Honor Magic V6 review: brilliant design, terrible timing, and why you should wait — here is a clear breakdown of what happened and why it matters right now.
The details below put the news in context: the key points first, the background after.
This year is shaping up to be great for big-screen foldable phones, making Honor’s job a particularly tough one with the Honor Magic V6.
It arrived much earlier this year, but has taken until July to get a UK price and release. It comes after other brands successfully released foldables in 2026, and ahead of several more highly anticipated models.
I’ve been using the Honor Magic V6 for several weeks in total to find out if it’s worth your time and money.
The Honor Magic V6 has taken its time to reach UK stores, and while the phone has several strengths, its tardiness and inability to standout will hurt it.
We first talked about the Honor Magic V6 at MWC 2026, and since then it has received a partial global launch, and as of July 2, it’s available in the UK for £2,000 (about $2,650) through Honor’s own online store. Tesco, and the EE network. Honor does not officially sell its smartphones in the US.
It comes in the red color in our photos, along with a white, black, and gold color scheme.
Honor has a promotion to reduce the price down to £1,500 (about $1,986) with some included freebies, but this will only run until the end of July 2026.
It faces some serious competition. The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold is $1,800, the Motorola Razr Fold has recently arrived for $1,900, and the fantastic Oppo Find N6 can be imported for around the same price.
Over the next few months, the real heavy hitters arrive. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 is expected before the end of summer, followed by the highly likely announcement of Apple’s first foldable iPhone.
For a big-screen foldable to make sense, it has to be slim, light, and manageable. Otherwise, a normal phone with a big screen will always be the more sensible choice, and also satisfy most people too.
The Honor Magic V6 manages to get the dimensions and weight, at 9mm and 224 grams, just right. It’s not a featherweight, but I haven’t felt like I’m wrestling with it, or that it’s deliberately forcing me to do a workout when I use it.
Better than this is the careful, uniform curve of each corner, and the equally well-judged shape of the chassis. It makes the Magic V6 comfortable to hold when closed, which is how I find myself using the phone most of the time.
The tall, slim cover screen isn’t restrictive, but does affect how some apps appear on it. I can swipe type at normal speed and accuracy doesn’t suffer. However, the relative thickness of the phone and the slightly off-balance weight distribution means it can cause fatigue after only a short time.
Special mention should go to the red, flocked rear panel. Not only is it really attractive, but it’s also tactile and unique looking. I’m not one for gold phones, but it works well with the red rear panel here.
Open the Magic V6 up and the 6.52-inch screen is surrounded by a noticeable bezel, and you can spot and feel the central crease. It shows just how ahead of the competition Oppo is with the Find N6.
The Honor Magic V6 looks good, the design is modern, it is all well-made, and the IP68 and IP69 dust and water resistance ratings are very welcome on a foldable.
However, it does not push the foldable game forward in any way, unlike the Oppo Find N6, and that’s before what we get from Samsung and Apple.
It may end up hurting the Honor Magic V6, and shrewd buyers will want to see what the competition brings out before putting down their cash.
There are three cameras on the back of the Honor Magic V6, and it’s a decent setup for a foldable phone. The 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) is joined by a 50MP wide-angle, and also a 64MP telephoto with OIS, which takes 3x optical zoom shots.
Unlike some previous Honor phones, there’s no shutter lag, and the camera app performs just as you would want. Face unlock is really fast too, so you can jump into the camera app quickly and not miss crucial moments.
Use the main camera and photos are bright, punchy, and often over-saturated. There’s not much subtlety here, just amped-up reds, blues, and greens. It’s good to see consistency in tone when taking wide-angle photos, even if they’re still far from natural.
The telephoto camera is great, with plenty of detail and color, and even the 6x shortcut in the app produces good photos. It makes the Honor Magic V6’s camera versatile and fun, with performance ideal for sharing on social media.
There are a few AI editing features worth trying. There’s the option to change the style of your photo so it looks like a sketch or a watercolor, and one where it changes the atmosphere to a season or time of the day.
More interesting is the “outpainting” feature, which fills in an image you crop. for example, the image above shows the full 4:3 aspect ratio photo adjusted to be a 16:9 ratio image, where the AI has filled in the sides. As long as you don’t look too closely, it’s a decent job.
Despite the Honor Magic V6 being a little longer in the tooth than some other foldables, it still has the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Gen 5 processor inside, and comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage.
