The Honor Magic V6 arrives as the thinnest, lightest book-style foldable money can buy — a device that slips into your pocket like a conventional smartphone and unfurls into a near-tablet experience. Priced at £1,499.99 until August, when it climbs to £1,999.99, this sixth-generation foldable from the Chinese challenger brand delivers exceptional battery life and blistering performance, yet its software remains frustratingly unfinished for a handset at this premium.
A Familiar Form, Refined
Honor has clearly found a formula that works. The Magic V6 is almost indistinguishable from last year’s V5, which is simultaneously its greatest strength and most glaring weakness. At just 8.75mm thick when folded and a mere 4mm at its thickest point when open, this is one of the most svelte foldable tablets on the market. Weighing in at 219 to 224 grams, it handles with the familiarity of a regular flagship Android device — a quality that cannot be overstated for anyone weary of unwieldy folding handsets.
The redesign is subtle but welcome. A new red suede-like back panel, framed in gold, adds texture and grip where rivals rely on slippery glass or bare metal. It is a tactile distinction that sets the Magic V6 apart in a crowded field, even if it does little to disguise the enormous circular camera housing that dominates the rear. Honor has persisted with its signature approach of cramming top-class optics into a protruding lens cluster — a design choice others frequently avoid, but one that pays dividends for photography.
The external 6.52-inch OLED display is crisp, smooth, and responsive at 120Hz, making the closed phone feel like a premium slab device in its own right. Open it up, and the 7.95-inch internal flexible OLED at 403 pixels per inch ranks among the finest screens available for media consumption and multitasking. One minor grievance: the central crease is slightly more pronounced than on recent competitors, and the integrated screen film acts as a fingerprint magnet, demanding regular cleaning to maintain its clarity.
Power and Endurance That Rivals the Best
Under the hood sits Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for 2026, paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. On paper, this makes the Magic V6 one of the most powerful foldables anywhere, capable of rivalling slab phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra in raw performance benchmarks.
There is a catch, however. By default, Honor equips the device with a “balanced” battery mode that noticeably throttles peak performance. Day-to-day messaging and browsing proceed without a hitch, but the limitation becomes apparent during gaming and other intensive tasks. Switching to the “performance” mode restores full speed, though at the cost of increased heat and diminished battery longevity. Buyers will need to weigh their priorities carefully.
Where the Magic V6 truly excels is endurance. Its generously sized battery sustains nearly two full days of active use — more than eight hours of mixed browsing, messaging, work, and media consumption across both screens. Even heavy gaming sessions dent it less than competing foldables. A full charge from zero takes just 59 minutes via a standard 100W USB-C charger, with the battery reaching 50% in only 25 minutes. The charger itself is not included in the box, which feels like a stingy gesture at this price point.
A Camera System With Real Depth
The triple-camera array on the rear is where Honor has invested genuine improvements over the V5. The 50MP primary sensor produces excellent stills at its default 12MP output, delivering strong detail and colour range through its cropped 2x zoom — though photographers shooting striped or patterned fabrics should watch for moiré artefacts. The 50MP ultrawide lens has been refined to address distortion issues that plagued its predecessor, and the 64MP 3x telephoto emerges as the stand-out performer, capturing superb detail even when cropped to an effective 6x magnification through its 2x digital crop.
Low-light photography is competently handled across all three rear lenses, and the camera app itself is intuitive and well-equipped. A manual mode caters to more creative shooters, while an abundance of computational tools — including AI-powered features — assist those who prefer automatic optimisation. Video recording supports up to 4K at 60 frames per second, and the phone can be operated in various partially folded orientations, a genuine advantage of the foldable form factor. Two 20MP selfie cameras, one embedded in each screen, ensure consistent self-portrait quality whether the device is open or closed.
Software: The Persistent Weak Spot
If the hardware tells a story of confidence and maturity, the software tells a different one entirely. The Magic V6 runs MagicOS 10, built on Android 16 — meaning it launches behind rivals already running Android 17. Honor has committed to seven years of Android version and security updates for devices sold within Europe, which is reassuring for longevity, but the launch-day experience feels dated before it has properly begun.
MagicOS has improved since its predecessor, offering a clean aesthetic, generous customisation, and the clever ability to run three applications in split-screen beyond the physical display boundaries. Google’s Gemini assistant can be configured to open in a split-screen window alongside whatever app is currently active, activated by a quick flex of the tablet. Yet the implementation is riddled with niggles that undermine the premium positioning.
The dedicated “AI button” on the power button — designed to launch torch functions or AI tools with a double-tap — simply does not work. Google Chrome refuses to open in split-screen mode due to a persistent bug. Honor’s own App Market insists on updating applications installed from Google Play, creating conflict between the two storefronts. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp stubbornly open as small floating windows even when a notification is tapped on the external screen, and there is no option for different home screen layouts on the inside and outside displays.
These are not the kinds of issues one expects on a device costing up to £2,000. They are the sort of oversights that pass muster on a budget handset but feel indefensible here. Honor has built a remarkable piece of engineering; it has simply not finished the job on the software layer.
Sustainability and the Bottom Line
Honor has made commendable efforts on the sustainability front. The battery is guaranteed to retain at least 80% capacity after 1,200 full-charge cycles. Spare parts pricing is published transparently — the internal screen replacement costs £609, the external screen £152, plus labour and shipping — and the company offers a free screen repair programme (Care+) for 24 months on devices purchased before 2 August. Trade-in and refurbished options are also available, and the device contains a measurable quantity of recycled materials detailed in its environmental impact report.
At £1,499.99 introductory, rising to £1,999.99 in August, the Magic V6 sits competitively against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra at £1,899 and the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold at £1,749. But while its price undercuts Samsung’s offering, it asks a premium over Google’s, and the value proposition becomes harder to justify given the software shortcomings.
The Magic V6 is a genuinely impressive piece of portable engineering — slim, light, extraordinarily durable, and capable of lasting well beyond a single working day on a single charge. Its cameras deliver genuine versatility, and the hardware feels confident and considered. Yet it remains a device that asks you to overlook its unfinished software in exchange for physical excellence. In a category where Samsung and Google are closing the gap on both hardware and software polish, Honor’s reluctance to perfect the user experience is its own greatest liability.
Why it Matters
The Honor Magic V6 crystallises a defining tension in the premium foldable market: hardware innovation has raced ahead of software refinement, and consumers paying upwards of £1,500 deserve both. As foldables inch closer to mainstream adoption, brands that prioritise physical design while neglecting the operating system experience risk ceding ground to more complete ecosystems. Honor’s willingness to publish repair costs, commit to long-term updates, and push battery technology forward sets a standard the industry should follow — but until the software matches the hardware ambition, the Magic V6 remains a brilliant device that asks too much of its buyers’ patience.
