Honor 400 review: Striking the right balance

At a glance

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Premium look and feel
• Great cameras with Harcourt portrait effects
• Excellent battery life
• Nifty AI features
• Long software support

Cons

• Slower charging than its predecessor
• Not the best for gaming

Our Verdict

The Honor 400 is a solid mid-range phone with a stacked spec sheet and tonnes of great features. The cameras are solid, the battery lasts a long time, and it looks and feels premium. It’s not enough of a powerhouse to satisfy keen gamers, but elsewhere the performance is great.

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Last year’s Honor 200 made a splash by offering great photography at a very reasonable price point. It stood out with its dedicated 2.5x telephoto and the excellent Studio Harcourt portrait mode, which landed first with the 200 series phones.

Now, its successor has arrived (there is no Honor 300), but Honor is taking a slightly different approach. This model ditches the telephoto, relying on an upgraded 200Mp main sensor and AI-powered super zoom tech instead.

It’s also significantly cheaper, launching at £399.99, rather than £499 making it more of a threat for the Tech Advisor’s best mid-range phones list.

Furthermore, despite the lower price, there are plenty of upgrades here. It now has a brighter display, an IP rating, a bigger battery and plenty of new software features.

The question is, has Honor managed to strike a perfect balance of upgrades and compromises for a £400-ish phone? The competition is stiff, but this model has plenty to offer. Let’s see what it’s all about.

Design & Build

• Aluminium frame, glass back
• 184g
• IP65 rated

The Honor 400 takes the design in a slightly different direction from last year’s 200. There are no longer smooth micro curves at the edge of the display and on the rear panel, both are completely flat, as are the side rails.

The new shape makes it feel very similar to an iPhone 16, or the Samsung Galaxy S25+, but this one’s significantly cheaper than either of those.

Luke Baker

However, judging by its look and feel, you could easily mistake it for a pricey flagship device. I would normally say the dual rear cameras give away its mid-range status, but now that the Galaxy S25 Edge exists, that’s no longer strictly true.

The 400s rear is made from glass with a smooth matte feel, and the frame is made from plastic, but if it weren’t for the lack of antenna lines, you’d never be able to tell. I was certainly fooled. It’s a relatively lightweight phone, at just 184g, but it feels dense and solid throughout.

I have the Midnight Black model in for testing, which has a matte finish on the rear. I love the way matt phones look, but I’m always concerned about fingerprint smudges. Thankfully, with this model, it’s not an issue in the slightest; it always looks pristine.

Luke Baker

If you want something that stands out a little more, you may be tempted by the Desert Gold option. Meanwhile, the Meteor Silver colourway is a lighter option with a similarly professional look.

The design of the camera module has changed quite dramatically since last year; The Honor 200 series phones had a rather unusual oval-shaped design, and I wasn’t too keen on it. This new layout reminds me of Huawei’s Pura 70 series phones, which I think look great. In my opinion, it’s a change for the better.

Last year’s Honor 200 lacked an IP rating, which some found off-putting, but that’s been resolved this time around. The Honor 400 is IP65 rated, which means it’s immune to dust ingress, and it’ll handle jets of water from all directions.

It’s very well sealed against the elements, just don’t go submerging it fully.

Luke Baker

On a related note, this phone also features Honor’s excellent “Super Rainproof Touch.” So if you’re out in wet weather, the touchscreen will still work as expected – that’s a big win if you live in the UK like me.

Screen & Speakers

• 6.55-inch 1200 x 2664 OLED 120Hz
• 5000 nits peak brightness
• Stereo speakers

The Honor 400 has a 6.55-inch screen, which makes it bigger than the standard iPhone 16 or Galaxy S25, but smaller than the S25+. I wouldn’t exactly call it a compact phone, but those with smaller hands will find this easier to wield than any bumper-sized flagship.

Luke Baker

It’s a 120Hz OLED panel with a 1200 x 2664 resolution and a peak brightness of 5000 nits. These are very impressive specs at this price point, and as you might imagine, the panel looks wonderful.

It’s more than bright enough to compete with direct sunlight, colours are vibrant and accurate, and the dark areas are deep and inky. If you watch some HDR content, the panel really shows what it can do. The dynamic range is excellent, and the highlights are dazzling.

As we’ve seen with a lot of recent Honor devices, the screen comes with a plethora of eye care certifications and features. The list includes 3840Hz PWM dimming, low blue light mode, AI defocus mode, circadian night display, motion sickness relief and more.

If you’re concerned about eye health, this is among the best options on the market.

Luke Baker

The phone has dual stereo speakers positioned on the top and bottom sides.

It’s not a given in this price range, and I’m always happy to see a proper stereo set. The sound quality is very good, there’s lots of detail, and more low-end response than most mid-rangers can provide, but they’re not especially loud.

