Digital Camera World Verdict
The best thing about the Honor Magic 8 Lite is how long the battery lasts. If you need a phone that you can use for days on end without a charger, you're sure to love this. The durability and excellent display are also highlights, but the cameras and processor aren't the most impressive.
Pros
- +
Incredible battery life
- +
Durable design
- +
Improved aesthetics
- +
Lovely screen
- +
Powerful enough for the basics
Cons
- -
Unimpressive cameras
- -
Not very good for gaming
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The Honor Magic 8 Lite is an affordable handset with a massive battery, a durable design, a big, bright OLED display, and a 108MP main camera. We've been impressed with the cameras on Honor's flagship devices, so there's plenty of potential to explore here.
On paper, it sounds like an incredible bargain, but what compromises were made to hit such a budget-friendly price? I've been using the Honor Magic 8 Lite as my main device for the past couple of weeks in an effort to find out.
Specifications
Price (Launch) | £399 |
Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 |
RAM + Storage | 8GB + 256GB / 512GB |
Screen | 6.79-inch OLED, 120Hz |
Main Camera | 108MP f/1.75 |
Ultrawide Camera | 5MP f2.2 |
Telephoto Camera | None |
Front Camera | 16MP f/2.45 |
Video | Up to 4K 30fps |
Battery & Charging | 7500mAh |
Operating System | MagicOS 9, based on Android 15 |
Size | 161.9 x 76.1 x 7.76 mm |
Weight | 189 g |
Price & Availability
The Honor Magic 8 Lite with 512GB of storage and 8GB of RAM (and microSD card expansion) launched for £399, although as ever with Honor, there are early bird discounts on the phone, alongside a series of bundled accessories. The phone is launching in the UK and most European regions, but it won't be available in the US.
Design
The last few Honor Magic Lite models have featured curved-edge designs, which served to make the phones feel extremely slim, but also made them look a little dated. With the Magic 8 Lite, however, Honor has adopted the boxy flat edges that we've seen on most of 2025's flagship handsets.
Personally, I much prefer the way the newer model looks and feels. It may not create the same illusion of slimness, but it looks a lot more premium. Plus, the flat display means better compatibility with screen protectors and no accidental edge-touches.
The circular camera halo in the centre of the rear panel remains largely the same, and I'm quite fond of it. It makes a change from the usual camera layout, and it makes the Magic 8 Lite immediately recognisable in a crowded market.
I'm especially fond of the Forest Green colourway that my sample came in. It has a velvety matte finish that's highly fingerprint resistant, and the colour shifts slightly when the light hits it. It's also available in Midnight Black and Reddish Brown, but since I haven't seen those in the flesh, I can't comment on how they compare.
The Magic 8 Lite has been awarded the highest IP-rating available, IP69K. This means it's effectively immune to dust and can withstand dunks in water. Apparently, it'll even survive a run through the dishwasher, as it can withstand blasts from jets of hot water. That's not something I fancied trying myself, though.
The phone has a plastic frame, and you can immediately feel the difference between this and a more expensive device. That said, it doesn't seem to have a negative impact on durability.
Honor says the phone can withstand drops from up to 2.5 metres, thanks to a 6-layer internal drop-resistant structure. In addition, the glass coating on the screen has a 31% deeper tempering depth, to help protect it from drops and scratches. If you're the adventurous type, this phone should be able to keep up.
The display punches well above its weight, and it's one of the nicer panels that you'll find in this price bracket.
It's a spacious 6.79-inch OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it peaks at 6000 nits brightness, outperforming many flagship devices. It also has slimmer and more symmetrical bezels on all sides, compared to its predecessors.
The pill-shaped cut-out is gone this time, too. You now get a smaller circular punch hole for the selfie camera, which means more of the screen real estate is actually functional. It also works well in the rain, as it supports Honor's AI Heavy Rain Touch feature, which is very handy at this time of year.
Camera Performance
The Honor Magic 8 Lite has the same camera hardware as the Magic 7 Lite, and the Magic 6 Lite before that. Unfortunately, that's not the best news for mobile shooters.
In terms of specifications, there's a 108MP main camera and a 5MP ultrawide on the back, and they're joined by a 16MP selfie snapper on the front.
As you might expect, the 108MP main camera is the best performer, and it's the lens that you should stick to in most situations. It performs well in the daylight, and it's decent at night, too, but there's only so much you can expect from the relatively small 1/1.67-inch sensor.
