Honor 200 review: sleek design, sharp shooter
The Honor 200 series recently launched in India, marking a significant leap in price and features compared to the brand’s previous offerings. The series strongly emphasises camera performance, and the vanilla Honor 200 reflects that faithfully. Its rear camera setup includes a 50MP primary camera, a 50MP telephoto lens, a 12MP ultrawide lens, and a 50MP selfie camera on the front. We’ve already conducted an in-depth review of the Honor 200 Pro (review), so let’s explore how the Honor 200 performs in real-world use.
Verdict
The Honor 200 is one of the best camera phones available under Rs 40,000, especially if you’re fond of taking portrait shots. It features an attractive design, delivers reliable everyday performance, and recharges quickly. The lack of an IP rating and the omission of a charger in the retail box might be drawbacks for some potential buyers.
Design & display
| Honor 200 | Motorola Edge 50 Pro | Vivo V40 | |
| Thickness | 7.7mm | 8.19mm | 7.58mm |
| Weight | 187 grams | 186 grams | 190 grams |
| IP Rating | NA | IP68 | IP68 |
The Honor 200’s design is quite lovely, with a sleek body, smooth curved edges and a quad-curved display that makes for a very comfortable in-hand feel. The camera island is oval-shaped and extends slightly upward, which makes the phone wobble when put on a flat surface. I received the Moonlight White variant, which has wave-like patterns imprinted on the rear panel, which looks very appealing, all enclosed in a matte finish.
The finishing prevents smudges and fingerprints from marring the surface and keeps it looking pretty. There’s also your regular retinue of additions like stereo speakers, a Type-C charging port at the bottom, noise-cancelling mics, and a SIM tray. One big caveat with the design is that there’s no ingress protection, which stands out in stark contrast against its counterparts, both of which offer IP68 water & dust resistance.
| Honor 200 | Motorola Edge 50 Pro | Vivo V40 | |
| Display | 6.7-inch AMOLED | 6.7-inch pOLED | 6.78-inch curved AMOLED |
| Peak brightness | 4000 nits | 2000 nits | 4500 nits |
The Honor 200 flaunts a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2664 x 1200p (FHD+), a 120Hz refresh rate, 4000 nits of peak brightness and DCI-P3 wide colour gamut. The display has a high pixel density of 435ppi and offers a top-notch visual experience. It also offers great visual fidelity even outdoors, thanks to its high peak brightness. The colours are punchy and the display appears quite sharp. You can choose between two display colour presets, vivid and standard, I’d suggest going with vivid as it does make the content more appealing. There’s also HDR10+ and Widevine L1 support, so you can stream HD content on OTT apps with ease.
There are a bunch of display features that I used extensively on the Honor 200. The EyeComfort mode is immensely useful and syncs with your sleep cycle to automatically toggle eye comfort mode during the night. The high PWM dimming is also useful for those with sensitive eyes and keeps the display flicker-free. I love the e-book mode as someone who frequently reads books on their smartphone, as it tunes down the colours to grayscale, thereby reducing the strain on your eyes.
Cameras
The cameras are one key aspect where the Honor 200 truly shines. The phone incorporates a 50MP Sony IMX902 primary camera with an f/1.95 aperture, a 12MP ultrawide & macro lens with 112-degree FOV, and a 50MP Sony IMX856 telephoto lens with 2.5x optical zoom. At the front is yet another 50MP portrait selfie camera with an f/2.1 aperture. The camera specs certainly sound impressive on paper, and they’re equally capable in the real world.
The Honor 200 takes detailed images with good dynamic range and slightly punchy colours. The saturation is quite tasteful, so the images appear lively while not appearing overly processed. The phone also takes good-looking low-light images with a low noise level and a decent amount of exposure. The ultrawide lens does a satisfactory job but does not match up to the main sensor and the portrait lens.
The Honor 200 touts itself as the ‘Portrait Master’ and it certainly lives up to the title with its stunning portraits. The phone separates the foreground and background very nicely and the details remain sharp. Skin colour can be a hit or miss, as the phone churned out accurate skin tones often enough, in my experience.
The Studio-Harcourt partnership shines through with three dedicated portrait filters: Harcourt Vibrant, Harcourt Colour, and Harcourt Classic. My favourite was the classic mode, which captures images in black and white. Unlike the Honor 200 Pro, the Honor 200’s selfie portraits don’t benefit from the Harcourt treatment, as these special filters are limited to the rear camera.
I compared the Honor 200, Vivo V40 and Motorola Edge 50 Pro’s camera capabilities in different scenarios, and here’s how it went:
Daylight
The Honor 200 represents the actual scene more closely compared to the Motorola Edge 50 Pro. The latter oversaturates the colours and fails to capture the details in the sky. The Honor 200 also manages to preserve details better, while the Motorola Edge 50 Pro has prominent noise towards the darker areas of the image.
The Vivo V40, in comparison, overexposes the image, leading to a loss of detail in the tiled ground. The colours are also a lot more pronounced compared to the Honor 200, although the dynamic range is slightly superior.
