Honor Magic 6 Lite Review
An attractive budget-focused smartphone with stellar battery life and a top-notch display.
Verdict
The Honor Magic 6 Lite is an attractive handset with a very reasonable price. The battery is excellent and the display is lovely, but it’s not the quickest in its class, and unimpressive video performance lets the side down a little. Still, this phone delivers enough to be well worth the price.
Pros
- Loverly premium design
- Brilliant display with 1920Hz PWM dimming
- Long battery life
Cons
- Slower charging than the Magic 5 Lite
- Video stabilisation is awful
- Ships with Android 13, rather than 14
Key Features
- Genuine two-day battery lifeHonor claims that you can achieve over two days of usage on a single charge, and in my testing, this proved to be true. If you frequently forget to charge your phone, the Magic 6 Lite could be a great solution.
- 108MP main cameraThe Magic 6 Lite has a solid main camera with a whopping 108MP resolution. It’s a very capable sensor, especially in the daylight, but the auxiliary lenses leave something to be desired.
- Impressive displayThe display on this phone stands out as one of the brightest in its class, while also boasting a fluid 120Hz refresh rate and 1920Hz PWM dimming to reduce eye fatigue.
Introduction
Honor’s first release of 2024 comes in the form of the Magic 6 Lite, the most affordable handset in its sixth generation Magic-series. It retails for just £350 in the UK, but like all Honor phones, it’s unlikely to make its way to the States.
The brand’s pricier and more capable phones will be on the way soon enough, but for now, this attractive and budget-friendly device does plenty to whet our appetites.
Just like its predecessor, the Honor Magic 6 Lite doesn’t look or feel like a budget device, and you could easily mistake it for a flagship offering at a glance. The main giveaway is how light it is, mainly due to the use of a polycarbonate frame, but even that could be viewed as a positive both in terms of its portability and durability.
Compared to the Magic 5 Lite, the newer model features a similar design but has seen plenty of upgrades on the inside. It now packs a faster processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1, and a new 108MP main camera. It also features a boost in the RAM and storage department, now coming with 8GB memory and 256GB storage as standard, at least in Europe.
At this price, though, there’s plenty of competition. The formidable Pixel 7a can currently be had for only a little extra, while the Galaxy A34 and Poco X5 Pro offer compelling alternatives at the same price. I was intrigued to see how the Honor Magic 6 Lite would stack up, so I’ve been living with it for the past couple of weeks; here’s what I’ve learned.
Design
- Curved sides on the front and rear
- IP53 dust and water resistance
- Large circular camera halo
The first thing that struck me about the Magic 6 Lite is how fancy it looks, considering its budget-friendly asking price. I was sent the Midnight Black colourway, which has an almost holographic shimmer to the frosted glass rear panel and is accented with gold trim around its halo-shaped camera array.
The device has a luxurious look about it, and it feels just as good. The rear panel is velvety to the touch, and the curved sides make the phone feel exceptionally slim in the hand.
Combine this slim design with a lightweight housing, weighing just 185g, and almost no camera bump whatsoever, and you have a device that you’ll barely notice in your pocket. It’s quite refreshing when you’re used to lugging about a chunky flagship smartphone.
The Midnight Black model is already quite eye-catching, but if you prefer something a little more colourful, the phone can also be had in Emerald Green, Titanium Silver and Sunrise Orange. The latter of which comes with a vegan leather back for a different, but similarly luxurious, look and feel.
The handset is a little slippery without a case, and there’s not one included in the box, but there’s a grippy knurled edge around the camera array that somewhat resembles a watch bezel. I found that placing my forefinger on this edge helped to keep it secure in my hand. That’s probably not an intentional feature of the design, but it works nonetheless.
The only thing that really indicates that is a cheaper device is the plastic frame. It has a polished finish and looks like metal, but it’s not cool to the touch. On the plus side, though, this should aid in durability. Honor says this phone is effectively immune to 1.5-metre drops from all angles and it has a 5-star drop resistance rating from SGS to back it up.
The Magic 6 Lite also carries an IP53 rating for dust and water resistance, which is great to see, as this was missing on the Magic 5 Lite. That doesn’t mean that the phone is fully waterproof, but it’s enough to know that the odd spill or rain shower shouldn’t cause any issues.
Screen
- 6.78-inch curved edge AMOLED display
- 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, FHD+ resolution
- 1920Hz PWM dimming, 1200 nits peak brightness
The Magic 6 Lite has an excellent display; it’s one of the brightest in this price range, and it always looks buttery smooth thanks to an adaptive refresh rate that can automatically switch between 60 and 120Hz.
