After hanging out by itself with final yr’s Honor 50, Honor is again with one other elegant mid-range smartphone. The Honor 70 follows an identical template to its predecessor, offering Huawei-like suave design, with out the software program restrictions, at a mid-range worth level.
Whereas this strategy is remarkably comparable in some ways, Honor has discovered a couple of new methods over the previous 12 months, mainly within the type of a novel digital camera system and a bigger battery.
These are shark-filled waters, nonetheless. With an extremely sturdy class of rivals priced at lower than £400, the Honor 70 has its work lower out proving that £480 remains to be good worth for what you’re getting.
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Honor 70 evaluation: What you should know
The Honor 70 is an atypically elegant mid-ranger that gives an excellent impression of an out-and-out flagship. Its slim, curvaceous design would possibly simply remind you of telephones promoting for double the cash.
Most noteworthy on the spec entrance is the Honor 70’s new digital camera system, which is the primary available on the market to make use of the 54MP Sony IMX800 extensive sensor. Along with some fascinating video options, it’s one other cellphone that guarantees large on the images entrance for a lower than premium worth.
Mix that with strong Snapdragon 778G Plus efficiency, a 6.67in FHD+ 120Hz OLED show and speedy 66W charging, and you’ve got one other compelling smartphone possibility for lower than £500.
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Honor 70 evaluation: Worth and competitors
The Honor 70 solely is available in a single variant right here within the UK, which provides you 8GB of RAM and 128GB of inside storage. This mannequin will set you again £480.
There aren’t many telephones that retail for that worth, which means it’s troublesome to make direct comparisons. The closest competitors is the present class of overachieving mid-rangers, which counts amongst its quantity the OnePlus Nord 2T (£319), the Pixel 6a (£384), the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G (£399), and the Nothing Cellphone (1) (£449).
Head within the dearer course, and also you gained’t encounter a lot of notice till you run into the £600 Pixel 6. On the time of writing, the Pixel 6 is definitely going for £474 on Google’s web site, with the Pixel 7 not far-off, however let’s keep on with the launch worth for the sake of readability.
Honor 70 evaluation: Design and key options
Whereas many producers are shifting in the direction of flatter shows and sharper corners, the Honor 70 sticks with the premium dual-curved show look of the Honor 50.
This can be a beautiful cellphone to carry and behold, with a thin 7.91mm physique, flat metallic high and backside edges, and a tiny facet bezel that contributes to a 90.8% screen-to-body ratio. It’s comparatively gentle, too, at simply 178g.
My mannequin is available in an interesting Emerald Inexperienced color, which glints pleasingly as you tilt it in the direction of the sunshine. There are additionally Midnight Black and Crystal Silver choices. The glass again is silky to the contact, nevertheless it does are inclined to put on fingerprints like little greasy badges. The cellphone additionally lacks a water-resistant IP ranking, not like the Samsung Galaxy A53 5G and the Pixel 6a.
One factor to say is that, in the direction of the tip of my time with the system, I seen a small crack in a single nook on the rear of the cellphone, regardless of no droppage having occurred, and no signal of beauty injury to the close by edges to point a collision. I wouldn’t like to take a position on the reason for this, suffice to say that whereas the Honor 70 design could be very engaging, you would possibly need to wrap it up in a protecting case.
There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack right here, although that’s hardly uncommon nowadays. What’s tougher to defend is the dearth of stereo audio system, with the one bottom-mounted speaker granting loud, clear, however finally restricted sound output.
Honor’s Magic UI 6.1 sits on high of Android 12, however continues to evoke its Huawei EMUI roots. That’s a coded method of claiming you’ll discover gauche menus and an excessive amount of bloatware clogging up the house display screen if you first swap it on.
Nonetheless, the Honor 70’s software program feels quick and usable, and finally secures a spot in mid-table obscurity with regards to the customized Android UI league.
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Honor 70 evaluation: Show
Honor has outfitted its cellphone with a 6.67in OLED show, full with a 2,400 x 1,080 (FHD+) decision. It’s able to hitting a speedy 120Hz refresh fee, whereas a 300Hz contact sampling fee offers a excessive diploma of responsiveness when gaming.
Just like the flagship Honor Magic 4 Professional (£791), the Honor 70 additionally encompasses a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) dimming fee of 1,920Hz, which ought to minimise eye pressure. By comparability, the iPhone 13 Professional solely manages 480Hz. Such a factor is difficult to appraise in real-world utilization, and all I can attest to is the Honor 70 show’s all-round fluidity.
After switching to the extra pure Regular display screen mode, I discovered it to be colour-accurate to the tune of a 95.4% gamut protection and 95.6% gamut quantity within the sRGB house. A mean Delta E ranking of 1.4 is respectable, too, if nicely wanting best-in-class.
With auto-brightness switched off, I recorded a most measured luminance of 445cd/m². Once more, that’s completely respectable, if wanting the perfect.
