Honor Magic V6 Review

Review disclosure: The product reviewed in this article was provided on loan. Reviewer: Elijah Cowling.

Foldable phones are reaching a more mature point in 2026. Opening a phone into a small tablet is still cool, but the novelty no longer excuses poor battery life, awkward proportions or average cameras. If manufacturers want people spending close to $3,000, the folding screen needs to feel like a genuine advantage.

The Honor Magic V6 makes a strong case for that. It is incredibly thin, weighs about as much as some conventional flagships and still manages to pack in a huge 6,660mAh battery, Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 performance, two 120Hz OLED displays and a versatile triple-camera system.

At $2,999 in Australia, it still has plenty to prove against Samsung, Oppo and Google. But after using it, I think the V6’s biggest achievement is how normal it feels when closed, while still giving you nearly eight inches of display space when you open it up. MagicOS needs some polish, but the hardware makes the V6 one of the more convincing foldables of 2026.

Design and Build Quality

The first number that really matters with the Magic V6 is not its processor speed or display resolution. It is the thickness.

The white version measures around 8.75mm when folded, while other finishes sit at roughly 9mm, excluding the large camera module. Open it and the body is about 4mm thick. Considering there is a folding display, hinge, flagship processor, triple-camera system and 6,660mAh battery inside, that is some serious packaging.

A few key design numbers are worth highlighting:

• Thickness unfolded: around 4.0mm
• Weight: from 219g
• Water and dust resistance: IP68 and IP69
• Fingerprint sensor: side-mounted in the power button

At 219g for the lightest version, the V6 no longer feels like two smartphones have been stuck together and shoved into your pocket. That has always been one of my biggest complaints with large foldables. A huge internal display sounds great until you have to carry a heavy brick around all day.

Honor has also avoided making the V6 unnecessarily sharp. The rounded outer edges make it comfortable to hold, particularly when using the cover display one-handed. The huge rear camera module will probably divide opinion, but I do not hate it. It even gives your fingers somewhere to rest when holding the phone.

The rear finish changes depending on colour. Some versions use a smoother composite surface, while others have a softer textured finish. I would lean towards the grippier option because a device this thin can become surprisingly slippery when you are trying to unfold it with one hand.

Honor also includes a case with a built-in kickstand. It is a useful addition on a foldable because the large internal display works well for watching video on a desk, although putting a case on does inevitably hide some of the engineering that makes the V6 interesting.

Durability is another area where Honor has gone hard. The Magic V6 carries both IP68 and IP69 ratings, providing protection against dust, immersion and high-pressure water jets under the relevant testing standards. Dust protection is particularly important on a foldable because a hinge introduces another place for debris to cause trouble.

Honor’s NanoCrystal Shield technology is used on the outer display to improve resistance to scratches and impacts. Long-term testing supplied for this review found only minor marks despite fairly careless treatment. I still would not throw a $3,000 foldable into a bag full of keys, but the V6 feels far removed from the fragile foldables of a few years ago.

Cover Display and Main Foldable Screen

A foldable lives or dies by its displays, and Honor has resisted making the cover screen unusually narrow just to accommodate the hinge.

The external panel is a 6.52-inch LTPO2 OLED with a 1080 x 2420 resolution and refresh rate of up to 120Hz. Honor quotes a huge 6,000-nit peak brightness figure, although that will only be reached under particular conditions. What matters in everyday use is that the display remains easy to see outdoors.

The main specifications are:

• Cover display: 6.52-inch LTPO2 OLED, 1080 x 2420, 120Hz
• Main display: 7.95-inch foldable LTPO2 AMOLED, 2172 x 2352, 120Hz
• Pixel density: around 403ppi inside and 406ppi outside
• PWM dimming: up to 4320Hz
• Anti-reflective coating: both displays

The anti-reflective treatment is one of the less glamorous features that actually makes a difference. Reflections can make an otherwise bright screen annoying outdoors, and Honor has done a particularly good job of reducing them here.

For me, the proportions of the cover display matter even more. It feels like a normal smartphone screen rather than something you tolerate until you unfold the phone. Messaging, Maps, social media, email and browsing all fit comfortably enough that I never feel forced to open the V6 for basic tasks.

Open it and you get the main attraction: a 7.95-inch display with a nearly square 9.75:9 aspect ratio. It changes how the phone works. Websites become easier to read, documents are more manageable, comics look excellent and photo editing becomes much more practical.

