Honor, like all Chinese manufacturers, isn't stopping. Following the announcement of the Honor 400 Lite last month, the brand is taking advantage of the end of May to announce its new mid-range smartphone. Here is the new Honor 400 and, like every year, it will try to differentiate itself from the competition. Once again, Honor arrives with a new smartphone that stands out from the competition with a successful finish and, above all, a camera unit with a truly original design. While brands mainly shine in the high-end or even premium segment, we must not forget that the heart of the market remains the mid-range and the competition there is fierce. Honor will have to convince against competitors like Google and Samsung, to name a few. We just spent ten days with the new Honor 400 and it has some great features to offer.
The Features of the Honor 400
As a reminder of the features, the new Honor 400 offers you:
| Honor 400 | |
|---|---|
| Screen | - 6.55-inch AMOLED - Definition 1264x2736 (460ppp) - 120Hz - DCI-P3 - HDR10+ - Dolby Vision - Brightness of 1600 nits (5000 nits peak) - PWM 3840Hz - Hallmark - Honor Eye Comfort Display - Motion Sickness Mode |
| Design | - Aluminum surround - Polycarbonate back - IP65 |
| Colors | - Midnight Black - Desert Gold |
| SoC and GPU | - Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 - Turbo X Game Engine GPU |
| Memory | - 8GB of RAM - 256GB or 512GB of internal storage |
| Camera | - 2 cameras, the main one with a 200 Megapixel sensor and the ultra wide angle one with a 12 Megapixel sensor - Wide angle lens with an aperture of F/1.9 - Ultra wide angle lens with an aperture of F/2.2 and Macro function - Telephoto from the main camera with a 4x lossless zoom and 30x digital zoom - EIS+OIS stabilization on the main camera - AI SuperZoom mode - Honor AI: AI Remove Reflection, AI CutOut, AI Outpainting, AI Face Tune, AI Upscale - Honor AI Motion Sensing Capture - Instant Movie - Memories - Scene Recognition via Artificial Intelligence - Super HDR - Night Mode - Video recording up to 1080p/60 and 4K(2160p)/60 - 4K HDR 10+ at 60fps - AI Deepfake Detection - 50 MP front-facing sensor - Wide-angle lens (90°) with an f/2.0 aperture - Autofocus - Automatic HDR - Front-facing video capture in UltraHD at 30fps |
| Audio | - Stereo speaker - No 3.5mm jack |
| Battery | - 5300 mAh silicon-carbon battery - Honor SuperCharge 66W charging |
| Connectivity | - Facial Recognition - Under-screen fingerprint reader - Bluetooth 5.3 LE - WiFi 6E - USB-C USB 2.0 - 1x eSIM - 1x nano-SIM - 5G |
| Software | - Android 15 - Magic UI 9.0 with Magic Capsule and Magic Portal - 6 years of update (OS and Security) |
| Size and Weight | - 156.5 x 74.6 x 7.3 mm - 184g |
| Price | - 499 Euros (256GB) - 579 Euros (512GB) |
| Date availability | - May 22, 2025 |
For the packaging itself, there's a small white box with a USB-C cable and instructions for getting started. The charger is optional, as are the protective cases. Remember that at one time, Honor offered a transparent protective case, which was admittedly of poor quality, but it was still better than nothing.
For its price, the official price is 499 euros for the 256GB version and 579 euros for the 512GB version. And for the launch offer, from May 22nd to June 1st, Honor is doubling the memory, so the 512GB version is the same price as the 256GB. In addition to the discount, users will also receive the Honor Choice Clip in black worth 149.90 euros and a 66W charger worth 49.90 euros.
Design, Screen, and Audio
The first thing you notice when you pick up the new Honor 400 is its thinness and weight. Aside from a design that strongly resembles an American smartphone, the Honor 400 is only 7.3mm thick and weighs 184g. This isn't as impressive as Samsung's new smartphone, but it must be said that Honor offers a rather attractive package. While the back is made of plastic, like many of its competitors in this price range, the plastic used offers a very pleasant soft-touch feel. We would obviously have preferred a frosted glass back, but that's the price you pay to stay under the €500 mark.
