- IP69 water and dust resistance
- Flagship performance
- Outstanding battery
- Bling
- Expensive (though less than some other foldables)
- Disappointing selfie cameras
- Over-processed photos
Most foldable phones don't offer much in return for the huge price tag. In fact, they're often worse than standard phones in many ways. Common sacrifices include terrible protection from dust and water, middling cameras, mixed battery life, poor processing hardware, and a certain degree of chonk.
The Honor Magic V6 has done a lot to catch up to where "slab" smartphones have been for years, albeit with the foldable price tag we've all come to expect. But at least it has the decency to look expensive, too.
The metal trim and slim profile (9mm folded, 4.1mm unfolded) feels great in the hand. The large camera bump throws off the balance a bit, but it's also situated where it can neatly rest against a finger when held one-handed. Overall, it's comfortable to hold and use when closed or open.
The Magic V6 comes in four colour options: Black, White, Gold, and Red. Aside from the White version being 5g lighter and 0.25mm slimmer when folded, those first two names are sufficiently descriptive. The second two are not.
The Gold version has a sort of rough texture on the back. It’s not entirely gauche, but it’s a far cry from the smooth, monotone finish we get from most manufacturers and it's definitely eye-catching. Our “Red” version is the one Honor has been using in most of its marketing. And for good reason.
All the external metal is gold (the colour, not the element) and the rear plate has a design that mimics animal fur in appearance. The rear case also feels like a cross between soft-touch rubber and expensive cardstock – a pleasant combination, as it turns out.
I fully expected to hate pulling this red bauble out in public, but to my surprise I didn’t. A quiet, long-forgotten part of me wanted people to notice. And I honestly couldn’t tell you the last time consumer tech gave me that feeling.
Was it the genuine leather rear plate of the LG G4 from 2015 or the (then) tiny bezels and sleek lines of the LG G3 a year earlier? Was it the novel curvature of the Samsung Galaxy Round in 2013? Maybe it was the bold colouring and style of the first Nokia Lumia phones way back in 2012, which also boasted the (then) exciting potential of the doomed Windows Phone operating system. Suffice to say, it’s been a while.
Let's be honest, we're all in the same boat because no one else really cares what handset you have anymore. But if any brand is going to try and reinvigorate the concept of consumer tech as a status symbol, foldable phones and their prohibitive price tags are a good target.
Anyway, enough about looks – let’s cover the phone stuff.
The Magic V6 thankfully doesn’t suffer from the same abysmal update life of the Honor 600 Pro. Where its slab-phone sibling has just two years of operating system (OS) updates and three years of security updates in Australia, the Magic V6 will get four years of OS updates and five years of security.
That's better, true. But once again Honor is giving Aussies the short end of the stick. In Europe, the Magic V6 will get the same seven years of OS and security updates as Aussies get for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. Yet again, we're getting a years-shorter lifespan for an Honor phone than other countries.
This is the only foldable phone with an IP69 rating for water and dust resistance. The one other option that comes close is the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold and its IP68 rating. This makes the Magic V6 uniquely durable among its peers, which is a big deal when you consider the price tag of foldable phones and the cost of repairing them.
Many other foldables are so poorly sealed that even the lint in your pocket can make its way inside and cause problems, not to mention water. So an IP69 rating is a big deal.
Battery life is outstanding. With foldables, mileage will vary based on usage more than with standard phones – two screens use a lot more battery than one, after all. But with my mostly-one-screen habits, I was pushing about 15 hours. That’s almost three days of comfortable usage.
To put the 6,660 mAh battery to the test, I hotspotted a separate phone to it and spent a solid day gaming (unfolded) whenever I had a spare moment. In lieu of podcasts and music, I streamed video, even if I wasn’t watching the screen. The Magic V6 still had more than 50% charge by bedtime.
As for those displays, they’re just lovely. And, specs-wise, almost identical.
Now, this isn’t the Oppo Find N6. There’s a visible crease, but it’s not usually noticeable while you’re using the screen. However, the Magic V6 also doesn’t unfold perfectly flat. There’s a subtle V-shape that the more obsessive user might care about, but even after I spotted it I forgot it was there almost immediately.
The external display has a 6.5-inch panel with 1,080 x 2,420 resolution, which is about 406 pixels per inch (ppi). The foldable screen is just shy of 8 inches with a 2172 x 2352 resolution, which is about 402ppi. No matter which display you pick, colours are vivid, blacks are inky, whites are pure, and movement is smooth.
Honor claims the external display has a peak brightness of 6,000 nits, which is frankly bananas if true. The internal display has an only slightly less crazy 5,000 nits. (For comparison, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has a peak brightness of 2,000 nits.) Combined with an anti-glare coating, both displays are easy to use, even in direct sunlight on a bright day.
The rear cameras are both a strength and a weakness, depending on how you look at them. When compared to other foldables, they’re great. Compared to standard flagship cameras, they’re fine, but not on the same level.
The rear camera system includes a 50MP ultra-wide, 50MP wide, and 64MP telephoto lens. The hardware here is good, but is let down by tasteless over-processing.