There’s a fairly pronounced curve on the left and right sides of the display, and how you feel about that will depend on your personal tastes. I tend to prefer a flat display, but it’s hard to deny how comfortable this phone feels in the hand. Gesture navigation feels much more natural with these curved edges, too.
One of the more unique features of this display is that it offers 1920Hz PWM dimming, something that’s usually reserved for high-end mobile displays. In essence, it reduces flicker from the display, particularly at low brightness levels, with the goal of preventing eye fatigue. It’s not something I’ve ever had too much issue with, but if you’re susceptible to flicker, this could be a bit of a game changer.
The Magic 6 Lite offers plenty of customisation options, so it’s easy to tweak the colour rendition to your preference. You get two preset options, Normal and Vivid, and you can choose between cool and warm colour temperatures for each. In addition, there’s a colour wheel that allows you to shift the mid-tones even further.
This model has an in-display fingerprint reader that was fairly quick and reliable throughout my testing. I did find its positioning a little uncomfortable, though. It’s positioned much lower than I’m used to, and depending on my grip, it wasn’t always the most natural position to manoeuvre my thumb into.
On the plus side, it also offers face unlocking, so this fingerprint reader isn’t always necessary.
Cameras
- 108MP main camera
- 5MP ultrawide and 2MP macro
- 16MP punch-hole selfie camera
When it comes to photography, the Magic 6 Lite is home to two solid cameras: the 108MP main camera and the 16MP selfie camera. The other two lenses are far too low resolution to be of much use and are prone to producing washed-out colours with muddy details.
Still, if you stick to the two higher-resolution sensors, the Magic 6 Lite is capable of capturing some good results, particularly in daylight. Night mode holds its own, too, but the lack of optical image stabilisation means you’ll need a steady hand to get the most from it.
Images from the main camera look sharp with a realistic colour rendition, and there’s a good amount of dynamic range, too. The processing is a little too high contrast for my tastes, but this is something that can be easily remedied in your preferred image editing app.
Despite the massive megapixel count, most of the time you’ll be shooting 12MP snaps with nine-to-one pixel binning. There’s nothing unusual about that; the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra works in the same way. If you want to shoot a 108MP image, you’ll have to dive into the menu and find the high-res mode.
Doing so results in much larger file sizes, and a touch more detail, but it’s unlikely to be enough of a quality uplift for most people to choose to use it. This high-res sensor is more useful for allowing 3x zoom photos with the main sensor. It’s not a fully lossless zoom, but it looks far better than cropping into a 12MP photo and comes in handy quite often.
There’s nothing particularly special about the 16MP selfie camera, but the resulting images look good. Again, it’s strongest in the daylight, and I found that low-light images were quite prone to blur. Portrait mode cutouts are decent, too, and it was only a few wisps of hair that bested the algorithm.
It’s the video results that I found most disappointing with this camera system. I’ve already mentioned the lack of OIS, but the electronic image stabilisation is among the least effective that I’ve seen on a recent smartphone. It’s best at 1080p@30fps and below, but even then, it’s not impressive. Meanwhile, 4K video almost looks like it has no stabilisation at all.
The same is true of the selfie camera, which maxes out at 1080p@30fps and looks like a shaky mess if you try to walk while shooting video. If you use your phone to take lots of videos, I’d advise looking elsewhere.
Performance
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1
- 8GB RAM (+8GB virtual RAM), 256GB storage
- Single speaker
The Magic 6 Lite runs on Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chipset, so I’m not expecting benchmark-topping performance here, but it should be a nice boost compared to the Snapdragon 695 found in both the Magic 5 Lite and the Magic 4 Lite.
There’s only one configuration going on sale in Europe, and it comes with a healthy 256GB of storage and an ample 8GB of RAM. Until recently, these kinds of capacities were unheard of in this price bracket, and it gets even better when you realise you can virtually double the RAM capacity, at the expense of some storage, using Honor’s RAM Turbo feature.
Coming straight from testing two of the most powerful handsets available, the Vivo X100 Pro and Redmagic 9 Pro, I was nervous about how sluggish the Magic 6 Lite would feel.
Thankfully, that’s not the case at all, and in casual day-to-day use, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between this phone and a top-tier flagship. Apps always opened quickly, animations never stuttered and the phone could multitask with ease.
Obviously, there are limitations, mainly with the graphics processing. If you want to run a taxing game like Genshin Impact, you’ll need to lower the settings to medium to achieve a solid 30fps without slowdowns. But still, that’s not a bad result, and it’s definitely more capable than I was expecting. The phone barely heats up in the process, either.
I was surprised that the Magic 6 Lite has a built-in game overlay like you’d find on a dedicated gaming phone. It’s not the most in-depth menu, but it can allocate more resources to your games at the cost of some battery life, as well as apply different colour profiles and activate mistouch prevention.