The 6.52-inch, 2420 x 1080 pixel OLED cover screen is joined by a 7.95-inch OLED with a 2352 x 2172 pixel resolution when opened, and both have a 120Hz refresh rate. The screens also support Honor’s Magic Pen stylus.
Playing graphically intensive games does expose the Magic V6 can get hot under pressure. Even Asphalt 9 makes the chassis hot after 30 minutes.
The Magic V6 did overheat on at least one occasion running the 3DMark benchmark stress test. When it did complete the test, the phone reached a very toasty 50 degrees centigrade.
Both OLED screens are bright and colorful, and watching video, browsing photo-centric apps like Autotrader, or editing images on the open screen is a genuinely enjoyable experience.
Blending this mix of manageable closed screen size and tablet-like open viewing is what makes big-screen foldables so much fun. The Magic V6 embodies this, but unfortunately for Honor, so does every other current big foldable.
Android 16 with MagicOS 10 is installed. Recently, the company confirmed the Magic V6 (and other Magic devices) will receive seven years of Android and security updates, putting it alongside the Pixel and Samsung devices.
One of the main reasons to choose a big-screen foldable is to use multi-tasking on the open screen. The Honor Magic V6’s system is powerful, but oddly restrictive at times and quite often confusing too.
for example, there’s a really handy button in the toolbar which lets you quickly set up a split-screen view. Except when you select Chrome, you’re told it’s not supported in split screen mode. This is very annoying. There’s a mini view, where an app is minimized into a tiny window in the top corner. It’s so small, it’s of no use, and minimizing an app normally into the background is just as helpful.
When split screen works, it’s great, and there’s a three-app view (just like OnePlus’s Open Canvas) which can be helpful too. On the other hand, I often accidentally trigger the floating window display, and closing it is awkwardly long-winded.
Elsewhere, Magic OS doesn’t overload you with pre-installed apps, you can choose to use an app drawer, and even the split notifications and Quick Settings system is tolerable.
Unfortunately, a problem I encountered on the Honor 600 returns, where it’s ridiculously difficult to just answer a call. The software seems to get confused if the phone unlocks. The call disappears into Magic OS’s silly Dynamic Island rip-off called the Magic Capsule, or it forces you to tap the Phone app, all just to answer a call.
Honor’s Magic OS 10 has improved over the years, and while it hasn’t been frustrating to use (outside the call problem), it’s not quite as simple or enjoyable to use as the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s software, or as seamless when multitasking as Color OS on the Oppo Find N6.
The Magic V6 has a 6,660mAh silicon-carbon battery inside in the UK, which is a lower capacity than some versions sold in China and other regions. It’s recharged at up to 80W wired and 66W wirelessly.
Depending on the charger you use, the battery will return to 100% in about an hour if you use an official Honor SuperCharge charging block.
If you don’t, speeds are very much charger-dependent, as I found various chargers refused to maintain a fast charging speed. It can lead to very slow 5W charging in some circumstances. It’s frustrating to find the chargers you already own don’t charge the phone at a sensible speed.
Battery life is sufficient for two days use on a single charge, based on around three to four hours screen time. It’s not the most efficient phone I’ve used, with video, camera, and gaming all hungrily eating the battery.
For reference, the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme stress test, which emulates high-end gaming for 20 minutes, takes 11%, and a 30-minute 1080p video streamed over Wi-Fi from YouTube takes 4%.
I’ve been very happy using the Honor Magic V6 for the last few weeks, and right now, should be telling you it’s a brilliant buy.
While I do think it’s a good buy — there are no glaring fundamental issues with it — it comes with further advice to not rush into it at all. The Honor Magic V6 doesn’t separate itself from other big-screen folding phones, especially if you miss out on the special offer price.
It’s a problem of Honor’s own making. If the Magic V6 came to the UK in March when we first saw it, it wouldn’t be butting up against whatever Samsung’s doing with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Apple’s folding iPhone, and the draw of the Oppo Find N6.
Because the performance, battery life, charging, and software all have quirks which lessen appeal, you’d be wise to see what the competition has in store over the next few months, and see if any other deals catch your eye instead of immediately leaping on the Magic V6.
The Honor Magic V6 is a great big-screen foldable which brings all the expected benefits of the style, but it lacks anything special to make it standout against the existing competition, and the big-name devices set to be released in the very near future. It’s a good buy, but make sure you take a good look at what else is available first.
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