HONOR 600 Pro review: can a supercharged mid-tier phone really have it all?

At around SGD 1,100, smartphone companies tend to follow one of two playbooks: either trim a flagship down to size — keeping the core experience but losing the frills — or they take a midrange platform and push it as far as it will go.

The HONOR 600 Pro very clearly chooses the second path, and it’s hard to argue against the approach. You’re looking at a flagship-tier chipset, a massive battery, a high-resolution camera system with periscope zoom, and one of the most aggressive AI feature stacks in its class — all sitting comfortably in a price bracket that usually demands some glaring compromises.

Performance: flagship power that mostly holds up

The HONOR 600 Pro runs on Snapdragon Elite 8, the best SoC that money can buy. Its performance is in line with flagship phones, so everyday use is simply buttery smooth. However, there is a catch: under heavy load for an extended period, the phone will throttle performance to keep the temperature manageable.

That’s still fine for a phone, unless you’re pushing the limits with hours of gaming and video editing daily. In which case, you should consider a phone with better internal cooling anyway.

But under normal use, it certainly delivers a premium experience, and it doesn’t get uncomfortably hot either. That’s also thanks in part to the new hybrid housing, which consists of a high-grade (according to HONOR) aluminium frame and a fine-cut matte glass rear facade that doesn’t get hot to the touch.

We have no complaints about the build quality here. Despite the mid-tier billing, the astute design choices — thin bezels and matte textures— make the 600 Pro look rather refined.

This brings us to the most visible elephant in the room: just be prepared for the “eh that one not iPhone meh” comments every other day.

Rear cameras: largely capable for day-to-day use

If there’s an underlying theme surrounding the HONOR 600 Pro, it would be the average, everyday usability, not someone obsessed with taking ultra-wide-angle travel pics or selfies. And that’s reflected in this phone.

Cameras-wise, the 600 Pro has a fairly competitive rear camera setup: a 200MP main camera built around a relatively large 1/1.4-inch sensor with optical stabilisation (CIPA 6.0), backed by a 50MP periscope telephoto lens offering 3.5x optical zoom and up to 120x digital zoom with optical stabilisation (CIPA 6.5). The ultra-wide module, which often gets ‘nerfed’, is modest in this case — 12MP, but it at least has autofocus.

The range from the base focal length to 7x telephoto (24mm to 160mm) gives you pretty solid, punchy photos. Transitioning to the ultra-wide lens is a little more drastic, and you can instantly see a drop-off in image quality, so stick to good lighting conditions for best results.

Although HONOR says you can go up to 120x, I find that 70x mark is where the images are actually passable, and lines do not have that blurry vagueness that’s a hallmark of AI. This is one of the trade-offs compared to higher-end phones, such as HONOR’s own flagship Magic series. It’s a shame, because the stabilisation is quite forgiving, even at 120x. I might go as far as to say this is genuinely flagship-level stabilisation.

But it certainly has not gone to waste; the stability makes this phone great for everyday videos and is an obvious quality-of-life upgrade. Noise-cancelling is also available to cut out background noise, such as a fan’s rustling.

No comments when it comes to the look of its images and videos, as it’s largely a matter of personal taste, but the HONOR 600 Pro continues the grand tradition of its ‘Apple on steroids’ look — Apple colour science but with more punch in colours and sharpening.

However, in night scenes, the 600 Pro delivers photos with good contrast and detail despite the darkness. Arguably, it’s a software tech look, but if the mantra is to get the shot no matter what, this phone certainly got the memo.

All said, when you stick within its lane — up to 7x — this is quite a decent camera setup.

Front camera: some compromise, but workable

Honour’s strategy is to use a high-resolution camera with a decent aperture (50MP, f/2) without autofocus.

The high-resolution sensor makes it easier to digitally enhance sharp selfie images, so you can get away with it, provided you keep the camera steady. However, there is no optical stabilisation here, so in low-light situations, you might need a few tries to nail the shot.

Video-wise, you are also capped at 4K 30p, which may or may not be a big deal, depending on your usage.

For those who prioritise the front camera, this is probably not up your alley.

AI features: not force-fed and good to have

HONOR goes harder on AI than most in this segment. There’s a wide spread of tools here — image editing, object removal, style transformations, generative features like image-to-video, and a layer of context-aware system interactions sitting underneath.

Some features land immediately. Quick edits, background clean-up, small enhancements — these are genuinely useful, and very likely you’re already using them to some degree. Others feel more exploratory but less essential, which tend to be the creative or generative features.

The upside is that HONOR keeps these features in a proverbial box and doesn’t force-feed them to you. One of the features it constantly touts is AI Image to Video 2.0, which takes static images — up to three for some templates — and turns them into animated videos. It’s not cutting-edge stuff, so don’t expect to see pores and reflections in the eyes, but it’s certainly good enough to send across group chats.

This is stuff you can already do in Gemini (Veo 3.1) or other applications, but this is primarily about the user experience — it’s easily accessed from a tab in your gallery, so it’s not constantly in your face when you don’t need it, but where you can easily generate within seconds when you do want it.

For now, you can use AI Image to Video 2.0 for free, but you will eventually have to pay for each use (tokens). These things cost money, so HONOR understandably can’t give you a free ride forever.

Multimedia: another flagship feature

They certainly didn’t skimp on the display — seeing the Amazon- and Netflix-certified labels might be comforting, but seeing how it handles dark scenes instantly banishes all doubts. Not all OLED displays are made equal, but this one certainly fits the bill as a premium-class display.  The speakers are a little lacking in bass, but make up for it with clarity.

Battery: the one area with no caveats

This part is a no-brainer. Battery big big, me use all day. Me forget to charge, me try survive day 2. Me finish day 2.

As implied, this phone easily navigates 1.5-2 days. Although 7,000mAh isn’t the biggest amongst the giants, there is plenty of juice in this phone. The 80W charging speed isn’t quite the fastest, but it’s quick enough for quick top-ups. If there’s any place for a compromise, this trade-off won’t make you sweat.

Verdict: ticks many of the right boxes

So how did the 600 Pro fare in this game of compromise? Not too bad, actually — though it might just come down to a game of checking off preference boxes.

What the HONOR 600 Pro gets right: flagship-grade speed in everyday use, a genuinely excellent battery, a premium-class display, strong main and mid-range zoom performance, and a broad AI toolset that is easy enough to ignore when you do not need it. Its wide and tele camera setup, 7000mAh battery and Snapdragon 8 Elite platform are the clearest examples of HONOR pushing maximum performance at this price.

Where the compromises still show: sustained performance under heavy load is good rather than class-defining; the ultra-wide and front cameras are more ordinary; extreme zoom is more about reach than detail, and the speakers lack bass. HONOR minimised several of the usual drawbacks of the supercharged mid-tier approach, but it did not erase them entirely.