You might think, given that this is such a high-resolution sensor, that it'll be great for digital zooms. And while it might be marginally better than other phones, you can still see a pretty sharp drop off in quality at around 3x zoom, and it gets worse from there on - as heavy-handed AI processing tries to fill in the blanks.
The 5MP ultrawide, meanwhile, is as unimpressive as it sounds on paper. Images lack detail, there's no autofocus, and the tiny 1/5.0-inch sensor means low-light photos are either noisy or blurry, depending on the situation.
The 16MP selfie camera fares better, but it's nothing too special. It can take a decent selfie in good lighting, but it's not too great in the dark. Portrait mode effects are a little lacking on this camera, too. You can only toggle the blur on and off, there's no strength slider, and I noticed a few errors in the cutout from time to time.
On occasion, you can get really nice photos from the Honor Magic 8 Lite, and I appreciate the amount of editing tools available for tweaking your images. At the end of the day, though, it's not as reliable as some similarly priced alternatives, and it doesn't hold a candle to Honor's pricier flagship devices.
When it comes to video capture, the main lens works at up to 4K 30fps, while the other cameras max out at 1080p. Stabilisation isn't great, and the microphones aren't the best, either. If you fancy yourself the next YouTube star, you may need to look elsewhere.
Phone Performance
The real star of the show here is the battery. It has a 7500 mAh capacity, meaning it's one of the largest you'll find in any mainstream phone. It matches the size of the Oppo Find X9 Pro, but for a fraction of the cost - and with a less powerful and more efficient chip inside, it should last even longer.
With my typical use, which involves spending a lot of time in the office, the phone was only using about 25% of the battery per day. This meant I could go four full days on a charge, which is something I don't think I've done since phones had number pads on them.
Of course, battery life varies wildly depending on how you use your phone. If you're out and about using 5G, taking loads of photos and playing games, expect it to die much quicker. But still, even if you're glued to your phone all day, you should be able to get 2 days on a charge without trouble.
The super-efficient Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 chipset is a double-edged sword, though. The phone feels quick enough most of the time, and it's by no means difficult to live with, but you can expect to see animation stutters from time to time, and you'll sometimes be waiting slightly longer than you'd like for an app to load.
If you're into gaming, you might not have the best time with this phone. It was able to run Wuthering Waves, which is one of the most challenging Android titles around, but it was only really playable on the lowest preset, and the framerate dipped from time to time.
As for the other specs, you get an ample 8GB of RAM as standard, and it's paired with either 256GB or 512GB of storage. I'm happy to see that even budget-focused phones are ditching the paltry 128GB version - take notes, Google.
You also get speedy 66W charging support, which takes the phone from dead to 50% charged in about half an hour. A full charge takes just over an hour, with the right charger, but you don't get one included in the box.
The Magic 8 Lite runs the same software as the rest of the Honor lineup, Magic OS. However, it's still on Magic OS 9, while some of the brand's other phones have already been updated to Magic OS 10. That said, Honor promises six years of updates and security patches in Europe, so it will receive the update sooner or later.
Magic OS is one of the more divisive Android skins, but I quite like it. It takes some styling cues from iOS, and the layout is quite similar, too. Stock Android fans may be rubbed the wrong way, but the most important thing is that it runs smoothly, even on lower-end hardware like this.
There's loads of useful stuff baked in, like Magic Portal, which lets you drag text and images from one app to another, and Magic Pill, which is essentially Honor's take on Apple's Dynamic Island. The image editing tools are extremely comprehensive, too, with plenty of AI tricks to play about with.
Final Verdict
Whether the Honor Magic 8 Lite is worth buying all depends on what you expect from a phone. Its key strengths are its insanely long battery life, its durable design and its lovely OLED screen.
If you're looking for an affordable phone that you'll rarely need to charge and don't need to be careful with, but you don't fancy carrying a specialist rugged phone, then you'll fall in love with this one. It's an excellent alternative.
It's the other aspects of this device that let it down. The cameras aren't very impressive, and the processor won't keep up with demanding tasks like 3D gaming and video editing, either.
It's not a great choice if you want to take incredible photos with your phone, but if you're into shooting landscapes and wildlife, for instance, this could be a great companion device for multiple days in the wilderness (without needing a charger).
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