Honor has a great 2025! With thoughtful upgrades and great deals throughout the year, it’s hard to find any losers in the manufacturer’s lineup.
Let’s see how it happened.
Winner: Honor Pad X9a and MagicPad 3
Honor made some solid tablets in 2025, but the affordable Pad X9A and the flagship MagicPad 3 were able to dominate markets like Malaysia, where Honor was the number one tablet maker!
Honor made both tablets competitive by starting with the specs page and then boosted their sales with regular promos.
Winner: Honor 400 and 400 Pro
The Honor 400 and 400 Pro were fan favorites right from the start. Both have durable yet elegant designs (the Pro is IP69), a large 200MP 1/1.4-inch main camera, and large batteries with fast charging.
honor 400 5g
| 256GB 8GB RAM | $505.00 |
€334.67 |
| 512GB 8GB RAM | $336.40 |
$499.00 |
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Now, as has been the case this year, there was some disparity between battery sizes. In the case of the Honor 400 and 400 Pro, the Chinese models got a massive 7,200mAh cell. The rest of the world (except Europe) got the smaller 6,000mAh pack. However, European markets got the short end of the stick with only 5,300mAh out of the original 7,200mAh. So in this situation Europe is the loser, but the Honor 400 series was a definite win for Honor.
honor 400 pro 5g
| 512GB 12GB RAM | $503.50 |
$799.00 |
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Winner: Honor 500 and 500 Pro
The Honor 500 series launched in China aims to build on the success of its predecessor. The Honor 500 and Honor 500 Pro retain this formula – 200MP main camera, powerful Snapdragon chipset and even bigger battery! This pair now packs an 8,000mAh unit with 80W charging!
And, they look slim if somewhat reminiscent of the iPhone Air. We’ll just have to wait and see if these phones make it on the global stage with all their milliamps.
Winner: Honor Magic V5
Honor’s book-style foldable Magic V series has been a hit since day one, but it truly hit its stride with last year’s Magic V3. It had great cameras, a beautiful profile, and was the company’s first truly rugged foldable.
This year’s Magic V5 is an evolution of that perfect foldable. It looks great, weighs just 222 grams, and is just under 9 millimeters when folded, making it look normal while looking like a regular bar phone.
However, Honor managed to fit a 5,820mAh battery inside along with a better all-around camera system, which is everything Magic V3 users wanted. Well, that faster charging is also provided by Honor. The promised seven years of software support was also a nice touch.
| 512GB 16GB RAM | $151.16 |
$1,649.00 |
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Loser: Honor Magic V Flip 2
Honor’s second clamshell foldable, the Magic V Flip 2, had everything – a beautiful design, excellent screen, a large 5,500mAh battery with fast charging, and great cameras with solid image quality.
But the phone remained China-exclusive and had an older chipset. This combined puts the Magic V Flip 2’s potential ahead of capable rivals like the readily available Galaxy Z Flip 7 and Motorola Razr 60 Ultra.
Winner: Honor Magic8 Lite
The Honor Magic8 Lite is going to be a popular midrange phone in early 2026 for several reasons. It has improved on almost every aspect of its already great predecessor, the Magic7 Lite, with a bigger battery, newer SoC and omnidirectional durability thanks to the higher standard of IP68/IP69K. Winner.
Winner: Honor Magic8 Pro
The Honor Magic8 Pro arrived in Honor’s home floor China in October, but will make a global presence in early 2026. Nevertheless, it is among our winners for 2025.
We have the phone in the office and we’ve had a chance to play with it. It’s a solid flagship with impressive camera features, huge battery, and the latest chipset. But more importantly, it’s possibly the sleekest flagship cameraphone we’ve had in our office this year. It’s lighter and narrower than popular rivals, and despite packing the all-important 200MP telephoto camera, it has a smaller camera island.