At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Premium-looking design
- Fantastic AMOLED display
- Great battery life
- Smooth performance
Cons
- Terrible video stabilisation
- Slower charging than predecessor
- Not running the latest Android version
Our Verdict
The Honor Magic 6 Lite is an affordable handset with handsome looks, a lovely display and mammoth battery life. It’s not the fastest around, and its video capabilities definitely could use some improvement, but it delivers enough to be well worth its asking price.
Best Prices Today: Honor Magic 6 Lite
Honor launches its new Magic-series lineup with an affordable option that can be had for just £349. Despite the mid-range price, though, the Magic 6 Lite has the look and feel of a device that’s much more expensive. It also comes with a generous 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, the kind of capacities that, until recently, were unheard of in this price range.
This handset also boasts a 108Mp main camera, which is extremely high resolution, even by flagship standards, and a battery that can supposedly last for two days on a charge.
So, it’s a promising start, but competition is fierce at this price point. It’s up against the likes of the Google Pixel 7a , Poco X5 Pro and Samsung Galaxy A34 , does the Honor Magic 6 Lite offer enough to compete? I was excited to find out, and after living with the device for the past couple of weeks, here’s how I got on.
Design & Build
- Premium look and feel
- Curved sides on the display and the rear
- IP53 certified
The Honor Magic 6 Lite looks and feels like a phone that should cost more than it does. Especially in the Midnight Black colourway that I’m testing, where golden accents give off high-end fashion vibes. The only real tell that this isn’t a flagship is the use of a polycarbonate frame, which has a polished and shiny appearance but doesn’t feel cool to the touch.
Luke Baker
Midnight Black is probably the most subtle of the four available colour options, but even this model has plenty of flair. I particularly like the way the light shimmers off of the frosted glass rear panel. It’s a device that’s sure to attract attention, even in its darker outfit, but if you prefer something bolder, the Emerald Green, Titanium Silver and Sunrise Orange (vegan leather) variants have got you covered.
There’s significant curvature to the left and right edges of the display, and this is mirrored on the rear panel. The curvy design gives the phone a streamlined look and makes it feel even slimmer in the hand. It’s less than 8mm at its thickest, and there’s barely a camera bump to speak of, so it’ll slip in and out of your pocket with ease.
Speaking of the cameras, they are positioned in Honor’s signature ring-shaped array, just as we saw on the Honor Magic 5 Lite . This ring is quite large, taking up most of the upper portion of the phone, but as mentioned, it barely protrudes at all – so the phone won’t rock about when placed screen-up on a table.
Luke Baker
The camera ring is encircled with a knurled edge that reminds me of a watch crown. I’m not sure if it’s the intended use, but I liked to rest my forefinger against it for a bit of extra grip. The rough texture of the bezel contrasts nicely against the velvety smooth glass back and helps to orient the phone in your hand without needing you to look at it.
This time around, the Magic 6 Lite carries an IP53 rating for dust and water resistance. That doesn’t mean it’s fully waterproof, but it’ll handle a rain shower without trouble and you can relax at the beach without worrying too much about the sand.
Honor has also put in some work to ensure this phone is durable. It has achieved a five-star rating in SGS’s Drop Resistance test and Honor says it’s effectively protected from all angles against drops of up to 1.5 meters. I didn’t fancy lobbing it on the floor myself, but it’s nice to know, especially since there’s no case included in the box.
Screen & Speakers
- 6.78in AMOLED display
- Full HD+ resolution
- 120Hz adaptive refresh rate
- Single speaker
The screen is a highlight of this device, it’s spacious at 6.78in, has a zippy 120Hz refresh rate and it’s one of the brightest panels in this price bracket, able to output up to a whopping 1200 nits at peak brightness. It also boasts 1920Hz PWM dimming, so if you’re sensitive to flicker, you’re very unlikely to spot any on this display, even at low brightness.
Luke Baker
Personally, I tend to prefer flat displays, but there’s no denying that the curved edges look great on this handset. The smooth radius makes gesture control feel natural and smooth, too.
When it comes to customisation, you get two main profiles to choose from, Normal and Vivid, and you can tweak the colour temperature of each. Honor goes a step further than most, allowing you to choose between warm and cool options as well as offering an adjustment wheel to fine-tune your preferences.
The panel covers 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut, which is great if you value colour accuracy, though it’s worth noting that neither the Netflix app nor YouTube would play in HDR on my pre-release device despite the Widevine L1 certification being present. Hopefully, this is something that can be addressed in future firmware.
Luke Baker
The Magic 6 Lite has an in-display fingerprint scanner and it worked well throughout my testing, unlocking the phone quickly and reliably. It’s positioned lower on the screen than I’m used to, though, and that meant that it wasn’t always the most comfortable to reach. If you prefer, a face unlock option is available, too.