Multitasking is where the larger panel makes the strongest argument for itself. Two applications can sit beside each other while still having enough room to be useful. Having a browser beside notes or email open next to a document feels much closer to working on a small tablet than a conventional phone.

Movies are slightly less convincing because the near-square screen leaves large black bars with widescreen video. You can crop in, but then you lose part of the image. I see the internal panel primarily as a productivity, reading, browsing and gaming display, with video as a bonus.

The crease is still visible from certain angles, but it becomes much harder to notice when looking directly at the screen. There is also only a subtle dip when running a finger over it, so I stopped thinking about it fairly quickly.

One point needs clarification. Honor’s supplied specifications list stylus support on both displays, while separate Australian testing states that its review unit did not support a stylus. If pen input matters to you, I would confirm compatibility for the exact Australian model before buying.

MagicOS 10 and the Foldable Experience

The Magic V6 ships with Android 16 and Honor’s MagicOS 10 interface, along with a promise of up to seven major Android upgrades. That long support window is exactly what I want to see on a $2,999 phone.

MagicOS is familiar enough for anyone coming from another Android device. You have Google’s Discover feed, Honor’s own notification and control centre layout, custom widgets and plenty of options designed around the folding display.

The important part is multitasking.

Honor lets multiple apps run alongside each other, with support for up to three applications. When everything works, the larger screen becomes genuinely useful. Tasks that would be annoying on a normal phone become surprisingly manageable, and I could see the V6 replacing a laptop for quick jobs more often than I expected.

You can also swap applications in and out without rebuilding the entire layout. It makes the internal display feel more like a workspace rather than simply an oversized phone screen.

MagicOS is not as polished as the hardware, though. Some apps refuse to cooperate with split-screen mode and need to run in floating windows instead. Honor provides settings that attempt to force more applications into multi-window mode, but it does not fix everything.

There are smaller bugs as well. Supplied long-term testing mentioned occasional Bluetooth issues where previously paired hardware would refuse to reconnect until the phone was restarted, along with awkward translations and inconsistent behaviour in parts of Honor’s software.

These are not disastrous individually, but they stand out on such an expensive device. Samsung has spent years refining the software on its Fold range, and Honor needs to reach the same level of consistency.

I am also not a fan of the preinstalled commercial software. Apps including Agoda, Booking.com and ReelShort appeared on the Australian review unit. They can be removed, but I would rather a $3,000 flagship arrive clean.

AI Features and Device Integration

AI inevitably plays a major role in Honor’s software, but at least some of the features have an obvious purpose.

There are tools for translation, subtitles, writing assistance and photo editing. The image features are probably the easiest to appreciate because you can remove unwanted objects or people, adjust images and upscale photos without reaching for another app.

Honor also includes deepfake and voice-cloning detection in supported situations. I hope most people never need it, but this feels like a more useful application of AI than many of the novelty features being packed into modern phones.

There is also an AI-driven sidebar that attempts to predict useful applications and shortcuts. The idea is good, although supplied testing found it could sometimes be inconsistent about appearing when requested. An AI feature only saves time if accessing it is easier than just opening the app yourself.

I am more interested in Honor’s device integration. Honor WorkStation is designed to move files between the V6 and computers, including support for Macs and iPads rather than restricting everything to Honor’s own ecosystem.

Being able to transfer photos and documents directly between devices is genuinely useful, especially because Android-to-Mac workflows can still feel unnecessarily awkward.

Unfortunately, setting it up appears less polished than the feature itself. One supplied testing experience involved problems linking an Honor ID and Google account, including confusing security warnings and SMS verification issues. It eventually worked, but reportedly took more than half an hour.

Most normal buyers are not going to spend that long troubleshooting a feature. Honor has a good idea here, but the setup process needs to be much easier.

Performance, Gaming and Thermal Management

The Magic V6 uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, built on a 3nm process. Depending on configuration, Honor pairs it with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and between 256GB and 1TB of UFS 4.1 storage.

The core hardware includes:

• Chipset: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
• RAM: 12GB or 16GB
• Storage: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB
• Storage technology: UFS 4.1

Day-to-day performance is not a concern. The phone handles multiple applications comfortably, and there is enough RAM for the kind of multitasking that makes a foldable useful.

Gaming is strong as well. Demanding titles were able to run at high settings with frame rates frequently sitting in the high-50fps range. The V6 gets warm around the camera during extended sessions, which is unsurprising in a chassis this thin, but the vapour chamber helps keep sustained performance under control.

Where things become interesting is Honor’s performance tuning.