That dual-curved show does current distracting discolouration the place the sides fall away, which isn’t very best when streaming video content material. It’s an inevitable consequence of the design, and one thing to keep in mind if media playback takes up a variety of your time.
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Honor 70 evaluation: Efficiency and battery life
Honor hasn’t made an enormous leap ahead from the Honor 50 with regards to efficiency, with the Snapdragon 778G Plus 5G merely including a couple of hertz to earn its “Plus” moniker.
Nonetheless, it is a completely succesful mid-range chip, as we found with the Nothing Cellphone (1). Common Geekbench 5 scores of 813 for single-core and a pair of,935 for multicore put it proper in amongst its mid-range rivals for CPU efficiency.
GPU speeds are equally aggressive, although not absolutely the quickest amongst its class. The gaming expertise is respectable reasonably than spectacular, with Genshin Influence remaining playable at Medium settings and 60fps, with a few noticeable stutters alongside the best way.
Elsewhere on the specs entrance, you’ll get 8GB of RAM right here within the UK, in addition to 128GB of inside storage. That’s fairly normal as mid-range Android telephones go.
Honor has outfitted its cellphone with a 4,800mAh battery, which is a giant step up from the 4,300mAh cell of the Honor 50. I discovered the Honor 70’s stamina to be considered one of its sturdy fits, able to getting me by a full day with four-and-a-half to 5 hours of full 120Hz screen-on time, but nonetheless leaving me with round 50% energy.
The Honor 70 lasted 21hrs 37mins in our normal looping video check. That’s proper up there within the mid-range cellphone stamina stakes, sitting above the Nothing Cellphone (1) and the Pixel 6a, nearly drawing stage with the mighty Samsung Galaxy A53 5G, and solely falling considerably wanting the OnePlus Nord 2T.
You additionally get a 66W Honor SuperCharge charger within the field, which is able to get you from zero to 80% in round half-hour, and crack on to 100% inside 45 minutes.
Honor 70 evaluation: Cameras
The Honor 70’s digital camera system is without doubt one of the most fascinating issues about it. It’s primarily a twin digital camera system led by a 54MP foremost sensor. That’s not a typo. That is the primary outing for the 54MP 1/1.49in Sony IMX800 sensor.
This foremost sensor captures sharp, vibrant, well-exposed pictures in sturdy to average lighting, with 4-in-1 pixel binning producing a 2.0μm equal pixel dimension. I used to be genuinely impressed by the element and pure color in a collection of lunch pictures I took, whereas snaps fired off from a pedalo on a sunny day demonstrated respectable HDR chops, balancing out the shady bushes and the brilliant fluffy clouds.
I used to be additionally impressed by how the Honor 70’s foremost digital camera dealt with a neon-drenched bar at a marriage reception whereas nonetheless capturing a pure avenue scene by the window.
It’s not so sizzling when the lights drop decrease, nonetheless. The disappointing lack of OIS undermines the cellphone’s comparatively giant picture sensor, leading to barely fuzzy – if removed from disastrous – Evening mode photographs.
That foremost sensor is backed by a 50MP ultrawide, which can be on macro obligation. Its ultrawide pictures are strong, matching the tone of the primary sensor fairly nicely, although I seen some clear cases of purple fringing on the bushes in the direction of the sting of the body.
The place that secondary sensor actually excels is in macro mode, and it’s right here that the additional pixels and the extra succesful centre-frame are put to good use selecting out nice close-up element. There’s additionally a 2MP depth sensor, however that’s neither right here nor there.
The Honor 70’s 32MP selfie digital camera is able to capturing some spectacular, well-exposed pictures in enough lighting, with the topic popping from the background in pleasing trend. Portrait mode successfully ladles on some additional bokeh, must you want to intensify that impact.
Honor has additionally added some vlogging-focused video options, with varied multi-video capabilities that mix simultaneous feeds from every of the cameras. Honor’s Individual Autofocus Monitoring Expertise, in the meantime, enables you to observe a single face in a crowd and it really works reasonably nicely.
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Honor 70 evaluation: Verdict
The Honor 70 is a sublime, extremely succesful mid-range smartphone with respectable efficiency, sturdy battery life and a digital camera that’s able to superb issues in the correct situations. Its design, whereas removed from authentic, provides a contact of flagship class, too.
Nevertheless, it enters a market the place the OnePlus Nord 2T (£319), Pixel 6a (£384), Samsung Galaxy A53 5G (£399) and Nothing Cellphone (1) (£449) are providing comparable and infrequently superior options for roughly £80 much less. Because of this, whereas the Honor 70 is an efficient cellphone, it doesn’t really feel like nice worth.
In the event you really need that elegant, curvaceous flagship design, then the Honor 70 is nearly as good as you’re going to get south of £500. But when all-round digital camera high quality or flat-out efficiency matter extra to you, otherwise you need options comparable to correct water-resistance or wi-fi charging, there are higher choices for much less cash.
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