Honor hit the Australian market running with the brilliant Magic V5 last year. The Magic V6, which launched in Australia earlier this month has all the hallmarks of being a worthy successor, and it’s time to take it for a spin.
The new flagship in the Honor range, the Magic V6 carries a more premium price tag than the V5 at $2,999with 512GB of on-board storage. The phone retains that same thin profile, however it now has water and dust resistance and Honor managed to pack in even more battery this year.
We’ve already seen a number of new foldables this year. OPPO’s Find N6 decreased the crease visibility, and Motorola’s new Razr Fold was impressive as their first book style foldable. Samsung has just unveiled their passport inspired Fold8, as well as the traditional, thin and tall Fold8 Ultra which look to be just as good as we’ve come to expect.
We’re also expecting a new Pixel 11 Pro Fold shortly, so it’s a stacked foldable market that Honor launches their latest foldable into.
I spent the last couple of weeks using the Magic V6 and here’s how it went.
The Honor Magic V6 doesn’t depart from the familiar design of the previous model, simply adding improved dust/water resistance with the Magic V6 stepping up to IP68/IP69 improving the dust protection from last year.
There’s still a large 7.95” LTPO OLED internal display, however Honor have included a slightly larger 6.52” external OLED display this year.
Keeping that inner display accessible is the Super Steel Hinge, which Honor says is ‘reinforced by an AI-assisted bionic cushioning system’ letting the hinge absorb impact and distribute it evenly…if you drop it.
Honor haven’t changed things up with the button and port placement, with the same setup as last year – including the fingerprint sensor built-in to the power button.
The SIM tray is on the bottom next to the USB-C port, and the phone also supports a secondary eSIM. There’s a bottom speaker next to the USB port, with a second speaker on the top of the phone – diagonally opposite when the inner display is opened so you get stereo sound, clever.
Just like last year, Honor has also included an IR blaster on the top rail of the phone. It’s convenient and works so well, it just begs the question why it’s not a feature on all phones.
The Magic V6 comes in three colourways this year, with Honor bringing the gorgeous Red/Gold coloured model to our shores this year, with the Black, White options also returning.
The different colours use different materials on the back panel with black using a fibreglass, while the red model has a soft-touch vegan leather back. The thinner white model uses a special fibre weave, which also allows it to get the thinnest profile of the three colourways.
While all three phones have the same height and width, the white model gets that slightly thinner profile at 4.0mm unfolded and 8.75 mm folded, while the Black and red models are 4.1mm unfolded and 9mm folded – though the camera ring takes a little more space on all three models.
Honor sent over the red model for me to check out and it’s gorgeous. I personally like the soft-touch vegan leather feel, but your mileage may vary. The soft-touch material is also replicated on the shell that Honor includes in the box.
The shell nicely wraps around the rear and spine of the hinge on the phone, though leaves the front display unprotected. The ring on the rear which I loved from last year also makes a return, letting you flip it out use it as a stand.
The Honor Magic V6 includes a 7.95 inch folding inner display, and a 6.52 inch outer display which is slightly larger than last years 6.43 inch with both displays getting a resolution bump for higher pixel density.
The outer display isn’t just larger, it’s also brighter with 6000 nits HDR Peak, and 2000 nits global peak brightness. While you only see this peak in bursts, it does help in bright areas like outside in full sunlight where both displays are easy to read.
Honor has used a “UTG flexible glass” on the inner display, which will help to achieve what Honor says is ‘a near-zero crease visual experience’.
That crease is nearly gone, at the most it’s now essentially imperceptible, if you go looking for it, you will find it, but if you use the phone you will essentially forget about it.
The new external display uses HONOR’s Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield which they say has 5,600 layers of silicon nitride to protect it. In practice, I’ve been carrying it in my pocket for a couple of weeks, and even with keys, other phones and other day-to-day detritus the external display still looks great.
As a flagship, Honor has gone all out for the Magic V6. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform and paired with 16GB or RAM and 512GB of storage.