There’s only a single speaker on this device, positioned at the bottom next to the USB-C port. This means that you don’t get a stereo effect from your content, but despite that, it still sounds fairly decent. It’s not the loudest that I’ve come across, and begins to distort at max volume, but it sounds good enough for watching videos around the home.
Specs & Performance
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB storage
The Honor Magic 6 Lite is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 processor, it’s a mid-range chip, so don’t expect it to be topping any of the benchmark charts, but it’s still a significant performance uplift over the previous model as you would hope.
Luke Baker
In Europe, there’s only one model available and it comes with a generous 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. This is more than enough RAM for most people, but if you need more still, you can choose to double that capacity in software using the Honor RAM Turbo feature.
In use, the phone feels snappy and responsive and throughout my testing, I never experienced any freezes or stutters navigating the OS. Whatever kind of optimisation Honor has done here works extremely well, animations are fluid and you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this and a flagship device at three times the price.
It’s only in benchmarks that you can see how the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 lags behind its pricier siblings, and it’s particularly evident in GPU-based graphical processing workloads. Despite that fact, the Magic 6 Lite performs better than I was expecting in games. It can manage the notoriously taxing Genshin Impact in medium settings at 30fps with no noticeable slowdown, and it remains very cool in the process – impressive stuff.
Honor Magic 6 Lite benchmarks
There’s even a built-in game overlay that can be accessed by swiping from the upper left of the screen while a game is open. This can boost the phone’s performance by dedicating more resources to the game, at the cost of some battery life. It’s always nice to see outside of a dedicated gaming phone .
Cameras
- 108Mp main sensor
- 5Mp ultrawide
- 2Mp macro
- 16Mp selfie camera
The cameras on the Honor Magic 6 Lite are a bit of a mixed bag. You get an impressive main camera, with a whopping 108Mp resolution, and a very decent 16Mp selfie snapper, but the other cameras are far less impressive.
The 2Mp macro camera is just far too low resolution to be of much use in 2024, and the 5Mp ultrawide is lacking in detail, too. They are typical additions to phones around this price or less to essentially make up the numbers.
The colour rendition is also far worse on these low-megapixel auxiliary lenses, and I’d advise avoiding them where possible.
Luke Baker
The main camera, on the other hand, is quite capable, especially when you’re shooting in daylight. When aided by Night Mode it’ll even hold its own after dark. The image processing is slightly too contrasty for my tastes, but the colours are lifelike, and with a bit of tweaking in your preferred editor, you can get them looking their best.
Most of the time you’ll be getting 12Mp snaps, with nine-to-one pixel binning, but if you prefer, you can switch to high-res mode and take advantage of the full 108Mp resolution. There’s more detail, and larger file sizes, but it’s not enough of a quality difference to be worth the time in most cases.
The high-resolution sensor is more useful as a way to enable the 3x zoom capability, and it does a decent job here. It’s not a totally lossless crop, you can see a small drop-off in quality, but it’s better than cropping into a 12Mp shot.
The selfie camera is solid, if a little unremarkable, and I was pleased with the quality it produced. Portrait mode cut-outs are fairly reliable, and it was only a few wispy strands of hair that got the better of the system.
When it comes to video shooting, the results are a little more disappointing. There’s almost no image stabilisation on the selfie camera and it maxes out at 1080p 30fps. On the rear, you can shoot at up to 4K/30fps or 1080p/60fps, but neither of these options are very well stabilised either. It’s only when you drop to 1080p 30fps and below that the proper digital stabilisation kicks in, and even then, it’s among the worst stabilisation that I’ve come across recently.
Battery Life & Charging
- 5300mAh battery
- 35W charging support
- No power adapter in the box
The Honor Magic 6 Lite has a relatively large 5300 mAh battery pack on board, which Honor claims is enough for two full days of use on a charge. This is something that’s backed up with Gold Label recognition from DXOMark.
Luke Baker
In my normal usage, which involves streaming plenty of YouTube videos, messaging, camera use and lots of podcast playback, I was rarely going to bed with under 60% charge remaining. So it’s a very real claim.
In our usual PCMark battery test, which simulates varied non-stop usage, the phone lasted a commendable 11 hours and 44 minutes.
When it’s time to charge, the Magic 6 Lite can do so at up to 35W, but you’ll need to provide your own adapter. The phone only comes packaged with a USB-A to USB-C cable. It would have been nice to see some faster charging speeds supported, as this is oddly slight drop-down from the Magic 5 Lite’s 40W support.
Using a Ugreen Nexode 300W GaN charger I found it reached 18% in 15 minutes and 38% in half an hour. A full charge from flat will take around 95 minutes.
