Honor Magic V5 Review: A Foldable That Almost Feels Ready for Everyone

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks with the Honor Magic V5, and I’ll admit—this one surprised me - especially after having already written its initial hands-on. Foldables have always fascinated me, but I never felt like I could live with one full-time. Too heavy, too chunky, too compromised. The V5 doesn’t erase all of that, but it gets close enough that I caught myself thinking, maybe this is the foldable that finally works for me.

It’s hard not to notice how absurdly thin the device is when unfolded. At 4.1mm, it almost feels fragile at first touch, like it could snap if I sneezed too hard. Of course, it doesn’t. The build is solid, sturdy even, but the illusion of fragility lingers. That said, the thinness makes it feel futuristic in a way most foldables still don’t.

Fold it up, though, and reality sets in. On paper, 8.8mm doesn’t sound bad—similar to many bar phones—but the weight and the camera bump make it feel bulkier. More like slipping a compact wallet into your pocket than a phone. Not unbearable, but not sleek either.

Honor deserves credit here. The Magic V5 is one of the best-built foldables I’ve handled. My unit came in Dawn Gold, which has this subtle gradient from bronze to champagne. The finish is striking but not flashy, and the hinge has a geometric shimmer that catches light in interesting ways. Small touches, but they add to the sense that this is a luxury device.

Durability is clearly a focus. The phone is rated IP58 and IP59, a first for Honor foldables. That means real protection against dust and water, something earlier models couldn’t quite promise. The hinge feels robust too, with a reassuring snap when you close it and a firm hold at any angle above 45 degrees. Honor says it’s tested for 500,000 folds. I obviously didn’t get close to that, but after two weeks, it feels as tight as day one.

The one gripe—and I can’t ignore it—is the camera bump. It’s massive. The circular housing looks stylish, but it’s impractical. Lay the phone on a table and it wobbles constantly. Hold it folded and it digs into your grip. You get used to it, perhaps, but you’ll never love it.

This is where the Magic V5 really shines. The external screen is a 6.43-inch OLED, sharp, bright, and fluid at 120Hz. It peaks at 5000 nits, which is frankly overkill indoors but a blessing under Dubai’s unforgiving sun.

Unfold the device, and you’re greeted by a nearly 8-inch display. It’s vibrant, crisp, and large enough to make you forget you’re holding a phone at all. Watching videos, reading articles, even scrolling through emails—it’s like using a small tablet, except one that folds neatly into your pocket afterward.

The crease is there, but handled better than on most competitors. Head-on, you barely see it. You only notice when tilting the screen at sharp angles or deliberately running your finger across. Importantly, it doesn’t interrupt everyday interactions. Typing, swiping, sketching with the stylus (sold separately, of course)—the crease fades into the background.

MagicOS 9.0, built on Android 15, is where the V5 makes its case as more than just a hardware flex. Foldables live or die on software, and this version finally feels thought through.

Split-screen multitasking works smoothly. Dragging an app into a second pane feels natural, not clunky. Reading an article while taking notes, or keeping WhatsApp open alongside YouTube—it’s the kind of use case that justifies having two displays fused into one.

Then there’s Magic Portal, a feature I used to dismiss on older Honor phones. Here, it finally makes sense. You can grab an image, a block of text, or an address, and drag it straight into another app. Sharing screenshots from X to WhatsApp took seconds instead of the usual fiddly workaround. It’s small but transformative, the sort of thing that sneaks into your workflow until you can’t imagine going back.

That said, app optimization is still the elephant in the room. Some apps scale beautifully. Others stubbornly refuse to recognize the larger canvas. Gmail looks fine once rotated, WhatsApp adapts nicely, but YouTube sometimes insists on pretending it’s on a normal phone. This isn’t Honor’s fault entirely—it’s an Android problem—but it still undermines the experience.

With Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite and up to 16GB of RAM, the Magic V5 doesn’t stumble. Daily tasks are buttery smooth, even with apps running side by side. Scrolling is instant, switching between apps is fluid, and gaming handles well enough, though you’ll feel the heat if you push it too hard.

Benchmarks suggest it lags slightly behind bar phones with the same chip, mostly due to limited cooling inside such a thin body. But unless you’re obsessed with raw numbers, you won’t notice. For everyday use, it’s fast. Really fast.

AI features are sprinkled throughout—translation, transcription, photo cleanup. They work as expected, nothing groundbreaking, but at least they don’t get in the way. And Honor promises four years of OS updates plus five years of security patches, which feels reasonable but not quite Samsung-level.

The V5’s cameras are good but not amazing. The triple setup—50MP main, 64MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and 50MP ultrawide—delivers sharp, vibrant shots in daylight. Colors are pleasing, if occasionally leaning toward the artificial.

Portraits stand out, though the bokeh sometimes feels a bit overcooked. Zoom performance is better than expected at 3x, but beyond that, the quality starts to drop. The much-touted 100x digital zoom is more novelty than necessity. Yes, you can capture detail you wouldn’t otherwise, but it’s heavily reliant on AI reconstruction, and results vary.

Low-light performance is decent. Noise is controlled, highlights aren’t blown out, but fine detail gets smoothed away. It’s serviceable, not standout. Compared to Samsung or Apple flagships, it lags behind. Compared to other foldables, it’s competitive.

The 5820mAh battery sounds generous, and in practice, it mostly is. With regular unfolded use—emails, social, video streaming, a few photos—I managed a full day. By night, I usually had around 20% left, which sometimes required a quick top-up.

Heavy gaming or extended multitasking will drain it faster, but that’s expected. For perspective, my Samsung Galaxy S25 ends the day at around 40% with similar usage, but that’s a smaller phone with fewer screens to power.

Charging is fast. The 66W wired brick takes you from empty to full in under an hour, while 50W wireless is more than enough for casual top-ups. Honor’s silicon-carbon battery tech should also help longevity, though only time will tell.

So, is the Honor Magic V5 the foldable to buy? It depends.

At £1699.99, it’s undeniably expensive. And while Honor has made strides in durability and software, the bulkiness when folded and the still-inconsistent app optimization stop it from feeling perfect.

But here’s the thing: for the first time, when I switched back to a regular phone, I missed the V5. I missed the big canvas for reading. I missed having two apps side by side. I missed dragging images across apps instead of juggling menus.

That doesn’t happen often. It tells me Honor is close—closer than ever—to making foldables not just cool, but genuinely useful.

It’s not for everyone. Some will find it too heavy, too expensive, or too experimental. But if you’re curious about foldables and ready to pay the premium, the Magic V5 is one of the strongest options available today.