There’s no performance issues here. The phone handles it all. Apps and games load quickly and multi-tasking is a breeze.
There is a slight rider to the performance, in that some of the performance features are guided by power management. In the Battery section you can find options to run the phone in various power saving modes – with a Performance option available to go all out.
Using the Performance mode, I ran it through GeekBench and 3DMark and here’s how it looks:
Like most foldables, there’s five cameras included on the Honor Magic V6. Two 20MP front cameras embedded in punch hole notches in the inner and outer displays, as well as a triple rear camera array which hasn’t changed a lot since last year.
The rear circular camera island houses a 50MP Main sensor with 50MP ultra-wide offering 122° field of view, and a 64MP Telephoto sensor with 3x Optical, and 100x Digital zoom. The camera island is fairly large, adding on a decent amount of thickness to the design, while also giving the phone a distinctive look.
The hinged display also allows for interesting uses, including letting the phone act as its own stand when you have a convenient flat surface.
As far as quality goes, the main sensor takes a great shot in almost any lighting conditions.
The array of sensors gives you a good option for taking in a wider field of view using the Ultra-Wide, as well as for zooming in. The cropped digital zoom up to 100x works, though you do lose some details at the extreme.
And, as always, the 20MP front facing camera takes a good shot despite the subject.
Honor has packed in a large 6660mAh battery inside the Magic V6 – one of the largest batteries we’ve seen to date in a foldable.
The battery uses Silicon-Carbon, a denser material than the usual Lithium Polymer batteries we’re used to. We’ve seen more of this material being used in phone batteries with Honor leading the charge and using the new tech which allows for faster charging and a longer life.
The battery life is solid, allowing a full day of use which can extend into a second day – but you’ll be looking for a charger after that. It is an improvement over last years Magic V5 but that was already pretty good.
The phone supports 80W wired HONOR SuperCharge and 66W Wireless HONOR SuperCharge. However there’s no charger in the box, and almost a year after launching in Australia, Honor still does NOT sell compatible chargers in Australia, either wired or wireless.
Still, if you have a compatible charger (140W laptop charger to the rescue) you can get some pretty fast charging speeds with the phone taking just under 80 minutes to fully charge, however you can get a decent top up to a quarter full in 15 minutes.
To get the fastest charging you will have to turn off some of the smart charging functions which limit the charge to 80% or do a slow trickle charge to coincide with your wake up time, avoiding stress on the battery.
The Honor Magic V6 comes with MagicOS 10, based on Android 16 with the April 2026 Security Maintenance Release (SMR) installed. There is an Over The Air (OTA) update for MagicOS available which contains the May 2026 update, but as of today there are no more updates available.
In terms of those updates, Honor Australia has advised the Magic V6 will receive four OS Updates and five years of security updates, which still falls short of the seven major OS updates promised for the same phone in Europe.
The OS itself is much the same as we saw on the Honor 600 Pro, it’s heavily themed but with personalisation that allows you to stamp it with your own personality.
A big feature of MagicOS 10 is the transparent design. Similar to Apple’s ‘Liquid Glass’ it is across the entire OS from the lock screen, to home screen and even on widgets and app icons. You can change it using the theming options of course.
AI is embedded in with screen suggestions, and you also get Google’s Circle to Search and of course Gemini. There’s also a number of AI features including AI Deep Fake Detection in-built into the system itself. Honor AI is also on-board, and you can unleash a suite of AI Agents including an AI Settings Agent, AI Photos Agent, AI Suggestion, and AI Screen Suggestions. These agents can analyse your screen and offer suggestions, as well as content creation and more.
You’ll find almost all the same pre-installed apps are installed on the Magic V6 as you find on the Honor 600 Pro – unfortunately this includes the bloatware as well.
The Honor utilities including Recorder, Gallery, Notes, Music Player, Files app and even a Mirror are there – and the IR Remote app, but also social media apps TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reel Short, travel apps Agoda, Trip.com and Booking.com and of course LinkedIn – though one thing Honor have not done is pre-install the games that were on the 600 Pro.
