Bold iPhone clone but still a brilliant smartphone? Honor Magic 8 Pro Air review verdict
With the Air model, Honor is expanding its high-end Magic8 family with another smartphone, which at first glance closely resembles current Apple smartphones in terms of design and even name.
The Magic8 Pro Air is available in four color variants, including the striking orange shade of the test unit, which closely resembles the "signature color" of the iPhone 17 Pro, suggesting a clear alignment with Apple’s color palette.
Apple’s influence is also visible in the camera design. The camera bar on the Magic8 Pro Air is styled similarly to the Air model from Cupertino but uses the right side for additional sensors, giving the slim smartphone its own identity. Strictly speaking, Apple itself drew design inspiration from Google’s Pixel smartphones, which helped popularize the camera bar design, a trend that Honor is now continuing.
Even so, the design of this iPhone Air competitor should not distract from the strong overall package. The price-to-performance ratio of the Magic8 Pro Air is also very attractive. However, the Honor phone is likely to remain officially available only in China. Imports from China start at around €700. The CN version of Honor also includes a multilingual package with German language support.
Compact and lightweight Android phone makes the iPhone Air look less impressive
Despite the likely limited availability as a China-exclusive phone, the Magic8 Pro Air is an interesting option for fans of compact smartphones. This is especially notable because in some areas both the iPhone Air and a Galaxy S25 Edge fall behind.
The camera module on the Honor phone may look similar to its Apple counterpart, but it delivers clearly higher quality. The main camera uses a similarly large 1/1.3-inch sensor as the Pro model. Despite its compact design, photos from the Magic8 Pro Air perform well in testing and show more detail, significantly better dynamic range, and less artificial sharpening compared to the iPhone 17.
In contrast to the Apple iPhone Air, which only has a single rear camera, the Magic8 Pro Air also includes a 50 MP ultra-wide camera and a 64 MP periscope telephoto lens with OIS and 3.2x optical zoom, which can still produce solid results up to 5x zoom.
Additional advantages of the Magic8 Pro Air, which are covered in more detail in our in-depth review, include its weight, battery, and GPU performance.
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