Honor 8 Pro review: Screentrooper

Performance

The Honor 8 Pro utilizes the same Kirin 960 chip found inside the P10 and Mate 9 series. It is developed in-house by Huawei's chipmaker HiSilicon and has been around for some time now, originally making its debut on the Huawei Mate 9. Even with a few months of history behind it, the Kirin 960 is still one of the most powerful smartphone chips and we are glad to welcome it in our testing lab once again.

The main processor within the chipset consists of a quad-core Cortex-A73 cluster clocked at 2.4GHz, plus a quad-core array of the familiar Cortex-A53 cores, ticking at 1.8GHz. The Cortex-A73s boast a 30% power efficiency compared to the previous A72 design, while delivering improved performance at the same time.

We kick off the benchmark routine with some CPU-only loads in GeekBench. If you expected the new Exynos and Snapdragon chips to shake the charts, you'd be wrong. Apparently, the Honor 8 Pro's single A73 core performance is on par with the new S8 series and better than any other processor we've tested so far under Android, but Apple's Hurricane cores still trump everything else.

GeekBench 4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3473
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  1939
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  1939
• Huawei P10 Plus
  1937
• Huawei P10
  1927
• Honor 8 Pro
  1924
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (S835)
  1915
• Huawei Mate 9
  1898
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  1860
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  1815
• LG G6 (US)
  1792
• Sony Xperia XZs
  1724
• Huawei Honor 8
  1720
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  1696
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  1467

But it's the multi-core tests where the four A73 units really shine and easily beat everything we've tested so far except for the new Exynos 8895 and Snapdragon 835 found in the Galaxy S8 lineup.

GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  6338
• Huawei Mate 9
  6112
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (S835)
  6106
• Huawei P10
  6069
• Honor 8 Pro
  6036
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  5845
• Huawei P10 Plus
  5821
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  5664
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  5583
• Huawei Honor 8
  5447
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  4333
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  4142
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  4128
• Sony Xperia XZs
  3979
• LG G6 (US)
  3648

The Kirin 960 choice of graphics, the Mali-G71MP8, is an enormous improvement over the previous generations of HiSilicon chips and is flagship worthy. It managed to perform beautifully on the regular P10 and Mate 9. However, on the Honor 8 Pro, just like on the P10 Plus and the Mate 9 Pro, it is tasked with pushing pixels on a QHD panel. That explains the major performance delta between it and the P10 in on-screen rendering.

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  42
• Sony Xperia XZs
  34
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  32
• Huawei P10
  30
• Huawei Mate 9
  23
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  23
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (S835)
  18
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  15
• Honor 8 Pro
  15
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  13
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  12
• Huawei P10 Plus
  12
• LG G6 (US)
  11
• Huawei P9 Plus
  11
• Huawei Honor 8
  11

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia XZs
  21
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  19
• Huawei P10
  16
• Huawei Mate 9
  14
• Samsung Galaxy S8+
  13
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  10
• Huawei P10 Plus
  9
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  8.2
• LG G6 (US)
  8.1
• Honor 8 Pro
  7.9
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  7.8
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  7
• Huawei Honor 8
  6.9
• Huawei P9 Plus
  6.8

This offscreen test can give you a better understanding of the Mali G71MP8's real power. Unfortunately, the GPU came last among the flagship crop, though still a worthy contender.

GFX 3.1 Car scene (offscreen)

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  25
• Sony Xperia XZs
  20
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  18
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  18
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  15
• LG G6 (US)
  15
• Huawei P10
  14
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  13
• Huawei Mate 9
  13
• Huawei P10 Plus
  12
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  12
• Honor 8 Pro
  11
• Huawei Honor 8
  6.3
• Huawei P9 Plus
  6.2

Still, while looking at the synthetics, bear in mind that most games will scale back gracefully in both resolution and detail, if necessary. Real-life gaming is definitely a pleasant experience on the Honor 8 Pro.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Huawei P10
  39433
• Huawei Mate 9
  36519
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  36062
• Sony Xperia XZs
  33815
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  32160
• LG G6 (US)
  32041
• Honor 8 Pro
  30853
• Huawei P10 Plus
  30602
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  28480
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  27600
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  23513
• Huawei Honor 8
  16592
• Huawei P9 Plus
  15058

Moving on to some all-round performance benchmarks, we find that the Honor 8 Pro shines bright in BaseMark OS II tests. It pretty much outpaces all other Android devices currently in our database, while comes on par with the P10 lineup.

Basemark OS II

Higher is better

• Huawei P10 Plus
  3447
• Honor 8 Pro
  3429
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  3401
• Huawei P10
  3393
• Huawei Mate 9
  3280
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  2843
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  2677
• Sony Xperia XZs
  2606
• Huawei P9 Plus
  2155
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  2107
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  2045
• Huawei Honor 8
  2029
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  1823

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  3796
• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  3298
• Huawei P10 Plus
  2940
• Huawei P10
  2910
• Honor 8 Pro
  2865
• Huawei Mate 9
  2637
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  2496
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  2434
• Sony Xperia XZs
  2386
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  2352
• Huawei P9 Plus
  2099
• Huawei Honor 8
  2099
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  2050

AnTuTu appears to show a different story. However, it's nothing really unexpected, since Huawei handsets typically get penalized in this particular benchmark for some reason. That being said, the Honor 8 Pro falls in line perfectly with its expected performance.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy S8+ (E8895)
  174070
• Apple iPhone 7 Plus
  173110
• Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus
  155185
• LG G6 (US)
  141895
• Sony Xperia XZs
  133574
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (S820)
  132849
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge (E8890)
  129229
• Honor 8 Pro
  128755
• Huawei Mate 9 Pro
  128719
• Huawei P10
  126629
• Huawei P10 Plus
  126252
• Huawei Mate 9
  122826
• Meizu Pro 6 Plus
  113397
• Huawei P9 Plus
  97392
• Huawei Honor 8
  94892

The Honor 8 Pro stands tall in the performance race - nothing short of a proper flagship offer. We really couldn't ask for anything more in the CPU department. As for the GPU, frankly, the Mali-G71MP8 happily chewed through any graphics task we threw at it even though it is not topping the charts.

Under heavy synthetic loads, the Honor 8 Pro gets hot at one particular (small) spot at the back and if your finger happens to rest there, the phone may not be comfortable to hold. But it's far from dangerous and even Huawei thought so, as it seemingly did not implement any performance throttling to combat the rising chip temperatures.