Honor Magic 4 Pro

Honor's latest flagship shines with lightning-fast charging, bags of quality and an excellent camera

- BASIL KRONFLI

PRICE £792 (£950 inc VAT) from hihonor.com

Formerly a sub-brand of Huawei, Honor is now its own company - and the Magic 4 Pro is one of its best ever smartphones. That's partly because the firm is no longer bound by the US sanctions that blocked Huawei from using Google services. Thus, for the first time in years, Honor can offer a flagship phone with the Play Store and a full complement of Google apps preinstalled.

The design is attractive, too. The phone is made of high-gloss glass and metal, and though a little on the thick side at 9.1mm, it feels elegant in the hand, with the curved back and front tapering into the sides. It's relatively life-proof for a modern handset: it comes with a pre-fitted screen protector and a case, and is IP68 dust and water-resistant for extra peace of mind. My sole reservation concerns how easily the back picks up fingerprints; it quickly goes from shiny to smudgy.

The screen is a delight. The large 6.8in LTPO OLED panel has a maximum brightness of 1,000cd/m²: it looks expansive, bright and bold, and feels wholly immersive thanks to the phone's tiny bezels.

Movement is smooth, too. Its silky 120Hz refresh rate scrolls fluidly, then adaptively dials down as low as 1Hz depending on what's happening on the screen. More subtly, it also boasts an extremely fast flicker rate of 1,920Hz - twice as high as any other LTPO screen on the market, according to Honor which means the screen should appear rock solid even when you dial down the brightness.