Honor Magic V5 review: How this temptingly thin foldable won me over

Choice is a wonderful thing. No matter what you’re buying, being able to pick between multiple options is not only fun from a personal standpoint, but crucial for competition too. Unfortunately, if you live in the U.S., your choice of big foldable phone is restricted to two, or possibly three if you’re OK buying an older model.

The Honor Magic V5 is a choice U.S. buyers are deprived of, but it’s now widely available elsewhere, including in the U.K. and Europe. I’ve been using it for a while, and have already put it against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 where some key benefits surprised me. Now it’s time to see how it stands up on its own, and if it’s more than just a slightly spurious claim to be the world’s thinnest foldable.

Specs, price, and availability

Honor does not officially sell its hardware in the U.S., but it has now released the Magic V5 in the U.K. and Europe. It starts at £1,699 (that’s about $2,287), which undercuts the local £1,899 starting price of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, and the newly announced, £1,749 Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold. If you’re in the U.S., these are the two most recently released big screen foldables.

Whatever way you cut it, the £1,699 starting price is temptingly reasonable (sort of) when Samsung’s alternative costs so much more. Price only tells part of the story, though, so let’s see if you’re missing out on anything by saving some money when getting into foldable phones.

Ignore the silly world’s thinnest numbers

It’s just dreary marketing

The Honor Magic V5 is the world’s thinnest foldable phone. Except, just to confuse everyone, I haven’t been using the world’s thinnest foldable phone. Here’s what’s going on. While the Honor Magic V5 can claim its title, the only model that measures 8.8mm thick folded up and 4.1mm open is the white one. The Dawn Gold version I’ve been using is 9mm thick and 4.2mm open, which makes it 0.1mm thicker than the Galaxy Z Fold 7, and therefore not the world’s thinnest foldable.

The fact that only one model is the thinnest only confirms that it’s all done for marketing purposes. What’s more, look past the numbers, and you’ll find that when you use both the Magic V5 and the Galaxy Z Fold 7, both feel really thin, and far from the oversize monsters some will associate with big folding phones. By making such a big deal out of the “world’s thinnest” title, only for it to come with a caveat, ends up obfuscating just how brilliant it is to use such a thin folding phone.

Believe me, it’s really great. Beyond the thinness, the Magic V5’s extra curved edges make it comfortable to grip; it weighs 222 grams, the hinge has a cool diamond motif running down it to give the phone some flair, and the phone opens up with a fluid, nicely weighted motion. Honor claims the hinge has been stress tested to 500,000 folds. The camera module on the back is huge, but the top-center location means that when the phone is screen-up on a table, it doesn’t rock side-to-side like the Z Fold 7.

Impressively, Honor has engineered the Magic V5 to meet both IP58 and IP59 dust and water resistance ratings. While the water resistance is great, the dust resistance is a rarity in the world of foldables, yet it is essential to keep the hinge and its workings in good order. Honor uses its own Anti-Scratch Nano Shield over the cover screen, and states the glass on the inner screen is 40x times stronger than standard glass. The Magic V5 is everything you’d expect such a costly phone to be like.

Two screens, high specs

Great performance all round

The Honor Magic V5 has a 6.43-inch, 120Hz OLED cover screen and a 7.95-inch 120Hz OLED inner screen. It’s driven by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage space.

While there are small differences in screen sizes between them, the Magic V5 differs from the Galaxy Z Fold 7 in the bezels, both on the cover and inner screen. They’re smaller in general on the Z Fold 7, more uniform on the cover screen, and less of a bumper on the inner screen. It means the Z Fold 7 looks and feels more modern, but doesn’t really affect use.

Inside the Magic V5 is a 5,820mAh battery. Without playing hardcore games, the battery returned five hours of screen time on a single charge for me, with use ranging from camera, GPS, Reddit, browsing, and general email, and the browser. Calls are excellent, with the phone’s speaker remaining loud and clear, and callers saying there were no issues with audio.

Staying with the battery for a moment, a 30-minute YouTube video takes 5%, and the 3DMark app’s 20-minute Solar Bay Stress Test benchmark assessment takes 12%. This gives a good idea of what extended gameplay sessions will be like on the phone, and it displays strong efficiency, just as expected from the top Qualcomm chip. There is minimal heat buildup around the top of the phone and down the hinge.

Recharging the battery can be done with both a wired charger and a wireless charger, and while it supports 66W wired and 50W wireless, you don’t get a charger in the box. I used an Anker 140W wall charger, and the display showed the Magic V5 drawing a maximum of 33W of power. It took 22 minutes to reach 50% and just 50 minutes to fully charge.

