Honor 20 Pro review

Selfies

Selfies look great. Although there's no autofocus, the focus distance seems to be optimal at around half arm's length. The 32MP photos offer great sharpness, detail and natural skin tone. Dynamic range is above average but you might struggle balancing the shadows and highlights in sub-optimal conditions. The portrait mode, as expected, isn't as good as on the main and telephoto camera but it was to be expected - there are no additional sensors used for depth sensing - it's all just software. It finds it difficult to manage hair in some cases.

Normal selfies

Portrait selfies

Macro camera

Here are a couple of macro samples from the dedicated macro camera. The detail is surprisingly good for a 2MP unit, but you do have to get close to the subject as the fixed focus distance is just 4cm.

Super macro mode

We also wanted to see if you are better off using the main camera for macro shots. Of course, the optimal focus distance on the main unit is much further but you can crop the image to get the same level of magnification as the macro camera as we've done below for comparison's sake.

Macro vs normal cameras: Macro • Normal cropped • Normal • Macro • Normal cropped • Normal

It turns out that the main camera takes photos with better contrast, punchier colors and generally more detail. If you don't mind the hassle of cropping after you've taken the shot (the gallery has the functionality), the macro lens will hardly be needed.

Video recording

The handset can record in 2160@30fps and 1080p@30/60fps - EIS and OIS work together to deliver smooth video recording. Moreover, all three cameras can record in 4K - the main, the telephoto and the ultra wide-angle. Here are some samples.

The main camera does a pretty good job delivering good dynamic range, nice contrast, no visible noise and punchy colors.

The ultra-wide angle, however, starts to lose some detail along the edges, which was to be expected, and also loses some information in the shadows, meaning that the dynamic range isn't as good.

Surprisingly, Honor didn't add any artificial sharpness but due to the nature of the telephoto lenses, expect less detail and slightly darker videos overall.

And as for stabilization, the Honor 20 Pro offers EIS for all of its video modes - in 2160p and in 1080p. In either case, the stabilization works great but keep in mind that there's no way to disable it so it will always crop a part of the frame when using a tripod, for example. And, of course, it's a bit better in 1080p mode, which was to be expected.

Once you are done with the real-world videos, take a look at how it stacks against the competition in a more controlled environment.

2160p: Honor 20 Pro against the Asus Zenfone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S10e in our Video compare tool