Verdict
The Honor Magic V5 is a very impressive Android, combining two stunning OLED displays, wicked-fast performance, and a sleek and stylish design. It’s expensive, yes, but almost all foldable phones are, and as far as I’m concerned, this might be the best one currently on the market.
- Stellar performance
- Top-quality displays
- Reliable battery life
- Impressive cameras
- Whopping camera bump
- Expensive
I won’t lie, it took me a while to get on board the foldable phone hype train. At first, I thought it was a bit of a gimmick, with brands such as Honor and Samsung seemingly looking to every avenue for new ways to innovate. Then, in 2024, I got my hands on the Honor Magic V3, and I finished our review of that a little more convinced. Cut to now, with me putting together our Honor Magic V5 review, and without spoiling the surprise too much, I can say that I’m officially a convert. The future might be foldable after all.
In terms of the phone itself, the Magic V5 is an absolute superstar. It packs Snapdragon’s latest and greatest chip, has OLED displays, and just so happens to be one of the world’s slimmest phones when unfolded, which is something the marketing campaign is keen to point out. Still, how does it fare against the best foldable phones already on the market? And can its performance keep up with the best gaming phones? Well, let’s get into it.
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Price and availability
As of August 28, the Honor Magic V5 is now available to order in the UK and Europe, starting at £1,699 / €1,999 in Ivory White, Black, Dawn Gold, and Reddish Brown colorways. You can pick up the phone from Honor’s official website or through online retailers such as Amazon.
Unfortunately, the Honor Magic V5 isn’t widely available in the US, but there’s always the option to import the phone. For this review, we received the Honor Magic V5 in Dawn Gold with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
Specs
Here are the Honor Magic V5’s specs:
Performance and gaming
The Honor Magic V5 packs Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which, in simple terms, makes it an absolute performance beast. That applies to everything from day-to-day tasks such as scrolling social media and recording videos to my personal favorite pastime, mobile gaming.
I usually test the performance capabilities of a new phone by playing some of the most demanding picks from our guide to the best Android games, such as Honkai Star Rail and PUBG Mobile. Unsurprisingly, given the 8 Elite chip inside the Magic V5, it has absolutely no problem running both games at high settings, making for an almost console-like experience. Even after a couple of hours of continuous in-game grinding, the frame rates never dipped, and the bigger screen made Honkai Star Rail’s epic battles even more compelling.
In terms of battery drain when gaming, the Magic V5 isn’t quite as impressive as some other phones I’ve tested, but it’s not bad. For every hour of HSR, I lost about 20% of charge, but it’s worth remembering that I was playing at the highest possible settings, which is likely to drain the battery a bit quicker. We’ll get onto general battery life in a bit, but if you’re settling in for a couple of hours of gaming, you should be fine with 60% battery or higher.
Something else worth highlighting in this section is the Magic V5’s cooling capabilities. They’re great. I’ve spent hours playing games on the phone, and while it might get a little toasty, it doesn’t get nearly as hot as other flagship devices I’ve tested, which is pretty impressive when you consider the form factor. I don’t know what sort of magic the technical wizards at Honor employed to keep the phone as cool as it stays, but it’s a big win for me, especially as I had some doubts going into this review after checking out the Honor 400 earlier this year.
Features and software
Honor’s MagicOS 9.0 Android skin powers the Magic V5, and it’s a lovely, user-friendly bit of software. Even if you’re an iOS devotee, you should find MagicOS pretty easy to adjust to, and the software feels even better with the amount of screenspace on offer when the phone is unfolded. The fantastic Multi-Flex feature takes advantage of the massive internal display, enabling you to open three windows at one time, which is great for those who use their phones for work. I predominantly use my phone for gaming, so I don’t have much use for it, but I recognize a good feature when I see one.
As is the case with almost all of 2025’s new smartphones, the Magic V5 comes with a few AI party tricks. You’ve got Google Gemini, which is relatively standard now for Androids, but that’s not all. Honor has its own suite of AI tools. Magic Portal is the most useful, enabling you to copy or search anything that pops up on screen by simply circling it with your knuckle. It’s pretty similar to Circle to Search with Google, but it works across a number of apps and is another boon for productivity.
There are also translation tools and writing tools that can come in handy, as well as AI Eraser, which does exactly as it says on the tin, removing any irritating background objects or passing bodies from your pictures. You can even check out the AI-powered Image to Video feature, which is almost frighteningly impressive, though you are limited to three free attempts. With all this in mind, the Magic V5 is a pretty good fit for anyone who’s enthusiastic about AI features, and they’re easier to use than what some other brands have to offer.
In terms of software updates, Honor promises four Android OS updates and five years of security patches. That’s certainly not a bad offering, though it’s not quite as generous as what you can get from the latest foldable Google Pixel and Samsung devices, which each offer a minimum of seven years of full updates.
Design
The Honor Magic V5 is truly a sight to behold. It’s modern, elegant, and stylish, which is exactly what you’d hope for from a device that’s going to set you back the best part of $2,000. Honor’s big selling point for the Magic V5 is just how thin it is, and it is indeed slim at just 9mm when folded or 4.1mm unfolded, and it’s hard to deny how impressive that is. It also weighs 217g, which is relatively lightweight when you consider it’s a foldable phone, weighing just a little more than the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Another big win for the Honor Magic V5 is its IP58 and IP59 certified rating, making it one of the most robust foldable phones to date in terms of dust and waterproofing. This factor also makes the Magic V5 more practical than its main rival, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, as that alternative only boasts an IP48, which, while still decent for a foldable, isn’t quite as impressive as what Honor has managed to pull off. Honor also promises that the Magic V5 is capable of at least 500k folds, and while I didn’t quite have the time or the patience to test this out myself, it’s still folding and unfolding nicely at the time of writing.