Portraits
The Honor 200 portrait shots appear more washed out when compared directly to the Motorola Edge 50 Pro, but it is closer to what the subject looks like in reality. The Motorola Edge 50 Pro adds an orange hue to the subject’s skin, which makes it appear unnatural. The Motorola Edge 50 Pro does have a lead in edge detection since the Honor 200 presents a little warping around the edges.
The Vivo V40 brightens up the skin slightly but has good edge detection, albeit with visible colour saturation. The Honor 200, in comparison, has a much sharper image and looks quite appealing.
Low-light
In low-light settings, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro does a better job of managing exposure and controlling bloom around light sources, which results in a more pleasing output compared to the Honor 200. The Honor 200, however, does do a better job in terms of details.
While Honor 200 has its own issues with light bloom, the Vivo V40 does have a problem in capturing scenes that include a direct source of light. Lens flare is persistent in all low-light images involving an active light source. Discounting that, the Vivo V40 has superior details and sharpness compared to the Honor 200.
Performance & software
The Honor 200 comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset at its core, paired with up to 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, which is not expandable. I received the top-end variant for review and my day-to-day performance was a breeze on this smartphone, with no noticeable hiccups during normal usage. The smartphone’s performance is on par with its key competitors, Vivo V40 and Motorola Edge 50 Pro, both of which feature the same chipset.
The phone, however, delivers much better performance under stress compared to its counterparts, as evidenced in our Burnout CPU throttling test. If you want better performance output at this price point, the Realme GT 6T (review) is a sound choice and features the Snapdragon 7+ Gen 3 chipset.
The Vivo V40 lags slightly behind in benchmarks because our tests were conducted on the lower-end 8GB+128GB variant of the phone, in comparison to the top-end models for its counterparts. The gaming experience on the smartphone was also quite pleasant. The phone comfortably plays demanding titles like COD: Mobile and BGMI on ‘High’ graphical settings and delivers an average of 50FPS and 30FPS in both games, respectively.
Its thermal management could have been better, as both the Motorola Edge 50 Pro and the Vivo V40 have lower average temperatures while gaming. The Honor 200 for instance, shows an average temperature increase of 7.3 degrees Celsius after 30 minutes of gaming. The Motorola Edge 50 Pro registers 5.7 degrees Celsius, and Vivo V40 registers an average temperature increase of just 4 degrees Celsius for the same.
The Honor 200 comes with Android 14-based MagicOS 8.0 out of the box. The OS is well-optimised and offers a decent level of customisation, including your lock screen. There are a lot of features that come in handy in day-to-day use, especially if you tend to multitask on your phone while working. The Magic Portal feature allows you to drag and drop text, images, and videos from your phone’s gallery to social media apps, notes, etc.
The function did not work for me when trying to do the same with images on my browser or social media. Although, it easily picks up the text from both social media and other apps, so you’re good on that front. One thing that peeved me is that you can only change the volume level using the volume rockers and nothing else. You can’t change the alarm volume, notification volume, or ringtone volume, unlike other Android-based OS. Honor promises 3 years of Android upgrades and 4 years of security updates, which is standard for this price bracket.
| Pre-loaded apps | Android updates (in years) | Security updates (in years) | |
| Honor 200 | 46 | 3 | 4 |
| Motorola Edge 50 Pro | 41 | 3 | 4 |
| Vivo V40 | 51 | 3 | 4 |
Battery & charging
The Honor 200 packs a 5,200mAh battery, which comes with 100W fast charging support. The battery has a silicon-carbon coating around the standard Li-on cell. From what I’ve read about it, the silicon-carbon coating is more energy-dense and allows the brand to increase the battery capacity while keeping the phone’s waistline slim. The phone’s battery life is decent for the price and it will last an entire day on moderate usage levels. The battery delivered a screen-on time of around 6 hours during my usage.
| Honor 200 | Motorola Edge 50 Pro | Vivo V40 | |
| Battery | 5200mAh | 4500mAh | 5500mAh |
| Charging time (20%-100%) | 39 minutes (100W) | 16 minutes (125W) | 35 minutes (80W) |
Verdict
The Honor 200 is available for purchase in two storage variants: 8GB+256GB & 12GB+512GB, which cost Rs 34,999 and Rs 39,999, respectively. The phone does not come with a compatible charger, and the original charger will set you back an additional Rs 2,999. At its price, the chief competitors of the device include the Motorola Edge 50 Pro (review) and the Vivo V40 (review). All three phones feature the same Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, so there’s not a lot of difference in their performance output.
The Motorola Edge 50 Pro offers a stock Android experience and blazing fast charging speeds, while the Vivo V40 offers better battery backup and comes in a slimmer body. Both phones also include a charger, which helps keep the cost down. The Honor 200’s biggest strengths are its cameras, especially its portrait lens, which the competitors might struggle to match up to. On top of that, you get a beautiful AMOLED display, an attractive design and respectable day-to-day performance. If these aspects appeal to you, the smartphone is worth considering.
Editor’s Rating: 7.5/10
Reasons to buy:
- The Honor 200 comes in a sleek, attractive design.
- The device packs a crisp AMOLED display with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.
- The Honor 200 captures stunning portrait images.
- The smartphone’s battery recharges pretty quickly.
Reasons not to buy:
- The smartphone does not have an IP rating.
- The phone does not come with a charger in the retail box
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