Honor 200 Pro Review: Studio-level Portraits at your Fingertips

Portraits are all the rage these days as smartphone companies, especially those from China, prioritise them in their cameras and marketing materials. Just look at the Xiaomi 14 Civi, Motorola Edge 50 Ulta, and the upcoming Vivo V40 Pro, and you’ll realise why. The latest smartphone, the Honor 200 Pro, has partnered with Studio Harcourt, a Parisian art photography studio in Paris, to take portraits to another level.

Cameras are the Honor 200 Pro’s strong suit. Along with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3, can the Honor 200 Pro, priced at Rs 57,999, make a name for itself? Let’s find out.

What is the Honor 200 Pro

If you’re producing a smartphone that isn’t an outright flagship, you’re fishing for areas where you can compromise. It isn’t a bad thing to be compromising, but making the right choice of where to compromise is ideal. The Honor 200 Pro does just that right off the bat. At the heart of the Honor 200 Pro is the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chipset. The smartphone comes with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.

The smartphone can power daily tasks with aplomb. In my two weeks of usage, I noticed almost no lags and stuttering and I was happy with the smooth performance. Out of the box, the smartphone runs on the company’s Magic OS (based on Android 14) and can even indulge in some gaming (though not always at its highest settings), though it gets slightly warm. The smartphone has some bloatware, including an App Market, which is disappointing. Honor has promised two years of OS updates and three years of security patches. It’s on the lower side vis-a-vis the competition.

There’s a 6.78-inch display (with a full HD+ resolution) that is the crown jewel of the Honor 200 Pro. It’s got curved sides on the glass, blue light reduction (and one of the highest PWM dimming rates), a 120Hz refresh rate, and a pill-shaped design to fit the selfie camera up top.

The display is punchy with bright colours. There’s Widevine L1 certification, so all your content can run at its full resolution. Being an AMOLED display means that the dark scenes are handled even better. It has a peak brightness, according to Honor, of 4,000 nits. Optimistic, yes, but still, it is plenty bright for outdoor usage.

The display comes without any display protection (no Gorilla Glass or other protection). There is a pre-applied screen protector, but I’d suggest you go to any market and buy something stronger.

The in-display fingerprint works without a hitch. There’s face unlock present on the smartphone, but it isn’t as secure as on the Honor Magic 6 Pro (slated to launch in India before Diwali). It’s closer to the bottom than on other smartphones, which takes some getting used to. The stereo speakers work very well and can get plenty loud. They are clear and crisp for the most part unless the volume is over 90 percent.

The Honor 200 Pro has an IP65 dust and water resistance. The thing is, there are plenty of smartphones at lower prices that offer an IP68 rating.

You see where I’m getting with the whole “compromise” thing. The Honor 200 Pro has chosen to cut corners. In some places, it’ll be noticeable to the consumer, and in some, it won’t. It’s a mixed bag of decisions, but overall, it should work.

 Are the cameras and design the Honor 200 Pro’s USP?

Let me first talk about the design, before I get into the hero of the product, which is the cameras. The Honor 200 Pro features a design that is immediately eye-catching. Remember the pill-shaped module I talked about above? Well, it is featured on the back of the smartphone as well and is monstrous. It is minimalist but huge. Thanks to the protruding camera island, the smartphone fails to lay flat atop a table. The camera module is inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s "Casa Milá". My review unit came in the pale green (Ocean Cyan) colour variant, with a wavy design, which does look striking. There’s a huge lack of grip on the smartphone thanks to the matte finish and velvety texture. One can choose to put a case on the smartphone but that will take away from the sheer elegance on display.

That said, the Honor 200 Pro is slim, lightweight, and very comfortable to hold. The pill-shaped cutout (inspired by Apple’s Dynamic Island) is called Magic Capsule. It can be used for timers, background music, and a few other things.

Let’s get to the smartphone’s USP - the cameras.

The Honor 200 Pro features a triple-lens setup. There’s the 50MP main shooter (with a 1/1.3-inch image sensor), a 50MP telephoto lens (with a customised Sony IMX856 sensor that is capable of 2.5X optical zoom), and a 12MP ultra-wide lens (that doubles up to handle macro photography).

That’s some serious hardware if you ask me. With the help of Studio Harcourt (famous for its black-and-white portraits), Honor has taken the 200 Pro’s portrait chops to the next level.

It’s safe to say that the Honor 200 Pro has been my go-to camera these past two weeks. So much so that the Oppo Find X7 Ultra has just stayed in my bag, or even been forgotten back on my desk at home. I’m a big fan of portrait photography, and in the mid-range segment, the Honor 200 Pro blows the socks off the competition (especially that of the Xiaomi 14 Civi and most definitely the Oppo Reno12 Pro). What the Honor 200 Pro gets right with its studio-style portraits is the colour science and the fact that the bokeh isn’t very aggressive.

You get three options - Harcourt Classic (black-and-white), Harcour Vibrant, and Harcourt Colour - and each is unique enough and fun to play around with. The 2.5X setting was the best for these portrait shots. The edge detection is one of the best on any smartphone, period. No matter the lighting conditions, the portraits shone like no other. Whether it was a dimly lit bar or an early morning excursion, I could never stop taking portraits. The Harcourt Classic became my ultimate favourite, and to an extent, it mirrors camera-level photos.

The main sensor is also good and clicks photos with punchy colours. It’s got a fast shutter speed, and three modes - Vibrant, Authentic, and Natural - and each provides good results. The white balance is good and none of the photos of overblown. They retain a lot of details.

I only have one gripe with the Honor 200 Pro’s cameras. The speed of the low-light shooting is very slow. It’s like the shutter speed does a 360-degree turn when the lighting conditions aren’t favourable. It’s not that the photos in low light photos are bad. In fact, they’re very good. It’s just that you can hardly capture fast-moving objects.

The ultra-wide camera wasn’t so good as there weren’t as many details remaining. There was some noise in the images and some distortion, but at least the colours were balanced.

Selfies performed above my expectations. With quick face detection, you get nice and clean selfies. There’s even an option for a 0.8x wide-angle selfie, in case you need to accommodate more people in the frame.

A quick note on charging

HTech does not sell a charger in India, and you’ll have to buy Honor’s SuperCharge charger to get the 100W fast charging speeds that the smartphone supports. With that charger, the phone can fully charge the 5,200mAh battery in 55 minutes flat.

Given the size and the efficiency of the chipset, I was expecting over 8-9 hours of SoT (screen-on-time). Instead, I was getting a respectable 7-8 hours. But yes, the battery will easily last you a day and some, unless you’re pushing the phone to its limits.

The smartphone does support 66W wireless charging, which is something we all love to see.

Verdict

Is the smartphone worth it for its incredible camera (read portrait) chops? I’d say yes. But HTech’s pricing in India is baffling. The Honor 200 Pro has left me confused. The smartphone launched at Rs 57,999, but with an Rs 8,000 instant discount. If it was priced at Rs 49,999 flat, then it would have been a much easier recommendation to potential buyers.

But being closer to Rs 60,000 means that it is competing with the likes of the OnePlus 12 (an overall faster and more efficient smartphone), the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra and some other smartphones.

Nonetheless, those into photography, and aware of Honor and Huawei’s legacy in smartphone cameras, will be impressed by this smartphone.

For those into photography, this is a slam-dunk. The software will grow on you, and hopefully, the compromises won’t be a dealbreaker.

But, one just hopes that HTech had priced the smartphone a little aggressively. It’s a hard sell, at this price, to those who don’t prioritise the camera features in their smartphone purchases