Honor Magic V2 RSR Porsche Design Review

Verdict

The Porsche Design edition of the Honor Magic V2 is one of the best-looking foldables on the market right now. There are drawbacks, like the last-gen hardware and the inevitable high price point, but it’s a delight to live with and performs with the best of them. It’s a luxurious experience, and those don’t typically come cheap.

Introduction

The Honor Magic V2 RSR is a limited edition version of the Magic V2, designed in collaboration with Porsche Design. This phone launched in China last month, and now, it’s also making its way to European markets.

While it has a fresh look, it’s still based on the standard Honor Magic V2, which debuted in China last summer. This means it’s running a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, rather than the latest Gen 3 chipset. It’s still an impressive processor, but with such a premium price tag, we’ll have to hope that the Magic V2 RSR can impress elsewhere.

On first impressions, it does just that. I think it’s one of the nicest-looking foldables available today, and it feels even better. It’s clear from the outset that this Porsche Design collaboration is all about luxury, and combined with the slimness and portability of the Magic V2 chassis, it’s a phone that’s hard to put down.

The UK and EU pricing is yet to be revealed, but it’s sure to be high, as the standard Magic V2 will already set you back £1699. The question is, does it do enough to compete with the likes of the Galaxy Z Fold 5, OnePlus Open and Pixel Fold? I was excited to find out, so after living with it for the past week, here’s what I learned.

Note: We’ll add a star rating to our full review once Honor confirms pricing later this month.

Design 

• Fiberglass body, titanium hinge
• Premium Porsche Design case included
• Honor Magic Pen in the box

I’ve never chosen to use a book-style foldable as my daily driver, simply because I always felt that there’s too much bulk and weight relative to the utility provided. That’s not the case with the Magic V2. What Honor has managed here is truly astonishing, it’s lighter than plenty of traditional flagships, and it’s actually slimmer than my Vivo X100 Pro – if you factor in the camera bump.

Of course, that’s not news, we sang the praises of the Magic V2’s svelte chassis when we reviewed the standard version. What’s new with this version is the look, and the accessories included in the package.

The Porsche Design edition has the same dimensions as the standard model, but the rear panel is made from fibreglass, rather than glass or vegan leather. It’s finished in the signature Agate Grey colour, and has a sculpted ridge down its centre, mimicking the look of an aerodynamic sportscar – a Porsche 911, perhaps.

It has a matte finish, which is quite resistant to fingerprint smudges and very grippy. It’s definitely possible to use without a case if you’re brave enough, but you don’t need to, as there’s an extremely high-quality case included in the box.

The case is covered in PU leather material and has stitching running up the centre and around the camera array to match the sculpting of the rear panel. It looks and feels a bit like a car seat or a steering wheel, and it’s one of the highest-quality cases I’ve seen included with a smartphone to date.

The package also includes Honor’s Magic Pen active stylus and a neat presentation box to keep it safe. This stylus is normally sold separately, but it’s not currently available in the UK store. In China, it retails for 599 CNY, which is about £65, but these things usually cost more when they arrive in Europe.

The stylus works on both the interior and exterior displays, which is an advantage over the Z Fold 5, as the S Pen only works on the folding display. The stylus is pretty effective and detects pressure reliably, but there’s more latency than I would like. I also can’t help but feel a little nervous about poking a flexible display with something more rigid than my fingertips, though I haven’t noticed any ill effects so far.

Screen 

• Internal: 7.92-inches, 2344×2156
• External: 6.43-inches, 2376×1060
• 120Hz LTPO, 3840Hz PWM dimming

Being a foldable device, the Magic V2 RSR has two displays, and they’re both very high-spec. They’re both OLED, they both refresh at up to 120Hz and they’re both LTPO, which means they can dynamically adjust the refresh rate to conserve battery life.

The outer screen is the brighter of the two, boasting a massive 2500 nit peak brightness, while the interior display manages a respectable 1600 nits output. This means the outer screen is the obvious choice in harsh daylight conditions, and that makes sense to me, as the foldable panel is both more cumbersome and prone to uneven reflections when out and about.

If you’re sensitive to screen flicker, the Honor Magic V2 RSR has one of the highest PWM dimming rates that I’ve ever come across, at up to 3840Hz on both displays. Personally, I’ve never had issues with such things, but it’s great news for those that do.

One of my favourite things about the Magic V2 is that its outer display has typical smartphone dimensions, so much so, that I often picked up the wrong phone by accident when it was on my desk next to other phones. That’s not something I’ve experienced with a foldable before, normally the unusual display dimensions or thickness are a dead giveaway.

In practice, it means that the Magic V2 feels completely natural to hold and use while folded, and there’s zero compromise on screen quality. It looks great in all lighting conditions, the colours appear accurate and HDR content looks wonderful.

When unfolded, you get one of the largest displays around, only rivalled by the OnePlus Open. And to add to the allure, it has one of the shallowest creases too. In dim lighting, you could almost forget it was there entirely, but it’s a little more obvious in the daylight, where it attracts some unwanted reflections.

The inner display is just as impressive as the one on the outside, I loved using it to catch up on Netflix shows and YouTube content and it’s brilliant for a gaming session, too. It happily plays Netflix in Dolby Vision or HDR10, so you get great colours and amazing dynamic range. The display even makes apps like Instagram more enjoyable, as you get a much better look with the large screen. 

Cameras 

• 50MP f/1.9 main camera
• 50MP ultrawide, 20MP 2.5x telephoto
• Dual 16MP front cameras

The Magic V2 has a 50MP main snapper with a f/1.9 aperture, a 50MP f/2.0 ultrawide and a 20MP f/2.4 2.5x telephoto. Around the front, there’s a 16MP punch-hole selfie camera, and there’s an identical one on the interior display, too. Of course, since it’s foldable, you can also use the rear cameras to shoot selfies if you want the best possible quality.