Australian benchmark testing supplied for this review showed the V6 performing significantly below other Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones in its default Balanced mode. One set of results recorded 1580 single-core and 5970 multi-core.

Switch to Performance mode and those numbers jumped to 3015 and 9990 respectively, while the GPU score increased from 20,080 to 24,000. The hardware is clearly capable of considerably more than Honor allows by default.

I understand the thinking. Modern flagship processors are far more powerful than most everyday tasks require, so reducing performance to gain battery life makes sense. The problem is that Honor could communicate the difference more clearly.

For most people, I would leave Balanced mode enabled. The V6 still feels fast, and the battery benefit is significant. Performance mode is there when you actually need maximum power for gaming or other demanding workloads.

Cameras and Video

Foldables have historically asked buyers to accept weaker cameras in exchange for the folding display. The Magic V6 does a better job of avoiding that compromise.

The rear setup consists of:

• Main: 50MP, f/1.6, OIS
• Telephoto: 64MP, f/2.5, OIS, 3x optical zoom
• Ultra-wide: 50MP, f/2.2, 122-degree field of view

The 3x telephoto is probably the most interesting camera for me. A proper zoom lens changes how you can frame portraits and distant subjects without relying heavily on digital cropping. Supplied testing described the V6’s telephoto performance as one of the stronger options among current foldables.

The main camera tends towards bright, attractive images rather than completely neutral processing. Colours can look fairly lively, although Honor provides a more natural profile if you prefer a toned-down result.

Image quality is strongest in good lighting, with plenty of detail and generally dependable colours. Lower-light photography remains respectable, although some testing noted that edge sharpness occasionally looked less convincing than expected, with processing sometimes appearing a little aggressive.

Honor also throws in AI photography features and different colour treatments, but I see those as extras rather than reasons to buy the phone. The important part is that the main, ultra-wide and telephoto cameras are all genuinely useful.

The folding design gives the camera one major advantage over a conventional phone. You can use the cover display as a preview while shooting with the rear cameras, meaning you can take selfies or group photos using the much better main camera system.

There are also two 20-megapixel selfie cameras, one on each display, which are perfectly adequate for video calls and casual shots.

Rear video reaches 4K at 30 or 60fps with 10-bit capture. Testing found footage sharp and well stabilised, with reliable autofocus and the ability to switch between rear cameras while recording. The front cameras can shoot 4K at 30fps.

For vlogging, using the cover display as a monitor while recording through the rear cameras is probably the setup I would choose.

Battery Life and Charging

If there is one specification that immediately separates the Magic V6 from most foldables, it is the battery.

Honor has managed to fit a 6,660mAh silicon-carbon cell into a device measuring around 4mm thick when open. That is more capacity than many conventional flagship phones, despite the V6 having to accommodate a hinge and two displays.

Charging support is equally strong:

• Battery: 6,660mAh
• Wired charging: up to 80W
• Wireless charging: up to 66W
• Reverse wireless charging: supported
• Reverse wired charging: 5W

Usage produced around a day and a half to two days with roughly five to six hours of screen time. For a foldable, that is excellent. Separate testing using the large internal display for reading and browsing managed around 14 to 15 hours.

Gaming is obviously much harder on the battery, with demanding titles capable of draining it in a little over three and a half hours at maximum settings.

Charging is fast enough that topping up during the day should not be a major hassle either. The one omission is magnetic Qi2 support, according to the supplied Australian testing. On a $2,999 phone, I would have liked to see proper support for magnetic chargers, stands and car mounts.

Even with that missing, battery life is comfortably one of the V6’s strongest features.

Everyday Use, Connectivity and Speakers

The Magic V6 covers almost everything I would expect from a 2026 flagship when it comes to connectivity. You get 5G, eSIM, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC and aptX HD, along with an infrared transmitter that can turn the phone into a remote for compatible televisions or air conditioners.

The fingerprint reader is built into the side-mounted power button. I prefer this arrangement on a foldable because it remains accessible whether the phone is open or closed.

Stereo speakers are also included. They get reasonably loud without obvious distortion, although bass is understandably limited by the thin body. They are perfectly good for podcasts, YouTube and casual video, but I would still connect headphones for music.

The occasional Bluetooth issue mentioned earlier is the bigger concern. Having to restart a flagship phone because it refuses to reconnect to a speaker should not happen, and it contributes to the feeling that Honor’s hardware is currently more refined than its software.

