512GB capacity will be more than sufficient for the vast majority of buyers. I still have almost 300GB of free space after multiple months of use.
The stereo speakers of the Honor Magic V6 are decent, but hardly going to blow your socks off. There’s more bass than you might expect given the phone’s slight profile, and they can get fairly loud. Just make sure that you run to the ‘Sound quality and effects’ menu in the settings app and disable the various effects that are, for some reason, enabled by default. They just make everything sound washed out.
Honor Magic V6 review: Software
- Transitions between screens seamlessly
- MagicOS 10 is still a winner
- Sleek, iOS-inspired design language
I’m a big fan of MagicOS 10, Honor’s Android 16-based operating system. The design is certainly Apple-inspired, but as an ex-iPhone user, I find it both visually appealing and easy to use. It has a liquid-glass-like aesthetic, with sleek, semi-transparent menus and rounded buttons.
You get all the visual flair of using an iPhone, but with all the additional customization options that you would expect from the Android ecosystem. New icon packs, themes, and a range of pre-set options can be selected from the in-built themes app. You can even disable the transparency effects throughout the OS if you want something that looks a bit more like traditional Android.
Smart features, like an AI tool to recommend images that would be well-suited for your lock screen and AI-powered widgets that use context to suggest the app that you’re most likely to want to use, make daily operation smooth.
Other AI software elements include the ability to generate or rephrase text and a surprisingly good translation feature. They’re not all winners though. The AI Settings Agent (which allows you to type or speak sentences like ‘Turn off Bluetooth’ in order to change key settings) is laughably useless, while the so-called AI Memories App is literally just a screenshot tool with the word AI slapped on it.
But compared to other foldables that I have used, the Honor Magic V6 is by far the smoothest when transitioning between the two displays on the software front. You will get the odd moment where things freeze up, or apps fail to resize properly, but the vast majority of the time it works exactly as you would expect. I soon found that being able to seamlessly access the larger screen made it much easier to compose apps in Gmail, or edit documents in Google Drive.
Honor Magic V6 review: Battery
- 6,660mAh lithium polymer cell
- Best in class battery life
- Easily lasts for more than a day
The battery life of the Honor Magic V6 is superb. The 6,660mAh lithium polymer cell offers more than enough juice for a full day of use, even if you play graphically demanding games or stream video content. I use my phone constantly throughout the day and regularly go to bed with about 25% of juice left. With light use, you could easily stretch multiple days out of a single charge, particularly if you enable one of the power-saving modes.
6,660mAh is the largest battery capacity you will find across the entire foldable category, and it shows in real-world use. The Honor Magic V6 can comfortably outlast both the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 (we’re yet to test it against the new Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra), as well as traditional flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra.
Honor devices are already known for their serious battery chops, but cramming this much battery life into a device so thin and light is extremely impressive.
Should you buy the Honor Magic V6?
|
Attributes |
Notes |
Rating |
|
Value |
The Honor Magic V6 isn’t cheap, but it does offer significantly better value than key competitors. |
4/5 |
|
Design |
A sleek, stylish, and durable design with a smooth hinge. It’s great, but draws heavily on the winning formula of the Honor Magic V5. |
4.5/5 |
|
Display |
The Honor Magic V6 offers two great screens which feel like a natural extension of each other. |
4/5 |
|
Software |
Honor MagicOS 10 is a capable and attractive operating system that’s well optimized for foldables. |
4/5 |
|
Camera |
A compelling camera setup, only lagging slightly behind regular flagships. |
4/5 |
|
Performance |
Extremely fast and ready for gaming, but prone to overheating during extended play sessions. |
4/5 |
|
Battery |
The Honor Magic V6 excels with leading battery life in the foldable category |
5/5 |
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
Honor Magic V6 review: Also consider
Not so keen on the Honor Magic V6? Here are two alternatives to weigh up, one folding and one not.
| Row 0 – Cell 0 |
Honor Magic V6 |
Honor Magic 8 Pro |
Google Pixel 10 Fold |
|
Starting price |
£1,999.99 / AU$2,999 (around $2,700) |
£1099.99 |
$1,799 / £1,749 / AU $2,699 |
|
Dimensions |
156.7mm x 74.5 mm x 8.75mm (folded) / 156.7mm x 145.6mm x 4.1mm (unfolded) |
161.15 x 8.4 x 75mm |
155.2 x 150.4 x 5.2 mm |
|
Weight |
219g |
219g |
258g |
|
Screen |
Inner: 7.95-inch 2352 x 2172 foldable OLED Outer: 6.52-inch 2420 x 1080 OLED |
6.7-inch 1256 x 2808 OLED, 120Hz |
Inner: 6.4-inch OLED Outer: 8-inch OLED |
|
Chipset |
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 |
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 |
Google Tensor G5 |
|
RAM |
16GB |
12GB |
16GB |
|
Storage |
512GB |
512GB |
256GB / 512GB / 1TB |
|
OS |
Honor MagicOS 10 (Android 16) |
MagicOS 10, based on Android 16 |
Android 16 |
|
Rear cameras |
50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, 64MP telephoto lens (3x zoom) |
50MP main + 50MP ultra-wide + 200MP telephoto (3.7x zom) |
48MP, f/1.7, 0.5-inch sensor |
|
Front camera |
20MP wide, 20MP wide |
50MP |
10MP |
|
Audio |
Stereo speakers with Honor Sound |
Stereo speakers with Honor Surround Subwoofer |
Stereo with spatial audio |
|
Battery |
6,660mAh lithium polymer |
7,100mAh (tested), 6270mAh (EU) |
Up to 30 hours |
|
Charging |
80W Honor SuperCharge, 66W Wireless Honor SuperCharge |
120W wired, 80W wireless |
39W wired charging, 15W wireless |
|
Colors |
Red, Gold, White, Black |
Sunrise Gold, Sky Cyan, Black |
Moonstone, Jade |
How I tested the Honor Magic V6
- Tested for multiple months
- Used as a daily driver
- Compared to flagship devices
I tested the Honor Magic V6 over a period of multiple months, using it as my daily driver. I relied on it for a wide range of tasks, from listening to music and browsing social media on my commute to watching my favorite series on a plane and trying out the latest game releases.
Throughout my time with the phone, I frequently compared its performance to other flagship devices, including those from Honor and its major competitors.
First reviewed July 2026