I was delighted with the images from the Magic V2 RSR. The primary sensor is impressive in good lighting, and images come out looking sharp, vibrant and detailed. The look is very saturated and contrasty, but I think it works well. However, if you prefer something a little more natural, you can always switch to Pro mode and even shoot in RAW if you like.

The colours match across all lenses, and they all provide a good level of detail. As usual, the ultrawide is the least sharp, but the high resolution helps to compensate, and it also doubles up as a macro lens for extreme close-ups.

The 2.5x telephoto provides similarly promising results, but it’s a bit of an in-between focal length. It’s a little long for most portraits, but there’s not enough reach to be used as a proper telephoto. It has its uses, but this feels less versatile after becoming accustomed to 5x telephotos on recent flagships.

The camera app also gives you a 10x zoom button, but you should refrain from pressing it as the results aren’t good. It’s simply too much digital zoom for the processing to handle, and the detail isn’t there.

The dual 16MP selfie cameras are pretty unremarkable, but they’re decent enough for a quick snap, and more than good enough for video calls. I’d take the small punch-hole cutout over Samsung’s under-display camera any day.

For video shooting, you can record at up to 4K@60fps on all the rear lenses, and up to 4K@30fps on the selfie cameras. There’s a surprising amount of video options in the native camera app, and you can even record in a LOG profile if you fancy trying your hand at colour grading. 

Performance 

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
• 16GB RAM
• 1TB storage

When it comes to performance, the elephant in the room is the last-gen chipset that’s powering the Magic V2 RSR. This was bang up to date when the phone initially launched in China, but in early 2024, with the latest flagships all running Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chips, it’s a little disappointing to see.

Despite that, it still competes well with all the other top foldables that are available today. The OnePlus Open also runs on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, as does the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5. So, it might not be a cut above the competition, but at the very least, it matches it.

The Porsche Design model is also combined with 16GB of RAM and a whopping 1TB of storage, which is more memory than Samsung offers, and double the storage of the OnePlus Open. So, the Magic V2 RSR certainly has its advantages.

In use, nothing about this phone feels outdated. Apps open lightning quick and navigation is as smooth as can be. I was able to max out the settings in Genshin Impact and play on the large interior display at a solid 60fps with no noticeable dips or slowdowns.

The phone got a little warm when pushed to the limits, but never became uncomfortable to hold. It’s an impressive showing considering how slim the chassis is; Honor has clearly put some serious thought into the thermal design of this product.

There are dual stereo speakers on the Magic V2, positioned at the top and bottom of the device when it’s folded, and on the left and right when it’s held like a tablet. They’re mighty impressive, too, with more bass response than you’ll find on most smartphones and great clarity. They’re not the loudest you’ll find, but there’s no distortion, and they’re brilliant for content consumption and gaming.

Software 

• Magic OS 7.2 based on Android 13
• Comes with some bloatware
• Decent multitasking support

The Honor Magic V2 RSR runs Magic OS 7.2, a skinned version of Android 13. Like the processor, it’s slightly outdated now, as the majority of 2024 flagship devices ship with Android 14, but it doesn’t hold the phone back in any meaningful way.

Honor promises three major OS updates and five years of security patches. Comparatively, the Z Fold 5 and OnePlus Open also ship with Android 13 and should get four OS updates, which would mean that the Magic V2 ends up a version behind in the long run. However, on the security side, it offers an extra year compared to OnePlus, and matches the Samsung.

For the most part, I had a good experience with the software. It ran smoothly throughout my testing and includes some genuinely useful additions, like the ability to stack widgets (or cards as Honor calls them) and having enlarged folders where you can access up to 8 apps without opening the folder.

Multitasking support is decent, too. You can easily split the large interior display in two and display two apps side by side, then you can add a third app as a floating window. Or you can just have a couple of floating windows if you prefer. It works well enough, but it’s not quite on the level of the OnePlus Open’s Open Canvas mode. You don’t get a taskbar on the folding display either, which makes things a little trickier to navigate.

Another slight oddity is the fact that apps don’t open in full-screen mode by default. This means that you’ll have some borders on either side of the app when you open them on the larger display, and you have to tap the full-screen icon to get them to fill the display. I don’t fully understand this decision, as every app that I tried opened without issue in full-screen mode, but I suppose there could be a few outliers where this step saves the day.

It’s also worth noting that the Magic V2 RSR comes with a fair bit of bloatware preinstalled. It’s mostly Honor’s own applications, but there are also things like Facebook, TikTok and Booking.com. It’s no big deal, you can clean everything up or hide it away in the app drawer, but it’s not exactly what you want to see on a premium device like this.

Battery life 

• 5000 mAh battery
• 66W wired charging
• Charger included

With a 5000 mAh battery stuffed into its tiny chassis, the Magic V2 boasts the largest battery pack of any current foldable. A very impressive feat, considering it’s also the slimmest. Whatever kind of black magic Honor has employed here works wonders.

I used the device heavily throughout my testing, frequently watching videos on the internal display and snapping countless pictures. Even through all that, the phone would reliably see me through the day with battery life to spare.

Squeezing a day and a half from a charge is entirely feasible if you need to. Plus, when it’s time to charge, it takes less than an hour to go from flat to full thanks to 66W fast charge support.

Unlike the standard version, the Porsche Design edition of the Magic V2 comes with this charger in the box, and a cable, too. Mine came with both a European charger and a UK charger, though it’s hard to say if that will be the case with retail units.