DxOMark | The Honor V30 Pro is a hard-to-recommend camera beast

Huawei launched the Honor V30 phones a few months ago in China. Just like the Mate 30 phones, the V30 devices do not ship with Google Play Services support, which makes them hard to recommend to potential buyers outside China. That aside, though, it would seem that the phones offer excellent camera performance. The Honor V30 Pro made the trip to DxOMark, and performed brilliantly.

The V30 Pro recorded an overall score of 122, which makes it the second-best camera smartphone on DxOMarks' leaderboard, one point less than the Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G, and one point more than the regular Mate 30 Pro and Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition.

In the still photography category, the Honor V30 Pro earned a score of 133, on par with the Mate 30 Pro 5G (134) and Mate 30 Pro (132). Some notable weaknesses include autofocus failures and blue color cast in shadow areas.

In the video category, the V30 Pro made off with a score of 100, on par with all the other top dogs—Mate 30 Pro 5G, Pixel 4, iPhone 11 Pro Max, and Mi CC9 Pro Premium Edition. Notable weaknesses include autofocus issues and denoising artifacts in low-light conditions.

It's no surprise that the V30 Pro performs this well, as its camera hardware is almost on par with that of the Mate 30 Pro. For one, it's the first Honor phone to feature the 40 MP IMX600. The IMX600 is a huge 1/1.7" sensor with a binned pixel size of 2.0μm.

The IMX600 has been exclusive to Huawei's Mate and P series until now, and introducing it to the budget-focused Honor brand could be an attempt to raise interest in the V30 Pro, offsetting the lack of Google Services. We don't think that will prove to be effective, sadly, but the V30 Pro succeeds at offering a camera champ at its US$570 price point. That's hard to compete with.