If you max out the volume, an icon appears on screen to let you know you have activated “200% high volume mode”, but even then, it’s a little underwhelming. It’ll get the job done at home, but if you want to get the party started, consider picking up one of the best Bluetooth speakers.

Specs & Performance

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3
• 8GB RAM
• 256GB / 512GB storage

The Honor 400 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3. Bizarrely, that’s the exact same chip found in last year’s phone. Based on that alone, we already have a decent idea of how this phone will perform.

It’ll be more than powerful enough for day-to-day tasks, but gamers may be left wanting more.

Luke Baker

Aside from the processor, the phone comes equipped with 8GB of RAM and either 256- or 512GB of storage. I’m always pleased to see 256GB offered as a base model, as in 2025, 128GB can feel rather limiting.

As expected, the phone never felt slow or underpowered while I was checking email, streaming videos and browsing social media feeds. In fact, even during heavy multitasking, the phone never stuttered or struggled to keep up.

It’s gaming where this phone’s mid-range price point becomes more apparent. It can run all of the most demanding titles, but you’ll have to stick to lower graphical presets to enjoy stable framerates.

Luke Baker

I found titles like Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero could hold a stable 30fps on the Medium graphics preset, whereas 60fps was stable on Low settings. It’s perfectly playable, but there are other, more powerful, options in this price range if gaming is your priority.

Honor 400 benchmarks

Cameras

• 200 Mp f/1.9 main camera
• 12 Mp, f/2.2 ultrawide
• 50 Mp, f/2.1 selfie camera

The Honor 400 has a rather unusual camera configuration. The dedicated telephoto lens from last year’s model is gone, but the main sensor has been upgraded massively. It’s now a 200Mp unit with a 1/1.4-inch sensor.

Luke Baker

It seems to be the same sensor that the Xiaomi 15 Ultra and Vivo X200 Pro use for their telephoto cameras. In my opinion, they’re two of the best camera phones available, and that’s largely because of the telephoto quality.

This is the first time I’ve seen it used as a main sensor, and it performs just as well, with exceptional clarity and detail. However, it’s worth noting that two of my favourite aspects of the aforementioned flagship telephotos don’t apply here. With a 27mm equivalent focal length, you don’t get the same background compression as an 85mm shot, and it doesn’t have the same macro capabilities either.

Still, for close-ups, this relatively large sensor does produce some nice natural bokeh. Plus, you can always activate Honor’s excellent Studio Harcourt portrait mode when you need some extra subject separation.

There’s no dedicated telephoto on this model (you need the Honor 400 Pro for that) but with a high-resolution 200Mp main sensor, you can digitally zoom quite far, so long as there’s enough light. I found that results were decent up to around 10x, but pushing it further looked pretty awful.

However, the Honor 400 has another trick up its sleeve. It supports AI Super Zoom, just like the flagship Magic 7 Pro. At 15x zoom and above, an AI toggle appears on screen, and if you activate it, your resulting image will be upscaled in the cloud.

I had mixed results with this on the Magic 7 Pro, but it seems to be getting better over time. The Honor 400 produced much more realistic results. Of course, it still made up superfluous details from time to time, but that’s what AI does. The big difference here is that the zoom maxes out at 30x, rather than 100x.

The ultrawide on this model seems to be the same as last year’s, and that’s not great news. It does have autofocus and macro capabilities, which is handy, but it can’t come close to the quality of the main sensor. It really struggles at night, too.

The selfie camera takes good shots in the daylight, but it lacks autofocus, and it gets grainy in low-light conditions. It’s a decent showing, but there are better options if you’re a selfie addict.

For video shooting, you can capture at up to 4K 30fps on all lenses, but if you want 60fps you’ll need to switch down to 1080p. Stabilisation is very good, but switching between lenses isn’t the smoothest, so sticking to one focal length while recording might be the way to go.

Battery Life & Charging

• 5300mAh battery
• 66W wired charging
• No wireless charging

The Honor 400 has a 5300mAh battery, a modest increase on the Honor 200’s 5200mAh battery. It’s using the latest silicon-carbon tech, and it’s a bigger battery than you’ll find in most similarly priced phones, so there’s nothing to complain about here.

Charging, on the other hand, has seen a bit of a downgrade. It’s now 66W, rather than 100W, and you no longer get a charge in the box, at least in Europe.

Luke Baker

Still, 66W charging is pretty quick, so long as you have a suitable power adapter. I found it could take the device from fully dead to over 75% charged in just half an hour. For most people’s needs, that’s more than quick enough.

Battery life has been fantastic throughout my testing, too. I shouldn’t be surprised, as I was impressed by the Magic 7 Pro’s longevity, and this has the same capacity and OS, with a less power-hungry chip. I was consistently getting around two days of use on a charge, it’s a pleasure to live with.

