Honor Magic V6 Review: The Foldable That Outfolds Samsung

The Honor Magic V6 pairs an extremely thin folding body with top-tier hardware, and independent lab testing came away impressed: a powerful processor, a long-lasting battery, two excellent OLED screens, a strong triple camera and a software-support promise running to 2032. Even after the test centre had already put numerous foldables through their paces, the Magic V6 stood out — Honor, the testers concluded, has perfected the foldable concept to a degree Samsung has yet to match. This review is based on that laboratory test; it is not our own hands-on trial.

The hinge opens pleasantly, without much force, yet the mechanism feels stable — though only a long-term test will prove its endurance. Unfolded, a generous eight-inch display opens up in the format of a small tablet. Closed, the roughly 224-gram Magic V6 essentially feels like an ordinary phone, and at around eight millimetres thick the only intrusion is a camera island that stands slightly proud — less bothersome in the hand or pocket, the test noted, than the bulky mounts of some rivals. It is the natural successor to the Honor Magic V5, refining the same formula.

Both OLED panels convinced the lab. Sharpness is crisp enough to read fine text clearly, the 120-hertz refresh keeps motion smooth across both screens, and the rich colours and clean contrasts of the OLED panels impress. Peak brightness of roughly 2,000 to 2,500 nits makes the Magic V6 genuinely usable in sunlight. The fold line remains perceptible but barely disturbs everyday use.

Two areas put the Magic V6 in direct competition with conventional flagships: battery and performance. Fitted with the best Android phone processor available at launch — the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — the foldable posts strong figures in everyday use and benchmarks alike, loading apps and handling media without undue waiting. The camera island can grow hot under full load, though the rest of the body stays comfortable to hold. Thermal management does cost performance: in the stress test the Magic V6 throttles noticeably, sometimes dropping to roughly half its score after several graphics runs — something only extreme users editing video for long stretches need weigh.

Battery life is a highlight. Sticking to the outer display, the Magic V6 lasted 21 hours 53 minutes of continuous use in the standard battery test — level with the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Unfolded, runtime falls to 13 hours 53 minutes, a figure only the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold bettered among foldables at the time of testing. Charging over USB-C runs at normal speed — 58 percent in half an hour, enough for eight hours on the inner display — with Qi wireless charging as an alternative.

The camera island may protrude like a non-folding flagship's, and in testing it shoots similarly strong images. The main camera delivers high sharpness, lovely contrasts and lively but not over-saturated colour, with no intrusive noise in dark areas or at the edges, and impressive handheld shots. Portrait mode stands out for clear detail, though the strong bokeh could work a touch more precisely. A 70-millimetre telephoto gives a threefold optical zoom and a lossless six-times crop, both keeping crisp detail even if the sharpening looks a little artificial; push to the 100-times digital zoom, however, and software over-processing turns the result to mush. Video records up to 4K at a smooth 60 frames per second with high image and sound quality, spoilt only by visible jumps when the continuous zoom switches between lenses.

There is nothing to fault in the wider specification: a modern set of radios including Wi-Fi 7, 5G, Bluetooth 6.0 and NFC for contactless payment, plus eSIM support, though dual-SIM needs at least one physical card. The fingerprint sensor sits in the side power button rather than under the display, with two-dimensional face recognition as a backup. On software, Honor promises updates until at least 2032, with new features pledged to 2031. MagicOS 10 — based on Android 16 — makes multitasking on the big inner display easy with split-view and floating windows, and unlike some rivals ships with all Google services and the Play Store preinstalled, albeit alongside some optional, middling system apps.

The Honor Magic V6 is a fascinating high-end foldable that closes the gap between folding and conventional flagships further than almost anything before it. Two superb OLED screens, launch-leading performance, marathon battery life on the outer display and a genuinely strong triple camera add up to a foldable with very few compromises — the main ones being stress-test throttling and merely average charging speed. For buyers who want a small tablet that folds into a pocketable phone, it sets the standard; those still weighing conventional flagships can compare our high-end smartphone picks.