Honor 200 review: elegant appearance, keen shooting

By Rajveer Singh – Published On: August 22, 2024

Review Summary

Expert Rating ★7.5/10

With its recent launch in India, the Honor 200 series represents a major price and feature upgrade over the brand’s earlier models. Camera performance is heavily emphasized in the series, and the Honor 200 accurately captures that. A 50MP primary camera, a 50MP telephoto lens, a 12MP ultrawide lens, and a 50MP front-facing selfie camera make up its back camera configuration. Since we’ve previously done a thorough evaluation of the Honor 200 Pro (review), let’s look at how the Honor 200 functions in actual usage.

Verdict

One of the greatest camera phones around Rs 40,000 is the Honor 200, particularly if you enjoy shooting portraits. It has a stylish appearance, dependable daily performance, and fast recharging. Some prospective customers may find it disadvantageous that the retail box does not include a charger and does not have an IP rating.

Design and display

With its elegant body, softly curved corners, and quad-curved display, the Honor 200 has a very pleasant feel in the palm. When the phone is placed on a level surface, it wobbles due to the oval-shaped camera island that extends slightly upward. I was given the Moonlight White model, which is really attractive with its wave-like patterns embossed on the back panel and matte surface.

The coating keeps the surface looking nice and shields it from fingerprints and smudges. A SIM tray, noise-cancelling microphones, stereo speakers, a Type-C charging connector at the bottom, and other standard extras are also there. The lack of ingress protection is a major drawback of the design, since it contrasts sharply with the other two, which both have IP68 water and dust resistance.

The Honor 200 boasts a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with a DCI-P3 broad color gamut, a refresh rate of 120 Hz, a resolution of 2664 x 1200p (FHD+), and a peak brightness of 4000 nits. The display provides an excellent visual experience with a high pixel density of 435 ppi. Because of its high peak brightness, it provides excellent visual fidelity even in outdoor environments. The display seems pretty sharp, and the colors are vibrant. There are two display color presets available: vivid and standard. I would recommend selecting vivid because it does make the content look more enticing. Additionally, Widevine L1 and HDR10+ are supported, allowing you to easily stream HD content on OTT apps.

There are a bunch of display features that I used extensively on the Honor 200. The EyeComfort mode is immensely useful and syncs with your sleep cycle to automatically toggle eye comfort mode during the night. The high PWM dimming is also useful for those with sensitive eyes and keeps the display flicker-free. I love the e-book mode as someone who frequently reads books on their smartphone, as it tunes down the colours to grayscale, thereby reducing the strain on your eyes.

Cameras

One important area where the Honor 200 really excels is the cameras. The phone has three cameras: a 12MP ultrawide & macro lens with a 112-degree field of view, a 50MP Sony IMX856 telephoto lens with a 2.5x optical zoom, and a 50MP Sony IMX902 primary camera with an f/1.95 aperture. Another 50MP portrait selfie camera with an f/2.1 aperture is located up front. On paper, the camera’s specifications seem amazing, and in practice, they hold up just as well.

With a slightly vibrant color palette and high dynamic range, the Honor 200 produces detailed photos. Because of the moderate saturation, the photos look vibrant without coming across as unduly manipulated. Additionally, the phone captures visually appealing low-light photos with a respectable exposure and low noise level. While it performs satisfactorily, the ultrawide lens is not as good as the portrait lens and the primary sensor.

The Honor 200 calls itself the “Portrait Master,” and with its exquisite portraits, it more than lives up to the moniker. The phone does a great job of keeping the details crisp while separating the foreground and background. In my experience, the phone consistently produced realistic skin tones, however skin color accuracy can vary.

Three specific portrait filters—Harcourt Vibrant, Harcourt Color, and Harcourt Classic—showcase the Studio-Harcourt collaboration. The classic mode, which only takes black and white photos, was my favorite. Since these unique filters are only available for the rear camera, the Honor 200’s selfie photographs do not benefit from the Harcourt treatment like those of the Honor 200 Pro.

I conducted a comparison of the camera capabilities of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro, Honor 200, and Vivo V40 in various settings. The results are as follows:

Daylight

Comparing the Honor 200 to the Motorola Edge 50 Pro, the Honor 200 depicts the real situation more accurately. In the latter, the details in the sky are lost and the colors are oversaturated. While the Motorola Edge 50 Pro exhibits noticeable noise in the image’s darkest regions, the Honor 200 also does a better job of preserving details.

