Honor Magic V3 review - The slimmest foldable is now even thinner

Last year, the Magic V2 was already considered the benchmark for the architecture of foldable smartphones, as it was the thinnest of its kind to date. Unfortunately, the V2 only reached international markets around six months after its launch in China. Although it was announced at the International Consumer Electronics Fair (IFA) in Berlin in 2023, it would take until January 2024 before interested parties could hold it in their own hands.

This year, the Magic V3 was presented for the global market once again at the IFA, but it should be available to purchase soon. At the time of testing, a specific date had yet to be set. The Honor foldable comes with the latest chipset from Qualcomm and it features lots of storage. It is now IP-certified and should be even more robust. In order to defend its title as the thinnest foldable smartphone, it has also become even slimmer—although the battery inside offers even more power.

Our review will reveal whether all these superlatives are enough for the phone to take the foldable crown.

Please note: We have updated our rating system and the results of version 8 are not comparable with the results of version 7. More information is available here.

The Honor Magic V3 comes in a relatively large outer box, but there is no sign of any plastic on the outside or the inside. All accessories come packaged in small cardboard boxes. Honor hasn't provided any information on its CO₂ footprint or whether and how many recycled materials are used in the Magic V3. We did, however, receive this statement: 

HONOR consistently upholds the principle of producing greener and more environmentally sustainable products, aiming to enhance user experience while reducing the negative impact on the environment. We integrate the concept of green and circular economy into the whole life cycle of product development, develop and introduce applicable green and low-carbon technologies, and provide users with innovative and eco-friendly products with high quality. 
In 2023, through technological innovation, we have cumulatively reduced and avoided approximately 876 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. This reduction was achieved in the stages of product research and design, material selection and usage, durability improvement, and product efficiency enhancement. These efforts have significantly contributed to the achievement of our carbon neutrality goals.
We established a Green Product Technology Management Team to conduct research in professional fields such as environmental regulations, green product design, and clean production technologies. The team explores possibilities for green product upgrades in all aspects, such as product performance and production materials. They also formulate and promote innovative solutions to ensure the realization of our environmental concept throughout the entire product life cycle. 
We conduct environmental impact assessments throughout the entire product life cycle to understand the impact of our products on the environment, providing a data foundation for the optimization of energy conservation and emission reduction. We closely collaborate with our supply chain partners to collect product-related environmental data based on standards such as ISO14064/14067 and PAS2050 to ensure the authenticity and accuracy of the data. We assess and disclose the environmental impact of the product life cycle from dimensions such as product carbon footprint, hazardous substances, product energy efficiency, material selection, and recyclability. 
Based on the carbon footprint assessment, over 80% of the carbon emissions from HONOR products originate from the raw materials and production stages. We actively communicate with upstream suppliers to identify potential emission reduction opportunities at the production source. We encourage them to use clean energy, set carbon reduction targets and emission reduction pathways, and optimize high-emission processes to minimize carbon emissions from production.

Spare parts for the V3 aren't sold directly to customers and suitable instructions for repair are not available. Still, it is possible to have your foldable phone repaired directly by Honor.

The Honor Magic V3 supports the fast be-standard Wi-Fi 7. Unfortunately, it still doesn't offer any support for 6-GHz WLAN. In combination with our reference router—the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000—its transfer rates were quite fast and stable. 

We are currently still waiting for feedback from Honor regarding the phone's supported mobile frequency bands. As soon as we have this, we will provide the corresponding information. Its band support will probably be as broad as its predecessor. The Magic V3 connected well in a large city environment. Only the radio strength display wasn't always accurate. Occasionally, it showed we had access to 5G inside buildings, although access to the internet was practically impossible.

The Honor Magic V3 has space for two Nano SIM cards and can additionally or alternatively use an eSIM. Functions such as VoLTE and WLAN calls are supported.

When held up to your ear, the phone's call quality is great and ambient noise is suppressed quite well. The loudspeaker also works reliably, although users of the V3 then sound a little dull.

In addition, an ultra-wide-angle lens is installed, which also serves as a macro lens. Although its dynamic range and resolution are high, lots of details are blurred toward the photo edges. However, we really like its macro performance.

Honor has also made use of a periscope zoom for the first time inside a foldable smartphone. It features a 3.5x optical zoom and can enlarge digitally up to 100x. The photos look good and still deliver relatively decent results up to a 10x zoom.

Videos can be recorded in 720p, 1,080p or 2,160p and all resolutions allow up to 60fps. The 24fps are reserved for movie mode, which can also use LOG. The optional 21:9 format is unfortunately only a cropped image of the 16:9 format and only has 3,840 x 1,644 pixels.

Under controlled lighting conditions, the Magic V3's main camera showed slightly increased color deviations in its green tones and dark browns, which were displayed too bright and highly saturated.

The image of our test chart looked very sharp in the center and showed a lot of detail, while the sharpness decreased as expected towards the edge of the photo, with some contours also being slightly blurred.

The integrated Adreno 750 graphics unit is also throttled in Honor's standard settings, but you can also access its full graphics calculation performance with performance mode activated.

Its throttled performance was also reflected in the browser benchmarks. When running Jetstream 2.0, however, the value was lower with activated performance mode than without. During everyday use, on the other hand, this supposedly low performance likely won't make itself known.

The Magic V3 uses modern UFS 4.0 storage and delivers consistently high speeds. Storage expansion using a microSD card is not possible.

The Honor Magic V3's two speakers deliver a pleasant sound at medium volume, but they become less harmonious as the volume increases.

The USB-C port can be used for wired audio output, while Bluetooth is available wirelessly. However, the latter has rather limited codec support, at least as far as Honor's specifications are concerned. Unfortunately, these cannot be read out in the settings.