After the brief hands-on report we got on the Honor Magic8 Pro (including benchmark runs and camera samples), we now have a review-in-progress update for you, with some of the more important numbers now ready. We did the usual battery testing, plus a few rounds of charging and here are the results.
Honor Magic8 Pro battery life
The Magic8 Pro’s battery capacity varies by region. The China version gets the largest capacity, at 7,200mAh, while European Magics (like the version we’re reviewing) are capped at 6,270mAh.
There’s another version that’s for markets outside of China and Europe, which should be 7,100mAh. Regardless of locale, the battery uses silicon carbon anode tech.
The Euro version of the Magic8 Pro that we have here aced our tests, even though it’s the lowest specced of the three. We got an Active Use Score of 19:07h, with excellent marks in the individual tests. Admittedly, the Oppo Find X9 Pro is still a little bit better (7,500mAh is a lot of battery), but the Magic8 Pro is miles ahead of other major competitors and a significant step up from the previous generation.
Our new Active Use Score is an estimate of how long the battery will last if you use the device with a mix of all four test activities. You can adjust the calculation based on your usage pattern using the sliders below. You can read about our current battery life testing procedure here. For a comprehensive list of all tested devices so far, head this way.
Charging speed
The Magic8 Pro, in global form, is rated for 100W charging whether using a proprietary charger or a USB Power Delivery one, while the Chinese version’s specs extend the proprietary capability to 120W. We didn’t have a charger come with our review unit, but we did dig up a 100W Honor SuperCharge adapter we’ve kept from previous models, so we tested with that one. We also tried a few aftermarket USB PD adapters for good measure.
Using the Honor 100W adapter, we got a brief peak of 73W when starting from just above empty, and it took us to 100% in 40 minutes, with the phone showing 81% at the half-hour mark. With a 100W USB Power Delivery brick the numbers were ever so slightly worse – negligibly so, we’d say (70W, 42min, 79%). A 67W adapter was ever so slightly behind still (50W, 46min, 76%).
Mind you, you’d be best off with a USB Power Delivery adapter that has PPS profiles extending to 20/21V, because the phone charges the fastest at 18V, while lesser adapters might limit it to 9V – with one such charger we were looking at 69% at the half-hour mark which is now almost a meaningful difference compared to the more capable alternatives.
Regardless of which of these chargers we used, there was a relatively lengthy process of trickle and not-so-trickle charging after reporting a 100% state – about 25 minutes, give or take.
With both of the 100W options you need to press a bubble on the screen when you plug in the charger to go into boost mode and squeeze the absolute maximum charging speed out of the phone. That option doesn’t show up with the less powerful adapters.
The Magic8 Pro supports wireless charging and the company quotes an 80W maximum when using its in-house wireless charger. We didn’t have one for testing, but we did try with a 25W Qi2-compliant third-party charger and got single-digit power readings at its input end, so unless you get Honor’s charger, don’t expect to use wireless charging for anything but overnight top ups. Reverse wireless charging is also supported.
That’s all for this episode – stay tuned for the full review.