In contrast, the Vivo V40 overexposes the picture, which causes the tiled ground to lose detail. Even while the dynamic range is marginally better than the Honor 200, the colors are also much more vibrant.

Low-light

When compared to the Honor 200, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro produces a more aesthetically pleasing image since it manages exposure and bloom around light sources better in low light. In terms of specifics, however, the Honor 200 performs better.

The Vivo V40 has its own difficulties capturing scenarios that feature a direct source of light, while the Honor 200 has its own troubles with light bloom. In every low-light image with an active light source, lens flare is present. Putting that aside, the Vivo V40 outperforms the Honor 200 in terms of clarity and details.

Performance and software

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 CPU, which powers the Honor 200, is matched with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB of non-expandable UFS 3.1 storage. I was given the top-tier model to review, and I had no trouble using this smartphone normally or experiencing any difficulties. The smartphone’s performance is comparable to that of its two main rivals, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro and the Vivo V40, which share the same processor.

This phone, however, performs significantly better under pressure than its competitors, as our Burnout CPU throttling test shows. With its Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset, the Realme GT 6T (review) is a good option if you’re looking for more performance output at this price range.

Because we tested the lower-end 8GB+128GB model of the phone rather than the top-end variants for its competitors, the Vivo V40 performs marginally worse in benchmarks. Playing games on the smartphone was also a great experience. With the graphics set to “High,” the phone can run demanding games like BGMI and COD: Mobile with ease, averaging 30FPS and 50FPS in each.

Given that the Vivo V40 and the Motorola Edge 50 Pro both have lower average gaming temperatures, its thermal management should have been improved. After 30 minutes of gaming, the Honor 200, for example, displays an average temperature increase of 7.3 degrees Celsius. The Vivo V40 has an average temperature increase of just 4 degrees Celsius whereas the Motorola Edge 50 Pro records 5.7 degrees Celsius.

MagicOS 8.0, which is based on Android 14, is preinstalled on the Honor 200. Your lock screen may be customized to a reasonable extent, and the operating system is well-optimized overall. Many of the capabilities are useful in daily life, particularly if you use your phone to multitask while working. You can drag and drop text, photos, and videos from your phone’s gallery into notes, social media apps, and other apps with the Magic Portal function.

The function did not work for me when trying to do the same with images on my browser or social media. Although, it easily picks up the text from both social media and other apps, so you’re good on that front. One thing that peeved me is that you can only change the volume level using the volume rockers and nothing else. You can’t change the alarm volume, notification volume, or ringtone volume, unlike other Android-based OS. Honor promises 3 years of Android upgrades and 4 years of security updates, which is standard for this price bracket.

Battery life and charging speeds

The 5,200mAh battery of the Honor 200 has support for 100W rapid charging. The typical Li-on cell in the battery is surrounded by a silicon-carbon covering. Based on the information I’ve read, the silicon-carbon coating is more energy-dense, enabling the brand to enhance the phone’s battery capacity without compromising its thin design. With moderate use, the phone’s battery lasts all day, which is good for its price. During my use, the battery provided about 6 hours of screen time.

The phone’s battery depleted by around 2 hours during our rigorous benchmark tests, which is an average result for this price range. While the brand’s support for 100W fast charging is noteworthy, it is disappointing that a charging brick is not included in the package. The Honor 200 took only 39 minutes to fully recharge from 20% capacity when using a compatible 100W charger.

Final verdict

There are two storage options for the Honor 200: 8GB+256GB and 12GB+512GB, with prices of Rs 34,999 and Rs 39,999, respectively. There is no appropriate charger included with the phone, and buying the original charger would cost you an extra Rs 2,999. The Motorola Edge 50 Pro (review) and the Vivo V40 (review) are the device’s main rivals at its price. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, which powers all three phones, means that there is little variation in their performance output.

While the Vivo V40 has a smaller design and a stronger battery backup, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro provides stock Android and lightning-fast charging capabilities. A charger is also included with both phones, which lowers the price. The primary advantages of the Honor 200 are its cameras, particularly its portrait lens, which may be difficult for rivals to match. Additionally, you get a lovely AMOLED display, a stylish design, and decent daily performance. The smartphone is something to think about if you find these features appealing.

Editor’s rating: 7.5 / 10

Reasons to buy

The Honor 200 comes in a sleek, attractive design.
The device packs a crisp AMOLED display with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.
The Honor 200 captures stunning portrait images.
The smartphone’s battery recharges pretty quickly.

Reasons not to buy

The smartphone does not have an IP rating.
The phone does not come with a charger in the retail box

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