As with all third-party apps, you can always uninstall these quite easily.
The Honor Magic V6 takes what I loved about the Magic V5, and adds more.
While the look of the Magic V6 has remained the same, the phone has a bigger external display and bigger battery, with a more durable hinge while the internal display looks a little better with the crease.
The battery life is definitely an improvement, though last years model was no slouch, and the camera system is again excellent for most conditions.
Overall, it’s another great foldable that should keep Samsung, OPPO, Motorola and Google on their toes.
You can find the Honor Magic V6 in Black, White and Red on-sale now for
Honor haven’t changed things up with the button and port placement, with the same setup as last year – including the fingerprint sensor built-in to the power button.
The SIM tray is on the bottom next to the USB-C port, and the phone also supports a secondary eSIM. There’s a bottom speaker next to the USB port, with a second speaker on the top of the phone – diagonally opposite when the inner display is opened so you get stereo sound, clever.
Just like last year, Honor has also included an IR blaster on the top rail of the phone. It’s convenient and works so well, it just begs the question why it’s not a feature on all phones.
The Magic V6 comes in three colourways this year, with Honor bringing the gorgeous Red/Gold coloured model to our shores this year, with the Black, White options also returning.
The different colours use different materials on the back panel with black using a fibreglass, while the red model has a soft-touch vegan leather back. The thinner white model uses a special fibre weave, which also allows it to get the thinnest profile of the three colourways.
While all three phones have the same height and width, the white model gets that slightly thinner profile at 4.0mm unfolded and 8.75 mm folded, while the Black and red models are 4.1mm unfolded and 9mm folded – though the camera ring takes a little more space on all three models.
Honor sent over the red model for me to check out and it’s gorgeous. I personally like the soft-touch vegan leather feel, but your mileage may vary. The soft-touch material is also replicated on the shell that Honor includes in the box.
The shell nicely wraps around the rear and spine of the hinge on the phone, though leaves the front display unprotected. The ring on the rear which I loved from last year also makes a return, letting you flip it out use it as a stand.
The Honor Magic V6 includes a 7.95 inch folding inner display, and a 6.52 inch outer display which is slightly larger than last years 6.43 inch with both displays getting a resolution bump for higher pixel density.
The outer display isn’t just larger, it’s also brighter with 6000 nits HDR Peak, and 2000 nits global peak brightness. While you only see this peak in bursts, it does help in bright areas like outside in full sunlight where both displays are easy to read.
Honor has used a “UTG flexible glass” on the inner display, which will help to achieve what Honor says is ‘a near-zero crease visual experience’.
That crease is nearly gone, at the most it’s now essentially imperceptible, if you go looking for it, you will find it, but if you use the phone you will essentially forget about it.
The new external display uses HONOR’s Anti-scratch NanoCrystal Shield which they say has 5,600 layers of silicon nitride to protect it. In practice, I’ve been carrying it in my pocket for a couple of weeks, and even with keys, other phones and other day-to-day detritus the external display still looks great.
As a flagship, Honor has gone all out for the Magic V6. It’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 Mobile Platform and paired with 16GB or RAM and 512GB of storage.
There’s no performance issues here. The phone handles it all. Apps and games load quickly and multi-tasking is a breeze.
There is a slight rider to the performance, in that some of the performance features are guided by power management. In the Battery section you can find options to run the phone in various power saving modes – with a Performance option available to go all out.
Using the Performance mode, I ran it through GeekBench and 3DMark and here’s how it looks:
Like most foldables, there’s five cameras included on the Honor Magic V6. Two 20MP front cameras embedded in punch hole notches in the inner and outer displays, as well as a triple rear camera array which hasn’t changed a lot since last year.
The rear circular camera island houses a 50MP Main sensor with 50MP ultra-wide offering 122° field of view, and a 64MP Telephoto sensor with 3x Optical, and 100x Digital zoom. The camera island is fairly large, adding on a decent amount of thickness to the design, while also giving the phone a distinctive look.
