The Honor 90 is the latest mid-range smartphone on the market, but how does it compare to Honor’s top-end Magic 5 Pro?
Although the Honor Magic 5 Pro costs over double the Honor 90, the mid-ranger manages to beat the flagship model in a few key areas – though there are still plenty of reasons to fork out for the top-end smartphone.
Keep reading if you’re stuck in the middle and unsure which is best for your needs.
The Honor 90 has better display dimming tech
You might assume that being a flagship, the Honor Magic 5 Pro has the better display of the two – but that’s not entirely true.
Sure, the Honor Magic 5 Pro boasts impressive specs, including a 6.81-inch OLED 120Hz panel with LTPO tech that allows it to drop to as little as 1Hz to save battery life that delivers an exceptional viewing experience, but it can’t quite compete with the Honor 90’s high-frequency PWM dimming.
It’s tech that first made an appearance on the Honor Magic 5 Pro, with 2160Hz PWM dimming available to help make your eyes feel more comfortable when scrolling in darker environments – like when you’re in bed – but that has been taken up a notch with the Honor 90.
You see, the 6.7-inch AMOLED 120Hz display of the Honor 90 can go up to a whopping 3840Hz, further improving how easy the display will be on your eyes. It’s unclear whether this is notable in real life just yet, but it’s certainly a plus for a smartphone display that’s already pretty decently specced for its £449 price tag.
The Honor Magic 5 Pro is more powerful
The Honor 90 boasts Qualcomm’s mid-range Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 Accelerated, essentially a souped-up version of the 2022 chipset to deliver even better performance. That’s coupled with either 8- or 12GB RAM and either 256- or 512GB of storage.
We’ve not benchmarked the chipset yet, so we can’t comment on performance specifics, but given that the regular 7 Gen 1 performed well in the likes of the Xiaomi 13 Lite, we’re expecting good things here too.
However, it won’t be able to compete with the flagship-level Honor Magic 5 Pro and its matching flagship chipset. More specifically, the Honor Magic 5 Pro sports Qualcomm’s top-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, delivering plenty of processing power alongside 12GB of RAM and a whopping 512GB of storage as standard.
Our reviewer found the Magic 5 Pro to be fast and responsive in use, with not even high-end gaming able to slow the phone down, making it a solid option for mobile gamers and smartphone power users – likely more than the Honor 90 would.
The Honor 90 is lighter and thinner
The Honor Magic 5 Pro is a gorgeous premium smartphone with quad-curved edges, a camera housing that curves into the rear panel and rounded corners, but that doesn’t mean it’s thin or light. In fact, at 8.8mm thick and 219g, it can get quite hefty in the hand.
That doesn’t detract from the overall experience much though, with our reviewer remarking that the Honor Magic 5 Pro feels exceptionally nice in hand compared to boxier flagships like the Galaxy S23 Ultra – likely down to that curvature.
If you really want a thin and light Honor-branded smartphone, the Honor 90 is the one to go for. It’s not only thinner than the flagship at 7.8mm thick, but it’s almost 40g lighter at 183g. It’s not just thin and light either; it actually looks quite premium for a mid-ranger, sporting curved edges and a stunning patterned finish that’s certainly eye-catching.
The Honor Magic 5 Pro has Falcon Capture
On paper, the Honor 90 sounds like a camera superstar, sporting a main 200MP lens, a 12MP 112-degree ultrawide, a 2MP depth sensor on the rear, and a 50MP selfie snapper on the front. We’ve not yet tested the camera in depth so we can’t comment on performance, but it should be noted that there’s much more to camera performance than megapixel count.
With that said, the camera offering of the Honor Magic 5 Pro isn’t quite as pixel-packed as its cheaper brethren, but there’s plenty of camera tech going on behind the scenes. The 50MP main, for example, sports a wide f/1.6 aperture for better light intake and faster capture, accompanied by matching 50MP 3.5x telephoto and 50MP 122-degree ultrawide lenses.
The wide aperture of the main lens is what enables Honor’s exclusive Falcon Capture mode. The name might be a bit nebulous, but it essentially allows for stunningly fast image capture – even with fast-moving objects. Our reviewer noted that, while not always on the money, it managed to capture crisp shots of his German Shepherd running full-pelt, and few smartphones can do that.
The Honor Magic 5 Pro also takes things to the next level with video capture, capping out at 4K@60fps compared to the 4K@30fps offering from the Honor 90.
The Honor 90 is much cheaper than the Magic 5 Pro
With all that said, the Honor 90 represents great value for money at just £449 with 256GB of storage, or £499 if you want to go for the higher 512GB storage capacity. That’s pretty impressive for a 512GB variant.
It’s cheaper than the Honor Magic 5 Pro, which starts at £949 with 512GB of storage, though for the spec on offer, that’s still pretty good value – especially when compared to the likes of the £1249 Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and £1099 Xiaomi 13 Pro.
Both are available to buy now, following the release of the Magic 5 Pro in April and the Honor 90 in early July.