There’s a single speaker at the bottom of this phone, next to the USB-C port. It has a good amount of detail and there’s some weight to the sound, but it’s not especially loud and it begins to distort at max volume. Being a single speaker, you don’t get any stereo separation, so I’d recommend using headphones or a Bluetooth speaker if you want the best audio experience.
Software
- MagicOS 7.2 based on Android 13
- Some bloatware preinstalled
- 2 generational updates and 3 security patches promised
The Honor Magic 6 Lite ships with MagicOS 7.2, based on Android 13. Right out of the gate, it’s a little disappointing to see that we’re not on the latest Android version here, when most competitors have already made the jump to Android 14.
Honor promises two generational updates along with three years of security patches. Not the worst, but when you consider that one of those generational updates will be Android 14, it begins to sour the deal.
MagicOS is a fairly heavy skin. If you’ve used a recent Honor phone, you won’t be in for many surprises, but if you’re new to it, it might take some getting used to.
There’s some Apple influence here, and plenty of similarities with Xiaomi’s MIUI, too. The notification shade and quick settings menu are separate and can be accessed by swiping from either the left or right side of the display. This can be jarring if you’re coming from most other Android devices, but I found that I got used to it within a couple of days.
The app drawer is also disabled by default, so all of your apps will appear on the home screen, like an iPhone. Don’t worry, though; a few taps in the settings menu can change it back to a more familiar Android experience. On the whole, MagicOS is very customisable, and there’s a good chance you can tweak and adjust anything that doesn’t look or react the way that you’d prefer.
You do get some preinstalled bloatware, as you do with most phones at this price point, but it’s far from the worst I’ve encountered. On first boot, you’ll see a recommended apps folder and a few preinstalled apps like Netflix, Booking.com and TikTok. Thankfully, they’re all easy to remove, and you can clean everything up in just a few minutes.
What impressed me the most with this software was how smoothly it ran. I’m not sure if there’s some sleight of hand going on with the animations, but whatever Honor has done to make this midrange chip feel so snappy and responsive is definitely working.
Battery life
- 5300 mAh battery
- Up to 35W fast charging
- No wall adapter included
The Magic 6 Lite houses a large 5300mAh battery, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, this results in some excellent battery life. Honor says it can provide over two days of use on a charge, and in my normal usage, this is a claim that holds true.
In the couple of weeks that I have been testing the handset, I’ve very rarely gone to bed with less than 50% left in the tank, even on days with heavy screen-on time due to navigating with Google Maps.
What would have been nice to see, though, is faster charging support. The Magic 6 Lite charges slower than its predecessor, maxing out at just 35W, and there’s no wall adapter included in the box, only a USB-A to USB-C cable.
By my count, it takes about 95 minutes to charge from completely flat, whereas a 50% charge will take just over 40 minutes. It’s not awful, by any means, but it’s definitely lagging behind the speedy charging offered by much of the competition.
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Should you buy it?
You want an affordable phone that looks good with a battery that lasts
I think the Honor Magic 6 Lite is one of the best-looking phones in its price bracket, and its mammoth battery life makes it very convenient to live with.
You shoot a lot of videos on your phone
While the image fidelity isn’t bad, the video stabilisation is among the worst I’ve come across in recent times. Video shooters will get better results elsewhere.
Final Thoughts
The Honor Magic 6 Lite offers a lot for its asking price, and the fact that it looks the part sweetens the deal further. You get more RAM and storage than most brands offer at this price point, a lovely display with high-frequency PWM dimming, a mammoth battery and a solid primary camera.
It’s not perfect, though. The poor video performance and lacklustre auxiliary cameras are disappointing, and the same goes for the outdated operating system and slow charging speeds. Middle-of-the-road graphical performance will be a turn-off for keen gamers, too.
If the camera performance is a high priority, you’ll have a better time with the Google Pixel 7a, which can be had for about £30 more at the time of writing. However, you won’t get quite such an impressive display, and you’ll be halving the storage. If display quality and battery life are high priorities, the Honor Magic 6 Lite is hard to beat at this price.
How we test
We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry-standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product.
Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy.
Used as a main phone for two weeks
Thorough camera testing in a variety of conditions
Tested and benchmarked using respected industry tests and real-world data
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FAQs
The Magic 6 Lite is IP53-certified, which means it is protected from limited dust ingress and water spray less than 60 degrees from vertical.
Yes, the Magic 6 Lite has space for two Nano SIM cards in its removable SIM tray.
Yes, the Magic 6 Lite has 5G support, it also works with 4G, 3G and GSM.
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Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