Photos from the two 50MP lenses come out clear and fairly crisp, but even so remain at least one or two steps behind the single-screen competition. I’d rate any non-foldable member of the iPhone 17, Galaxy S26, and Pixel 10 families better in this regard, but the Magic V6 at least doesn't embarrass itself. The 64MP telephoto lens also takes some pretty solid zoomed shots, but don't get too excited about the 100x zoom option...
Sure, it's impressive that you can see the bike. But what actual use is an image this blurry?
Once you've taken the pic, things take a turn for the worse. Honor’s very much on the AI bandwagon and it’s evident in how the Magic V6 processes your pics. Far too evident.
There’s a recognisable mixture of over-saturation, heavy-handed contrast, and exposure fakery that’s a hallmark of AI imagery. And it’s very much on show in most of the photos the Magic V6 churns out.
At first, it might feel impressive. But it doesn’t take long for the sameness to creep in and, as it does, push out any sense of reality or variety. For example, at first glance this is a moderately nice photo of a street at night:
It kind of looks like this street has been thoughtfully lit by some well-meaning civil engineer. And with sky glow like that, you'd be forgiven for thinking there's a stadium nearby. But it’s just a dimly lit road in suburbia.
This photo is a pleasant re-interpretation of what's really there, but I didn’t ask it to re-interpret anything. The sky should be totally dark. The lighting should be dimmer and show far more contrast between the lit and unlit areas. The lighting itself should be white (not yellowish), and every square millimeter of green has been cartoonishly over saturated. I could go on, but you get the drift.
This level and type of post-processing is applied to every picture the Magic V6 takes. It’s all cheerful, all well-lit, all colourful. All artificial. The hardware is there, but it's buried under a pile of AI homogeneity and early Instagram filters. Unfortunately, that’s not a criticism I can only level at Honor so, while I can gripe, it’s also fast becoming the norm.
Honor Magic V6 camera samples
Check out these camera samples taken on the Magic V6. Click or tap on any photo to see a larger version.
The selfie cameras are both 20MP wide-angle lenses, which seem to function identically. They take decent photos during the day, though over-corrections due to bright, direct sunlight can lead to over- or under-saturated results.
At night, it’s a very different story. Many budget and some mid-range phones create a bright, white border around the edges of the screen to light the subject and compensate for lacklustre hardware. This hack works ok, but it's no substitute for a quality camera. It's also unpleasant in a particularly dark environment and is borderline blinding on an unfolded display.
While this janky workaround is tolerable on a budget or mid-range handset like the Motorola Edge 70 Fusion, finding it on a $2,999 phone is unacceptable.
I acknowledge that sporting two front-facing cameras doubles the cost, but I thought we'd collectively agreed taking photos with a tablet is a cultural sin. The internal one only really needs to be good enough for run-of-the-mill video calls, which would free up some cash to make the external selfie cam worthy of the phone's price tag.
General performance is smooth. Even gaming is fluid, thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor and 16GB of RAM. The phone did heat up on occasion, but usually in single-screen mode. When unfolded, the larger surface area seemed enough to keep things cool.
It’s also easy to run multiple windowed apps and switch between them simultaneously. You can have three apps open in the main view, with additional ones relegated to little floating windows that expand as overlays.
But it's not all roses. Video playback can be a bit weird at times. The Magic V6 very specifically seems to have a problem with YouTube ads. They often freeze the video, requiring an app restart before you can continue. That, or the failure to load causes the video to black out, while the audio keeps going.
A different playback problem can happen when switching from fullscreen to half-screen mode on any video, either via app or browser. One of the benefits of foldable phones is using them partially unfolded, like a little laptop. But if you have a video actively playing when you switch to this mode, there's a good chance it will stop and refuse to start until you switch back to fully open or fully closed. Pausing the video before switching modes usually avoids this.
Honor Magic V6 – Final Thoughts
If you're definitely keen on grabbing a new foldable phone, the Honor Magic V6 is one of the best yet – as long as you don't take a lot of selfies at night. It’s not quite on par with the OPPO Find N6 in (the current GOAT) in most respects, but it’s also $300 cheaper, and the IP69 dust and water resistance alone makes it a strong contender. Plus it looks more exciting, if that's something you care about.
But only a tiny minority of buyers so far have jumped on the foldable bandwagon. This is in part because of the price, but it's also still a technology looking for a problem to solve – and, so far, failing to do so.
At the end of the day, the Magic V6 has addressed some of the major problems suffered by foldables. But there’s no new value proposition to convince the average buyer to shell out at least another $1,000 at a point in history where everything else is more expensive, too.
There’s that IP69 protection rating – amazing for a foldable, but completely standard for slab phones. There's powerful hardware – allowing it to compete with flagship non-foldables that are a thousand dollars cheaper. It has great battery and a slim profile – but plenty of slab phones have the same new battery technology and are also much thinner. The rear cameras are pretty good compared to previous foldables – but they're not flagship quality, photos are way over-processed, and the selfie cameras would still be a bad deal on a phone a third the price.
So, for foldable fans, the Honor Magic V6 is one of the best options out there.
For everyone else, phones like this and the OPPO Find N6 make fewer sacrifices to accommodate their bendy displays. But, in most respects, they're still not on par with premium single-screen phones in almost every category.
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Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
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