Software & Apps
- MagicOS 7.2
- Based on Android 13
- Some bloatware to deal with
The Magic 6 Lite runs MagicOS 7.2, based on Android 13. It’s a fairly familiar skin if you’ve used a recent Honor phone, but if you haven’t, it bears some resemblance to Huawei’s HarmonyOS and Xiaomi’s MIUI.
Luke Baker
What I mean by that is there’s some Apple iOS influence here. The notification shade and quick settings are separated, and you can access each with a swipe from either side of the selfie camera, the app drawer is also disabled by default and you’ll need to go into the settings menu and reactivate it if you prefer to have apps hidden away from your home screen.
It’s easy to adapt to, and it feels like second nature within a couple of days, but it may be jarring if you’re used to stock Android. There are boatloads of customisation options available in the skin, so if you don’t like the way it looks and feels by default, it’s easy enough to tweak to your tastes.
As I mentioned earlier, navigating this operating system is snappy, smooth and responsive. This is partly thanks to the hardware, and the 120Hz refresh rate of the display, but it seems like Honor has done a great job of optimising its software for this mid-range chip. It’s a great experience.
What’s a little less ideal is that this phone is running on Android 13 , rather than 14, which has been appearing on other handsets since October last year. Honor promises two generational updates and three years of security patches, but one of those generational updates will be Android 14 , not exactly what you’d hope to see from a brand-new device.
Luke Baker
There’s some bloatware preinstalled, including a recommended apps folder and some random additions like TikTok, Netflix and Booking.com, but it’s far from the worst I’ve seen and is to be expected from a phone in this price bracket. Thankfully it can all be removed in a matter of minutes.
Price & Availability
In Europe, there’s only one variant available, and that comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. That can be yours for the low price of just £349.99 and the UK site lists Emerald Green, Midnight Black and Sunrise Orange as the available colours.
it’s not available elsewhere yet but Argos did stock the 5 Lite so there’s hope. However, at the time of writing, purchasing direct is fortuatous as you get a free Honor Pad X8 Neo, 6 Lite screen protector, the offer of a power adapter from £2.99, plus a £35 voucher. This deal ends on 16 Jan so be quick.
Other regions will have access to different colourways and can expect the pricing to differ slightly, too. Honor has yet to launch in the US, so our US readers would need to import the device if they wanted to get in on the action. The equivalent price in dollars is $440.
Luke Baker
A key competitor at this price is the Google Pixel 7a , which is currently selling for just £379. With the Google device, you’d be taking a step down to just 128GB of storage and a 90Hz refresh rate, but there’s a good chance you’ll be more impressed with your photos.
Another device worth considering is the £369 Poco X5 Pro , which offers better gaming performance, a similar camera setup and a comparable display for around the same price. You might also want to consider the Samsung Galaxy A34 for £349.
Still not sure which phone to buy? Check out our charts of the best budget phones and best mid-range phones .
Should you buy the Honor Magic 6 Lite?
There’s a lot to like about the Honor Magic 6 Lite, and the main thing that struck me is how premium it looks and feels, despite having such an affordable price tag.
The display is excellent, the battery life is very impressive and the performance in day-to-day use is superb. I wasn’t overly impressed with the camera system, but the 108Mp main camera is capable of some good results, as is the selfie camera. Just don’t buy it if you plan on shooting a lot of videos.
It would have been nice to see some faster charging support and an included charger would be even better, but it’s somewhat understandable.
Overall, the Honor Magic 6 Lite is a solid phone for the price, it just doesn’t do a lot to stand out from the crowd. It’s a great looker, though, and if that’s a priority, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more attractive handset in this price bracket.
Specs
- MagicOS 7.2, based on Android 13
- 6.78in, 2652×1200, AMOLED, 120Hz, curved display
- In-display fingerprint sensor
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1
- 8GB RAM
- 256GB storage
- Cameras: 108Mp, f/1.75 main camera 5Mp f/2.2 ultra-wide camera 2Mp f/2.4 macro camera 16Mp front-facing camera
- Mono speaker
- Dual-SIM
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
- Bluetooth 5.1
- 5300mAh battery
- 35W charging (no charger in box)
- 163.6 x 75.5 x 7.98 mm
- IP53 certified
- 185g
- Launch colours: Midnight Black, Emerald Green, Titanium Silver, Sunrise Orange
Best Prices Today: Honor Magic 6 Lite
Author: Luke Baker, Contributor, Tech Advisor
Luke is a freelance journalist who has been working in consumer electronics for over a decade. Previously Features Editor at Pocket-lint, Luke can now be found contributing reviews and features to a variety of publications, as well as running a YouTube channel called Neon Airship in his spare time. Luke loves anything that takes pictures, whether it’s a smartphone, camera or drone, and he also gets very excited about the latest VR and AR tech.
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- Xiaomi 15T Pro review: A premium camera experience for less
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