The Chinese smartphone manufacturer Honor has thoroughly impressed with its selection of smartphones this year – with the Honor Magic8 Pro taking the fight to Samsung and the Honor 600 presenting a brilliant proposition as a mid-range device.
Rather awkwardly sitting somewhere in between these two handsets is the Honor 600 Pro. It’s a more affordable alternative to the flagship-class Magic8 Pro (with some admittedly hefty compromises) but still retains plenty of “pro” features to keep businesses interested.
With an £899 price tag, however, many will question whether it offers value for money when you may choose to either go all-out for the most expensive Honor device or save a few hundred pounds and settle for something a little lighter in nature.
Honor 600 Pro: Design
Parallels in the design of the Honor 600 Series with the iPhone 17 Pro are unavoidable. You can immediately notice the same protruding translucent rear panelling (housing the camera lenses and sensors) as well as the brushed metallic sides with etched grooves.
They even share the same shouty orange primary finish, but we picked up an Honor 600 Pro draped in a sophisticated Golden White coating, which looks clean and sophisticated in its own right. You can also pick up the device in a more generic but safer Black look. The composite fiber material on the phone’s rear adds to its premium quality with some much-needed friction while you’re holding it, and it’s incredibly well constructed overall.
This phone is slightly smaller than the Honor 400 Pro (its predecessor) with a 6.57-inch display versus a 6.7-inch panel; in fact, it uses almost the same shell as the Honor 600 (except for a third lens here). With a weight of 195g, it’s also one of the lightest devices in this category – and one of the most compact too, thanks to its 7.8mm thickness.
Like the Honor 600, the left-hand side panel features several physical function keys, including volume controls, a power/Gemini button, and the Honor AI button. As with both devices, the display also features rounded corners that taper off far too aggressively, somewhat undermining the large real estate you’d otherwise enjoy.
Like the Honor Magic8 Pro, the device also boasts IP68/IP69/IP69K ratings for dust and water resistance, with the latter certification a new category that means total dust-tightness with protection against pressure and high-temperature water jets. This comes in addition to an SGS 5-Star drop resistance. Hard to believe, but this slender device is perhaps one of the most robust you can find right now.
Honor 600 Pro: Display
There’s plenty of strength in the Honor 600 Pro’s 6.57-inch AMOLED display – but it’s the exact same panel as that used in the Honor 600. Thankfully, it’s a good one, with a 2,728 x 1,264-pixel resolution equating to a solid 458 pixels-per-inch (slightly better than the Magic8 Pro) and a super-smooth 120Hz refresh rate. There’s also basic HDR support, although you’re missing advanced standards like HDR10+ or Dolby Vision.
Honor lets you pick from three distinct color profiles: normal (true-to-life), vivid (enhanced for higher saturation), and professional (suitable for color-accurate display tuning). You can also fine-tune the RGB values – as well as other settings like brightness, contrast, and tint (cool, warm, or a specific color) – for maximum control. The default Vivid setting is best for day-to-day usage, and the colors are fairly balanced to begin with, so very little tinkering is required. Additional settings include an eBook mode for grayscale rendering that’s easier on the eyes, as well as AI-powered Super Dynamic Display and Vivid Display, which collectively boost brightness and contrast while helping colors pop a little more.
The screen is dazzling, with a maximum brightness of 808 nits in standard use – although Honor suggests the device can reach up to 8,000 nits under certain conditions. There’s also a Sunlight Mode that can stretch brightness levels further, as well as automatic controls that let the phone configure brightness depending on the ambient light in the room. The result is a display that performs confidently in a wide range of lighting environments, making it well suited to both indoor productivity and outdoor use.
