HONOR 50
RM1,999
Pros | Cons |
+ Premium Looking | - Phone unable to lay due to the dual-ring design |
+ Lightweight | - Camera performance not up to expectations but sufficient |
+ Fast-charging | - Not very affordable |
Lo and behold, I’m reviewing my first ever smartphone. In today’s era, vloggers are on the rise and it makes this phone a top choice for people who are looking for a lighter alternative. Which is why, today I'll be playing with - the Honor 50.
Unboxing & First Impression
Upon receiving the box, I realized that it’s a rather plain white box with holographic wordings of the logo on the top and of the sides of the box as well as the 5G symbol on top.
Within the box, you will get the phone itself, a 66W charger and the corresponding USB Type-A to Type-C cable, a transparent phone case along with a SIM card ejector and USB Type-C earpiece. I am actually a tad-bit disappointed that it came with a 2-pin charger instead of a 3-pin one.
The HONOR 50 unit I received came in Midnight Black, though there are other colours such as Frost Crystal (personal favourite), Emerald Green and Honor Code if black is not your type. At first glance, the body of the phone itself is glossy and has a dual-ring camera design. If you ask me, I genuinely don’t enjoy the dual-ring camera setup as it adds a bump to the phone, not allowing it to lay still. On the contrary, I do enjoy the sleek design of it and it certainly feels very premium. It is, however, a fingerprint magnet, but that’s just a small price we have to pay as it cleans off pretty easily too.
On the right side of the phone, it has the volume rocker and lock button. Whereas, on the bottom it has a mono-speaker, SIM-card tray and a USB-C charging port.
I am, however, particularly impressed with its weight. Weighing only 175 grams, it is probably one of the lightest phones I've used up to date.
Display
The HONOR 50 has a 6.57 inch OLED display, full HD and a 2340 x 1080 pixel resolution. It also has a 75 degree super curve display and it gives you the option to customise the cutout in settings.
This device supports up to a 120 Hz refresh rate but if you want to save up battery, you may opt for a 60Hz refresh rate under Standard mode.
This device also features eBook-mode, which I enjoy as I LOVE reading eBooks on my mobile phone before bed, it adjusts the brightness and colour of the screen to lessen the stress on our eyes.
Camera
As for the camera, I am quite disappointed with the performance of it. I tried to take a few shots from the main, macro and wide camera, as well as used the Bokeh effect. The 108 MP main camera, though not picture perfect, should suffice for social media postings and casual snapshots.
The 8MP ultra-wide camera is probably what ruined it for me, the picture lacked sharpness, clarity and the colour changed completely.
As mentioned, I also tried the 2MP Bokeh camera on the 32MP front camera. I think I look fairly decent with it giving me a tad-bit of touch up removing my imperfections making me look flawless, it did blur my background pretty well and it overall would look good enough for day to day social media updates.
As mentioned above, this is a phone made for vloggers and it wouldn’t be a review if I didn’t test out the features. In which, I must say, I am fairly impressed with the 6 multi video modes it has, namely Dual-View Recording, Picture-In-Picture Recording, Dual-View recording, Fast and Slow Motion Recording, Front to rear recording, and Single to Dual-View Recording.
The multi-video mode allows you to have different types of videos, like shooting from both front and rear camera at the same time or switching from front to rear camera with just a touch of a button while recording. I personally enjoyed switching between modes.
Aside from the modes mentioned above, it also has a Story X mode that completely removes the need for additional applications to edit transitions and videos - there are 9 templates to choose from with pre-timed scenes and background music, all you need to do is record and choose your choice of multi-video mode. As someone who posts on TikTok a lot, editing is a hassle, which makes this mode my favorite.
Performance
In terms of performance, the HONOR 50 did leave a pretty good mark on me, with it running on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G 5G chip paired with 8 GB RAM and 256GB of storage. Despite the fact that the RAM is not expandable and the chip is not the latest version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon series, it did a pretty good job handling my gaming and social media usage.
As far as I’ve used it, I did not experience any lag nor heating issues which is a common problem for smartphones especially lighter-weight ones.
This phone sports a 4300 mAh battery and it can last me the day. I played Call Of Duty: Mobile for around 2 hours and listened to Taylor’s version of Red, with occasional social media usage with still enough juice for the next day, though I suggest charging before leaving in case you might forget to bring a power bank. Speaking of charge, it took me 26 minutes to get 60% of battery which I find super fast and convenient
Audio wise, the mono-speaker it comes with is pretty good enough for everyday use though I doubt it would satisfy the audiophiles out there. Another thing worth mentioning is that since it's a mono-speaker, the audio output wouldn’t be balanced while gaming.
Buy or no buy?
If you want to start vlogging and want a seamless way to do it, then this device should be good for you, that is if you have a spare RM1,999 to spend. It obviously lacks a lot of things that could be very vlogger friendly, it also removes the need for an editing app or an editor as you can do it yourself.
You can also connect the HONOR phone to any of your HONOR MagicBook laptop for multi-screen collaboration, which I unfortunately didn’t get to try as I didn’t have any MagicBook on hand.
All in all, if you are a Gen-Z who loves social media and occasional gaming, this could be a good phone for you, but if you are someone who is a more hardcore gamer there are other options in the market. At the end of the day, it’s up for you to decide if it’s worth the money.
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