Three rear cameras

Including a proper telephoto

The big camera module on the back of the Magic V5 contains a 50-megapixel main camera, a 50MP wide-angle camera, and a 64MP telephoto camera for a 3x optical zoom, and all come with optical image stabilization. There are a further two 20MP cameras — one on the cover screen and the other on the inner screen — for selfies and video calls.

The Magic V5’s camera is full of vibrancy and life, with strong colors, deep contrast, and masses of detail even when taking 3x and 6x photos. It’s definitely tuned for social media, and its performance makes the Galaxy Z Fold 7’s more natural tones look quite dull in comparison.

A 3x optical zoom provides just the right amount of versatility, allowing you to have fun and experiment with your photos. Because there’s so much detail in the optical shots, you can do so with confidence. It’s crucial for enjoying a phone camera. I loved taking it to a car meetup and appreciated its flexibility, but did find some of its photos to be just a little too heavy on the contrast for my personal taste.

The good news is, there’s a great editing suite. Open the phone up, and you get to see both a before and after version next to each other while you change attributes, making it very easy to see the difference when making major alterations. There’s some AI in the editing suite, including the ability to remove people from images. It’s good at recognizing the people in the photos, but it’s still pretty dimwitted when it comes to filling in the blanks left behind.

There’s no question the Magic V5 takes more detailed and more fun photos than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, and if the camera is important to you, it’s the big-screen foldable to choose right now. However, we’ll have to see what Google brings to the space with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold when it’s released later in the year to know if it can retain this title.

It’s all about the software

The main compromise

It’s Android 15 with Honor’s MagicOS 9 interface installed on the Magic V5, and it’s really the only major part of the device that could be called a compromise. It’s certainly not terrible, but it needs a lot of initial care, attention, and patience. Samsung’s One UI is notorious for requiring a degree of careful setup, but it’s nowhere near as complex and needy as MagicOS 9.

Want an example? There are a lot of pre-installed apps, and they are all stuffed onto your home screen right at the very beginning of your use, forcing you to customize it. All your apps are spread across multiple home screens, too, instead of being placed in an app drawer. However, before you start reorganizing and changing settings, you must decide whether you want an App Drawer or not.

Why? You must select it before performing any maintenance, organization, or setup, as it will reset everything if done later, and you’ll need to repeat the process. Ask me how I know. I also found the initial setup failed partway through on my review model, requiring a reset and starting again. None of this onboarding process made me comfortable with the Magic V5 during the crucial early stages.

Thankfully, once MagicOS 9 is set up, it becomes easier to live with, and there are some nice features. For example, I like the obvious and helpful cards used for notifications on the lock screen, as well as how quickly it opens the corresponding app when I want to interact with it. Additionally, the multi-tasking feature is really cool. You can have two or even three apps running at the same time on the open screen, and slide left and right between them.

There’s a host of the usual AI features, including translation, automatic subtitles, and AI re-writing. A lot of “classic” Honor features also live under the guise of AI, too, such as the camera-operated gesture control system and the Magic Sidebar, which shows a selection of quick access apps and some AI shortcuts.

MagicOS 9 isn’t quite as polished as One UI, OxygenOS, or Google’s Android on a Pixel phone. Still, once you’re past all the initial pain, it’s perfectly usable with a selection of sensible added-value features. Provided you go into the Magic V5 knowing it takes a bit of work at first, you’ll likely grow to enjoy using it.

Is the Honor Magic V5 the best foldable?

The answer is complicated

I lived with the Honor Magic V5 shortly after spending a few weeks with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, so where would I spend my money? It’s a very hard question to answer, mostly because of the camera, which is genuinely superior to the Z Fold 7’s. However, the Magic V5’s software is not as enjoyable to use or as visually appealing as One UI 8.

No matter what Honor likes to boast about, the Magic V5 and the Z Fold 7’s hardware is practically identical in terms of everyday use. I haven’t felt the small differences in weight and dimensions at all, and both are a real pleasure to hold and own. If you’re in a position to buy either folding phone, the Magic V5’s lower price makes it seriously tempting, provided you’re OK with the software requiring more care and attention than it does on the Z Fold 7.

I’ll close with one last thing. I love big-screen folding phones. They provide a wonderful versatility you won’t find with a standard device, and they feel about as futuristic as smartphones get, so once you’ve spent some time with one, it’s quite hard to go back to a regular device. I wholeheartedly recommend giving one a try, and I am very pleased there’s a genuine choice between several brilliant models this year.