To differentiate itself, if we find a camera unit composed of two cameras, we can't help but notice its different design compared to many. In reality, this doesn't affect anything other than the design, but we appreciate that Honor is trying to stand out from the competition. On the screen side, and because it's fashionable now, we find a flat screen on the front with a punch-hole at the top and center of the screen. Next to it, the screen of this new Honor 400 offers a diagonal of 6.55 inches, which allows for a relatively compact smartphone since the edges remain thin (yes, on all four sides). This also allows for a good grip. More traditionally, the panel is an OLED type with a Full HD+ definition. It is well balanced in terms of colorimetry, brightness and viewing angles. The contrasts are strong and the blacks deep, the brightness is impressive, even if it doesn't reach the level of a high-end smartphone. In short, it's all good.
On the audio side, the Honor 400 offers two stereo speakers. This has become a standard on this type of mid-range smartphone. In fact, it's been a while since we've seen smartphones with a single speaker, except for the entry-level range. In everyday use, we didn't experience any particular issues, regardless of the content. On social media content, the speakers deliver a fairly balanced sound but lack some bass. Obviously, this won't compete with a real external speaker or headphones, which we can only recommend to better enjoy your multimedia content.
Magic UI, Performance and Battery Life
Unsurprisingly, we find Android 15 with the Magic UI overlay in its 9.0 version. 2025 requires, we find AI with the Magic Portal portal which brings together all the AI functions (Honor and Google Gemini). No real surprises since we are starting to find more and more of the same functions everywhere. The difference being that the cloud functions are based on Google while the local part will generally be managed by the manufacturer. On the other hand, Honor continues with its duplicate applications such as the calendar, the phone application, etc. Unfortunately, they cannot be uninstalled. Likewise, there are third-party applications installed by default but which can be uninstalled, which we did at the first opportunity and which, for the moment, do not pose any particular problems!
In terms of performance, and unsurprisingly, it's a mid-range smartphone. We find the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, which isn't the fastest, but in everyday reality, it allows you to launch any application without slowing down. As for demanding applications, we tried some recent games like Call of Duty Mobile, Diablo Immortals, and Genshin Impact. There's not much to say, the games ran with a certain fluidity, even at 120Hz for compatible games. You'll still have to make sacrifices on the visual quality of the most demanding games, but these titles have remained benchmarks for several years on Android, which allows them to be relatively well optimized, even with a mid-range SoC.
And finally, we find a 5300mAh silicon-carbon battery. This new technology allows Honor to offer a relatively thin and light smartphone compared to the competition with a similar battery capacity. It also has 66W wired fast charging but no wireless charging. While for some, it's not the fastest on the market, it's still better than some premium smartphones from Apple, Samsung, or Google. All this to say that the Honor 400 will easily last a busy day. In our daily tests, we were even counting on two days of battery life.
Photo and Video
Even if we are not dealing with a high-end or premium smartphone, we can no longer ignore photography in 2025, even on a mid-range smartphone. Also, Honor offers us a rather versatile camera block on paper. Also, we find a main camera with an impressive 200 Megapixel sensor. Unsurprisingly, there is no telephoto lens, but the main camera can crop into the sensor to offer a mini telephoto lens, always practical. Next to it, we have a second camera, an ultra-wide-angle with a fairly standard 12 Megapixel sensor. This ultra-wide-angle can also act as a macro camera.
Even if Honor does not necessarily communicate on it anymore, we find the partnership with Studio Harcourt which allows the Honor 400 to offer a rather convincing Portrait mode. We remind you that for this Portrait mode, we use AI with the Honor AI Portrait Engine technology which, by relying on the expertise of Studio Harcourt, allows us to offer lighting close to that of a Parisian photo studio. On this specific point, these are not simple filters since the lighting is also modified but the Honor 400 does rather well.
For the rest, the Honor 400 does rather well with a complete and versatile camera block. Clearly, it is not at the level of a premium smartphone like the Magic7 Pro but it will be perfectly suitable for the general public. It should be noted that the exposure is somewhat random at times, so you will have to be careful, and in our examples, we can see the skies changing depending on the angle. We'll let you be the judge.
But better than words to get an idea, here are some example photos:
On the selfie side, we find a 50 Megapixel sensor on the front. It's pretty standard in itself and it's effective. With this resolution, it's more than enough for selfies without it posing any particular problems for Honor. For the video part, we stay on a more standard part with a smartphone of this range. The videos are detailed and allow you to cover the different needs of everyday life quite easily.
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