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Honor’s mid-range star is changing things up a bit this year, and while the company is still offering two versions of its latest Honor 600 series, it seems like the company is focusing more on the base model than the Pro version this year. Thus, no matter where you live, it’s more likely that you’ll be able to find the Honor 600 rather than the more expensive Honor 600 Pro.
But given my experience with the Honor 600 last week, there are a few reasons why you’ll probably want to spend more. Despite the lower price, the Honor 600 uses the same nearly bezelless 8,000 nit OLED display, the same huge battery, and nearly identical design and build (complete with IP69K resistance) as the Pro model.
With this build quality and design highlights, Honor is not only beating every mid-range phone, but the company has also left behind every flagship phone in some areas. As is to be expected from the company these days, the Honor 600 has an IP69K build that is drop and crush-resistant, so this phone will last you a long time and still look good.
|
Social class |
honor 600 |
|---|---|
|
operating system |
Magisk OS 10 (Android 16). 6 years of OS updates |
|
Display |
6.57-inch AMOLED, 1264×2728, 120Hz, 8000 nits peak brightness |
|
Eye comfort setting |
DC Dimming, 3840Hz PWM dimming, AI Defocus, Motion Sickness Relief, Ultra Dark Mode, Low Blue Light, Personalized Contrast |
|
processor |
Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 |
|
to hit |
8GB, 12GB |
|
storage |
256 GB, 512 GB |
|
rear cameras |
200MP (wide) + 12MP (ultra-wide + macro), color temperature sensor |
|
front camera |
50MP |
|
Battery |
6,800mAh global (7,000mAh China only) |
|
charge |
80W wired, 27W reverse wired, no wireless charging |
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Construction |
Matte metal frame, composite fiber back |
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ip rating |
IP68, IP69, IP69K |
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weight |
185 grams |
|
DIMENSIONS |
156 × 74.7 × 7.8 mm |
|
Colour |
Black, Golden White (our review unit), Orange |
An AI button can be found on the right below the power button, and its functions are not only customizable, but it also acts as a camera shutter button. Without a doubt, the overall look is definitely similar to the iPhone 17, but Honor trades out Apple’s industrial look is much more beautiful, and despite not enjoying Apple’s design this time around, I really appreciate it.
The raised camera housing is made of a different composite material than the back and has a transparent, pearl-like shine that complements the matte back. I dislike the flat edges of the phone, but the brushed aluminum feel is at least nice. Finally, it’s a smaller phone than I’m used to, which, admittedly, was strange at first, but ultimately a breath of fresh air.
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And while that’s all nice, the real star of the design is the near-bezelless display, which sports the world’s first bezel sub-1mm. It’s strange to think that a mid-range phone would be the first to achieve this, and even the phone has a similar 0.98mm bezel around it!
That display is absolutely gorgeous, featuring a true 10-bit panel with no temporal dithering and amazing eye-friendly features like DC dimming and 3840Hz PWM dimming, plus most of Honor’s Eye Comfort display system, which includes Motion Sickness Relief, Defocus EyeCare, and a personalized contrast test. However, Honor also offers a full suite of color adjustment options, including saturation, contrast, and many other properties that most smartphone companies omit.
Honor says this display has a maximum brightness output of 8,000 nits, but that’s typically across a small portion of the display. I measured the actual normal brightness output during HDR playback to be around 3,000 nits, which is phenomenal for a phone of any class, especially a mid-range phone. Even Samsung’s best flagship phones max out at 2,600 nits.
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The Honor 600 offers far more competitive performance than last year’s Honor 400, delivering 40% better performance than that phone in the Geekbench and 3DMark tests.
Despite the phone’s small size and low 190 gram weight, it has a massive 6,800mAh (7,000mAh in China) battery that lasts for days on a single charge. I don’t think I’ve ever had a phone with such battery life, and it’s also nice that it supports 60W charging as well.
Now, not everything about the build is good. As is unfortunately the case with most Honor phones, the haptics are completely useless. Since they are so bad it is honestly better to turn them off. Thankfully, this is the worst part of the experience, which is very minimal.
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As it tends to do these days, Honor is touting its new AI features as a big selling point of the phone. The company’s AI key on the right is well-designed and great to use, with quick on-screen AI context buttons that appear when you long press the key. This exposes the most common AI features to what’s on the screen, including saving screenshots to AI memory in automated note-taking software.
This time most of the new AI features have been found in Honor’s Gallery app. The AI ​​Photo to Video feature Honor launched last year got a major upgrade on this phone with the launch of V2.0, including the ability to combine 3 photos and create a 3-8 second video clip of a moment that never happened before. The video below was made using three photos of my cat taken by the Honor 600.
And this makes me question the issue of these types of facilities. Sure, it’s fun to try out and create a fake video from photos you actually took, but I don’t see any situation where I would actually want to create a video from a photo and use that. I prefer authenticity in my image and video capturing, and this doesn’t live up to that. However, it’s pretty cool and works well, so if the concept is appealing, this is the way to do it.
Now, in my estimation, the other two new AI features are far more useful. Moving Photo Eraser upgrades the Magic Eraser tool to preserve moving photos as well as remove people or objects. It works just like any other Magic Eraser-style tool, but the addition of Motion Photo capabilities is amazing.
Moving Photo Breakout Collage is another amazing feature that creates a collage of a group of photos and even includes motion photos in the collage. This way, you can put still images and motion photos together in a very social media-friendly photo collage, and it works brilliantly.
The camera is also very good. The main 200MP sensor captures clear photos with great dynamic range and accurate colors. Zooming in doesn’t leave much to be desired, but Honor’s AI enhancements for photos taken beyond the 6x zoom work impressively and help legitimately replace the physical 2x telephoto camera in many situations.
My biggest problem with this mode is that it’s not always available, and there’s no way to force it. Thankfully, if you don’t like the look, you can disable this feature completely.
Overall photo quality is the best in this segment, including very good motion capture quality. Flagship Honor phones still do a better job of capturing moving objects, but the Honor 600 will do it better than most phones in its price range.
The Honor 600 is an excellent follow-up to the Honor 400 series and while the price doesn’t increase drastically post-launch, it remains one of the best values ​​in the segment. Honor offers a better display, build quality and battery size compared to other phones in this price range. Google, Nothing, and Samsung are the company’s biggest competitors, but I think I would choose Honor over these other options because Honor is better at the basics.
Samsung and Google offer more lifetime software upgrades at one year than Honor, but I don’t think it really adds much value at this price. It’s a solid phone with great support and there are plenty of reasons to choose it over the competition, especially if battery life, charging speed, build quality and display quality (and comfort) are your top reasons for choosing a phone.