My only issue with the design of the Magic V5 is the absolutely mammoth camera bump on the back of the phone. Given that everything else about this phone is sleek and elegant, the camera bump stands out like a sore thumb, and it’s probably my least favorite thing about the phone. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a design compromise to make the slim-line form factor possible, but for me, I wouldn’t mind a slightly chunkier build if it meant that the camera bump wasn’t so hefty.
Display
The magic in the Magic V5 is how almost entirely undetectable the 7.95-inch interior display’s folding crease is. Seriously, it’s flabbergasting. While I was impressed by the Honor Magic V3 when I put that through its paces last year, Honor’s latest offering blows that out of the water, and unless you’re actively looking for the crease, holding the phone at all manner of angles, you’re not likely to spot it. The 6.43-inch cover display is the same size as V3’s, and it’s still great, but the star of the show is the folding screen.
Outside of the improved folding display tech, the screens themselves are pretty impressive. Both the internal and external displays offer 120Hz refresh rates, making gameplay as smooth as butter, while they’re also capable of 5,000 nits of peak brightness. I tested both displays under the summer sun and had no problem making out even small details on the screen, so it passes my test with flying colors.
Honor Magic V5 cameras
I should caveat this section by saying that I’m not much of a smartphone photographer, but I’m still pretty impressed by the Honor Magic V5’s capabilities. The triple-camera setup on the back includes a 50MP wide lens, a 64MP periscope telephoto lens, and a 50MP ultrawide lens. That’s the sort of setup you’d expect of a flagship phone, especially one that’s closer in price to $2,000 than $1,000, but it covers all the bases.
As ever, I employed the help of my lovely dog, Floyd, to put the Magic V5’s cameras to the test, and I’m pretty pleased with the results. The phone does a good job of capturing the detail in his fur and the depth of color in his eyes. Out of the natural, vibrant, and authentic visual styles, I always opted for authentic, as the other two seem to use a sort of filter, and I want the rawest possible images. Across the board, the wide, ultrawide, and periscope lenses all capture vibrant images, and they don’t suffer from a lack of ideal lighting as much as some other cameras I’ve tested. The night mode helps, but you don’t really need to turn it on, as low-light portrait or regular images are perfectly fine.
One camera feature in particular worth mentioning is the Magic V5’s 100x zoom capabilities. The caveat here is that the camera isn’t that good, and the phone uses some AI software to piece together a slightly higher quality image. This works great for everything except faces, which have a touch of uncanny valley about them if you’re capturing them from afar. Still, it’s a neat feature, especially for those who love taking live shots from a distance at sporting stadiums or concerts.
In terms of the selfie cameras, you’ve got two 20MP lenses on both the folding display and the external display. There’s nothing to split the two, but they’re both capable of capturing some high-quality selfies, and that’s all you can really ask for. I mean, you shouldn’t really have to use the selfie camera much, given all the possibilities of the folding displays, but it’s nice to know that they’re not awful if you’re ever in a rush to snap a quick picture.
Battery
In my experience, Honor phones have always offered impressive battery life, and the Magic V5 is no different. Admittedly, it’s not quite as remarkable as the brand’s regular flagships, but that comes with the foldable form factor territory. After a day of average use, with a bit of gaming, streaming video, and doomscrolling, I ended up calling it a night with around 20% battery left. That’s not bad at all.
As for charging speeds, the Magic V5 charges from flat to full in under an hour, provided you use the 66W charging brick included in the box. Again, that’s not quite as quick as the brand’s other 2025 blockbuster, the Honor Magic 7 Pro, but it’s still better than Apple and Samsung’s latest flagship offerings. The Magic V5 is also capable of 50W wireless charging, which is pretty rapid, especially for a foldable phone. Wireless charging isn’t a must-have feature as far as I’m concerned, but it’s always a nice bonus.
Should you buy the Honor Magic V5?
Even if you’ve just skimmed this review, it should be pretty clear that I’m a big advocate for the Honor Magic V5. Yes, it’s very expensive, but no more so than any of the current contenders from our guide to the best foldable phones. For that high price point, you’re getting a gorgeous design, vivid OLED displays, top-tier performance, and the best water and dustproofing that the foldable niche has to offer.
Still, all phones have their drawbacks. For the Honor Magic V5, it’s the massive camera bump and the similarly whopping price point. In the V5’s defense, fellow foldables such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 and the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold are just as expensive, but I think it’s still a factor that dissuades potential users from picking up their first foldable. If you’ve got the money to spend, though, I wholeheartedly recommend this option.
Alternatives
If we haven’t sold you on the Honor Magic V5, we’ve got a couple of suggestions for viable alternatives below.
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
Surprise, surprise, the Honor Magic V5’s main competition, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, is also the best alternative. Honestly, both phones are pretty similar, with stellar operating systems and superpowered performance. Still, if you’re used to Samsung devices and want a seamless connection to your Samsung watch or tablet, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 might be the way to go.
iPhone 16 Pro Max
If you’re not quite willing to spend over $1,500 on a foldable phone, then how about around $1,000 on just a really good one? If you’re open to that, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is a great alternative. Apple just doesn’t make bad phones, and even though the iPhone 17 might be around the corner, we’re not expecting any breathtaking upgrades, so it’s still a viable option going forward. For more details, see our iPhone 16 Pro Max review.
There you have it, our Honor Magic V5 review. For more top-tier tech, be sure to check out our guides to the best gaming tablets and the best handheld consoles while you’re here. Or, if you’re looking for something a little more old-school to go with your ultra-modern phone, see our list of the best retro handhelds, including a few iconic blasts from the past.
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