Introduction
Honor Magic8 Lite is not exactly a lighter Magic8 or Magic8 Pro, despite what its model name might suggest. But it sure is shaping up like an excellent mid-range offer with an attractive design, promising battery life, and a pinch of the premium photography skills the flagship models are offering.
The Magic8 Lite is an IP68/IP69-rated smartphone immersible in up to 6m of deep water. And it’s also drop-resistant up to 2.5m. For comparison, Magic6 Lite was IP53-rated and Magic7 Lite – IP64-certified.
The new model brings a 6.79-inch AMOLED screen with 1200p resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 1B colors. It supports HDR streaming, another upgrade over the previous models.
The Magic8 Lite runs on the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, not a massive improvement over the Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 inside the Magic6 Lite and Magic7 Lite, but one with modern CPU cores at least.
The camera department, unfortunately, has seen no updates. There is a 108MP OIS primary camera with a 5MP ultrawide secondary, plus a 16MP selfie imager on the other side.
Finally, the Magic8 Lite is powered by a larger 7,500mAh battery capable of 66W fast wired charging. But even with this beefier battery, the phone did not become thicker; in fact, it’s even slimmer with a 7.8mm profile.
Honor Magic8 Lite specs at a glance:
- Body: 161.9×76.1×7.8mm, 193g; glass front, plastic frame, plastic back; IP68/IP69K dust tight and water resistant (high pressure water jets; immersible up to 6m), Drop resistant up to 2.5m.
- Display: 6.79″ AMOLED, 1B colors, 120Hz, 3840Hz PWM, HDR, 800 nits (typ), 1800 nits (HBM), 6000 nits (peak), 1200x2640px resolution, 19.8:9 aspect ratio, 427ppi.
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 (4 nm): Octa-core (1×2.3 GHz Cortex-A720s & 3×2.2 GHz Cortex-A720s & 4×1.8 GHz Cortex-A520s); Adreno 810.
- Memory: 256GB 8GB RAM, 256GB 12GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM.
- OS/Software: Android 15, Magic OS 9.
- Rear camera: Wide (main): 108 MP, f/1.8, 24mm, PDAF, OIS; Wide (main): 5MP, f/2.2.
- Front camera: 16 MP, f/2.5, 24mm(wide).
- Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30fps, 1080p@30fps, gyro-EIS; Front camera: 1080p@30fps.
- Battery: 7500mAh; 66W wired, 7.5W reverse wired.
- Connectivity: 5G; Wi-Fi 6; BT 5.2, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive; NFC.
- Misc: Fingerprint reader (under display, optical); stereo speakers.
The Honor Magic8 Lite seems like a solid mid-range phone, though we expected some camera improvements over the older models because there are similarly priced phones out there with more versatile cameras.
Also, it’s worth noting that the Magic8 Lite is a reworked version of the Honor X9d with a slightly smaller battery. It is also very similar to the Honor X70, especially visually.
Unboxing the Honor Masgic8 Lite
The Honor Magic8 Lite ships in a thin paper box, which contains the phone and a 3A-rated USB-A-to-C cable.
The phone also comes with a thin protective folio already applied to its screen.
That’s it. There is no case and no charger inside the box of the review unit we received.