The hinged display also allows for interesting uses, including letting the phone act as its own stand when you have a convenient flat surface.
As far as quality goes, the main sensor takes a great shot in almost any lighting conditions.
The array of sensors gives you a good option for taking in a wider field of view using the Ultra-Wide, as well as for zooming in. The cropped digital zoom up to 100x works, though you do lose some details at the extreme.
And, as always, the 20MP front facing camera takes a good shot despite the subject.
Honor has packed in a large 6660mAh battery inside the Magic V6 – one of the largest batteries we’ve seen to date in a foldable.
The battery uses Silicon-Carbon, a denser material than the usual Lithium Polymer batteries we’re used to. We’ve seen more of this material being used in phone batteries with Honor leading the charge and using the new tech which allows for faster charging and a longer life.
The battery life is solid, allowing a full day of use which can extend into a second day – but you’ll be looking for a charger after that. It is an improvement over last years Magic V5 but that was already pretty good.
The phone supports 80W wired HONOR SuperCharge and 66W Wireless HONOR SuperCharge. However there’s no charger in the box, and almost a year after launching in Australia, Honor still does NOT sell compatible chargers in Australia, either wired or wireless.
Still, if you have a compatible charger (140W laptop charger to the rescue) you can get some pretty fast charging speeds with the phone taking just under 80 minutes to fully charge, however you can get a decent top up to a quarter full in 15 minutes.
To get the fastest charging you will have to turn off some of the smart charging functions which limit the charge to 80% or do a slow trickle charge to coincide with your wake up time, avoiding stress on the battery.
The Honor Magic V6 comes with MagicOS 10, based on Android 16 with the April 2026 Security Maintenance Release (SMR) installed. There is an Over The Air (OTA) update for MagicOS available which contains the May 2026 update, but as of today there are no more updates available.
In terms of those updates, Honor Australia has advised the Magic V6 will receive four OS Updates and five years of security updates, which still falls short of the seven major OS updates promised for the same phone in Europe.
The OS itself is much the same as we saw on the Honor 600 Pro, it’s heavily themed but with personalisation that allows you to stamp it with your own personality.
A big feature of MagicOS 10 is the transparent design. Similar to Apple’s ‘Liquid Glass’ it is across the entire OS from the lock screen, to home screen and even on widgets and app icons. You can change it using the theming options of course.
AI is embedded in with screen suggestions, and you also get Google’s Circle to Search and of course Gemini. There’s also a number of AI features including AI Deep Fake Detection in-built into the system itself. Honor AI is also on-board, and you can unleash a suite of AI Agents including an AI Settings Agent, AI Photos Agent, AI Suggestion, and AI Screen Suggestions. These agents can analyse your screen and offer suggestions, as well as content creation and more.
You’ll find almost all the same pre-installed apps are installed on the Magic V6 as you find on the Honor 600 Pro – unfortunately this includes the bloatware as well.
The Honor utilities including Recorder, Gallery, Notes, Music Player, Files app and even a Mirror are there – and the IR Remote app, but also social media apps TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Reel Short, travel apps Agoda, Trip.com and Booking.com and of course LinkedIn – though one thing Honor have not done is pre-install the games that were on the 600 Pro.
As with all third-party apps, you can always uninstall these quite easily.
The Honor Magic V6 takes what I loved about the Magic V5, and adds more.
While the look of the Magic V6 has remained the same, the phone has a bigger external display and bigger battery, with a more durable hinge while the internal display looks a little better with the crease.
The battery life is definitely an improvement, though last years model was no slouch, and the camera system is again excellent for most conditions.
Overall, it’s another great foldable that should keep Samsung, OPPO, Motorola and Google on their toes.
You can find the Honor Magic V6 in Black, White and Red on-sale now for $2,999 through JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman and The Good Guys in-store and online.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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