Software & Apps

• Magic OS 9, based on Android 15
• Lots of AI features
• The first phone to come with Google Image to Video
• A big upgrade on software support promise

The Honor 400 runs Magic OS 9, the latest version of Honor’s Android 15 skin. It’s a divisive operating system that strays pretty far from the stock Android experience, but personally, I have become quite fond of it.

Luke Baker

In some ways, it feels more like iOS than Android, but as someone who frequently switches between the two, I feel right at home. The notifications and settings shade are split and accessed with swipes from different sides of the display, there’s no app drawer by default, and there are even Honor’s own versions of Dynamic Island and StandBy mode.

Some of the battery-saving measures are a little extreme, but that can be remedied by tweaking options in the settings menu. There’s also a bit of bloat to clean up when you first set up the device, but it’s nothing too egregious, and you can have it all removed in a matter of minutes.

If you’ve used an Honor device in the last few years, none of this is new. What’s different this time is that Honor has added a slew of new AI features into the mix. Some debuted early last year, like Magic Portal, but there’s so much more to explore now.

Luke Baker

One of the big ones is Google’s new Image to Video tool, which is debuting first on the Honor 400 series phones. This lets you take any image, hit a button, and it’ll spit out a 5-second video. It’s pretty wild, and it can be unpredictable, but that’s part of the fun.

There’s no prompting or control of any kind, the AI will just do as it sees fit. Sometimes it’s simple, like water flowing down a stream, or someone smiling and blinking, and sometimes it’s just bizarre, like a vase of flowers that telescopes into a bigger one. In any case, the results look shockingly realistic.

This is a feature that’s developed by Google (like Circle to Search), so it will arrive on other phones in the future, but it’s landing here first. It’s free for now, but it sounds like Google may charge for the privilege in the future. Personally, I could never imagine myself paying for something like this, but it’ll likely be bundled with more useful stuff like Google Photos and Gemini features.

Honor’s own AI applications tend more toward the practical side. There’s all the usual stuff, like AI translation, summarisation and writing tools, plus some more unusual ones like AI deepfake protection for video calls.

Luke Baker

However, the image editing tools impressed me the most. The object eraser is excellent and the new AI outpainting feature allows you to expand images to have a wider field of view, which can be very handy. Reflection removal works quite well, too. We’ve seen similar features from competitors but Honor’s implementation is very impressive.

It’s also worth mentioning the software support terms. Honor is now promising 6 years of major Android OS upgrades and six years of security patches for the 400 series. It’s a big improvement over the thre Android upgrades and four years of security patches promised for last year’s models and only one year off Samsung and Google.

Price & Availability

The Honor 400 launched on 22 May 2025 in the UK, alongside the Honor 400 Pro. It’s available to order outright from Honor’s website and authorised retailers like Amazon, Argos, Currys and Very.

It will also be available on contract from network providers like Three, EE O2, Vodaphone and Tesco Mobile.

Globally, the Honor 400 series will be available in most regions, but Honor phones rarely launch in the US, and this one’s no different.

The Honor 400 retails for £399.99 with 256GB of storage or £449 with 512GB storage.

In the EU, it’ll cost you €499 for 256GB or €549 for 512GB.

Check out our list of the best mid-range phones for more alternatives.

Should you buy the Honor 400?

The Honor 400 is a compelling all-rounder at a very approachable price point. It looks and feels great, the screen is lovely, the cameras are good and the battery lasts for ages. The software might not be to everyone’s taste, but it works well for me, and there are plenty of new AI features to try out.

Honor seems to be gunning for the Google Pixel 9a and Samsung Galaxy A56 with this release, and it stands up well compared to either. It’s significantly cheaper than both, but often bests them in specs. Neither can match the battery capacity and charging speeds, for example, and it’s the only one with a 200Mp snapper.

That said, there are plenty of other tempting models in this price range. The Nothing Phone (3a) and (3a) Pro are definitely worth considering, and if you’re a gamer, the similarly priced Poco F7 Pro blows all of these phones out of the water with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.

If you’re looking for a blend of photographic chops and AI smarts around the £400 mark, though, the Honor 400 stands out as one of the best options available.

Specs

• Magic OS 9, based on Android 15
• 6.55-inch, 1200 x 2664, OLED, 120Hz
• Optical under-display fingerprint sensor
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3
• 8GB RAM
• 256GB / 512GB storage
• Cameras:
• 200Mp main sensor
• 12Mp ultrawide
• 50Mp selfie camera
• Up to 4K @ 60fps rear video
• Stereo speakers
• Dual-SIM
• Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6
• Bluetooth 5.4
• 5300mAh battery
• 66W wired charging
• 156.6 x 73.8 x 9.9 mm (folded)
• IP65 certified
• 184g
• Colours: Midnight Black / Meteor Silver / Desert Gold