Storage should not be a problem for most owners. Configurations reach as high as 1TB, while even 512GB is plenty unless you shoot huge amounts of 4K video or keep a very large game library. There is no microSD expansion, but that is normal for modern flagship phones.

Honor Magic V6 vs the Competition

The Magic V6’s biggest challenge is that foldable competition is getting very good.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold range still has the advantage of familiarity and years of software development. Samsung understands foldable multitasking extremely well, and that refinement matters if you intend to use the internal display heavily.

Honor fights back with hardware. The 6,660mAh battery is enormous for the category, the chassis is exceptionally thin and the IP68/IP69 protection is another genuine advantage.

The Oppo Find N6 is one of the closest competitors. Both use Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 hardware, both chase a thin-and-light design and both have large batteries by foldable standards. Oppo appears stronger in some aspects of multitasking polish, while Honor counters with excellent battery life in Balanced mode.

Google remains appealing if you prefer Google’s software and camera processing, while Samsung has clear ecosystem advantages if you already own Galaxy watches, tablets or earbuds.

Honor’s challenge is trust. At $2,999, buyers will naturally be more cautious about choosing a less familiar brand. The seven-generation Android upgrade promise helps, but software quality and long-term support will matter just as much as specifications.

Price and Value

The Honor Magic V6 costs $2,999 in Australia, which is expensive but fairly normal for a flagship book-style foldable.

I struggle to call any $3,000 phone good value in the traditional sense. You can buy extremely capable conventional flagships for considerably less. What you are paying for here is the ability to carry a normal-sized phone and an almost eight-inch tablet-style display in one device.

Within that context, Honor’s argument becomes stronger. You get flagship processing hardware, generous storage, a capable camera system, two excellent OLED displays, fast charging, outstanding battery life and very strong water and dust protection.

There are still areas where a phone this expensive should be better. I do not want commercial bloatware, Bluetooth bugs or difficult account setup. Magnetic Qi2 support would also have been welcome.

The performance situation bothers me less. Balanced mode restricts the Snapdragon’s benchmark output, but Performance mode restores much of that speed when you need it. Considering the battery advantage, I would rather have that choice than permanently sacrifice endurance for benchmark numbers.

Honor Magic V6 Verdict

The Honor Magic V6 feels like a foldable designed by a company that understands the category’s remaining problems.

Foldables need to stop being excessively thick. They need better battery life, more usable cover displays, better cameras and enough durability that owners are not constantly worried about damaging them. Honor has addressed most of those things.

The V6 is incredibly thin, surprisingly light and backed by a 6,660mAh battery that produces some excellent results. Both displays are great, the anti-reflective treatment makes a noticeable everyday difference and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 provides more than enough power, even if Honor deliberately holds some of it back in Balanced mode.

The camera system is also much more convincing than the basic setups once accepted on foldables. I particularly like having a proper 3x telephoto camera, while using the cover display as a preview for the rear cameras is genuinely useful.

My biggest hesitation is MagicOS. There is plenty of good thinking here, including capable multitasking, long-term Android support, security-focused AI features and cross-device integration. But bugs, awkward setup processes and occasional inconsistencies remind you that Honor still has work to do.

That becomes more noticeable when Samsung has spent years refining its foldable software.

The apparent lack of magnetic Qi2 support is disappointing too, and anyone specifically interested in stylus use should confirm support for the Australian model because the supplied information is contradictory.

None of that takes away from what Honor has achieved with the hardware.

For me, the Magic V6’s biggest success is that it does not constantly remind you that you are using a foldable. Closed, it is thin and light enough to behave much like a normal flagship. Open it and the larger display is available whenever you actually need it.

At $2,999, it remains a niche purchase. If you have no interest in an internal tablet-sized display, there are conventional flagship phones that make far more financial sense.

But if you are specifically shopping for a book-style foldable, the Honor Magic V6 deserves a place on the shortlist alongside Samsung, Oppo and Google. Its software still needs some polishing, but the combination of excellent battery life, strong displays, genuinely thin hardware and capable cameras makes it one of the more interesting foldables of 2026.

At $2,999, this remains a niche purchase. If you have no interest in an internal tablet-sized display, there are conventional flagship phones that make far more financial sense.

But if you are specifically shopping for a book-style foldable, the Honor Magic V6 deserves to be on the shortlist alongside Samsung, Oppo and Google. It has some rough software edges, but its battery life, displays, thin design and genuinely strong hardware make it one of the more interesting foldables of 2026.

Honor is no longer just proving that it can build a foldable.

With the Magic V6, it is giving the established players something they need to respond to.