Introduction
The Honor Magic 8 Lite isn’t quite the lightweight Magic 8 or Magic 8 Pro, despite what its model name might suggest. But it’s certainly shaping up to be a great mid-range offering with an attractive design, a promise of battery life, and a pinch of premium photography skills that flagship models offer.
The Magic 8 Lite is an IP68/IP69-rated smartphone that is waterproof up to 6 meters deep. And it is also drop resistant up to 2.5m. For comparison, the Magic 6 Lite was IP53-rated and the Magic 7 Lite was IP64-certified.
The new model brings a 6.79-inch AMOLED screen with 1200p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 1B colors. It supports HDR streaming, which is another upgrade over previous models.
The Magic 8 Lite runs on Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, not a huge improvement over Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 inside the Magic 6 Lite and Magic 7 Lite, but at least with a modern CPU core.
Unfortunately, the camera department hasn’t seen any updates. There’s a 108MP OIS primary camera with a 5MP ultra-wide secondary, plus a 16MP selfie imager on the other side.
Finally, the Magic 8 Lite is powered by a 7,500mAh battery capable of 66W fast wired charging. But even with that beefier battery, the phone didn’t condense. In fact, it’s even slimmer with a 7.8mm profile.
Honor Magic 8 Lite specs at a glance:
- body: 161.9×76.1×7.8mm, 193g; Glass front, plastic frame, plastic back; IP68/IP69K dust tight and water resistant (high pressure water jet; workable up to 6m), drop resistant up to 2.5m.
- Display: 6.79″ AMOLED, 1B color, 120Hz, 3840Hz PWM, HDR, 800 NITS (TYP), 1800 NITS (HBM), 6000 NITS (Peak), 1200x2640px resolution, 19.8:9 aspect ratio, 427PPI.
- Chip Set: Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 (4nm): Octa-core (1×2.3 GHz Cortex-A720s and 3×2.2 GHz Cortex-A720s and 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A520S); Adreno 810.
- Note: 256GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM.
- OS/Software: Android 15, Magic OS 9.
- Rear camera: wide (main): 108 MP, f/1.8, 24mm, PDAF, OIS; wide (main): 5 MP, f/2.2.
- Front Camera: 16 MP, f/2.5, 24mm (wide).
- Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps, gyro-eis ; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
- Battery: 7500mah; 66W wired, 7.5W reverse wired.
- contact: 5G; Wi-Fi 6; BT 5.2, Optics HD, Optics Adaptive; NFC.
- Miscellaneous:: Fingerprint reader (under display, optical); Stereo speakers.
The Honor Magic 8 Lite looks like a solid mid-range phone, although we expected some camera improvements over older models as there are similarly priced phones with more versatile cameras.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Magic 8 Lite is a reworked version of the Honor X9D with a slightly smaller battery. It’s also very similar to the Honor X70, especially visually.
Unboxing Honor Magic 8 Lite
The Honor Magic 8 Lite ships in a thin paper box, which includes the phone and a 3A-rated USB-A-TO-C cable.
The phone also comes with a thin protective folio already applied to its screen.
That’s it. The review unit we received has no case and no charger inside the box.
