Honor Magic5 Lite/Honor x9a review

Magic UI 6.1 on top of Android 12

The Magic5 Lite runs on a newer 6.1 version of Honor's proprietary Magic UI along with Android 12. But just like last year's Magic4 Lite, the newer Lite is a bit late to the party. In 2023, we would expect Android 13 out of the box and given Honor's poor track record of updating some of its midrangers; it's no small drawback to consider. For instance, the Magci4 Lite from last year launched with Android 11 and still hasn't received Android 12.

And yet, we struggle to find any noticeable difference between the Magic UI 4.2 from last year and today's 6.1 version. Aesthetically, the UI is the same as before, so if you are coming from an older version of Huawei's EMUI, you will probably feel right at home.

Home screen, notification shade, recent apps, settings menu

Unlike EMUI 12, the notification shade isn't separated into two parts, but it's instead of the usual design with re-arrangeable quick toggles and notifications. Unfortunately, you can't get to it with the usual swipe-down gesture on the Home screen. Some finger gymnastics require you to reach for the status bar to pull it down. We also couldn't find the toggle for automatic brightness control - you have to dig deep into the general Settings menu to switch it on or off.

Tapping and holding on an app shows only the "Uninstall" button in the context menu, so once again, you are forced to open the Settings menu to clear the cache, force stop a misbehaving app, adjust the background usage, etc.

No context menu on the home screen

Magic UI also has the usual customization options, including themes, wallpapers, icons and most of the home screen-related customizations. And since the Magic5 Lite comes with an OLED panel this time around, you get to choose from a wide variety of Always-on display styles and layouts.

Customization options and Always-on display

Honor seems to have whitelisted some of the most popular apps, which play well with the advertised RAM Turbo feature. The feature itself dynamically expands the available RAM by allocating a chunk of the internal storage and compresses the apps, so it can keep more of the said whitelisted apps open in the background.

Almost all pre-installed default apps aren't Google's stock ones but are proprietary. We are talking Gallery, Phone, Weather, Calculator, Files, Notepad, etc. There are also a couple of pre-installed ones that can be removed at your wish.

The good news is that the Honor Share feature is here to stay as long as you have an eligible Honor MagicBook to use it with. It allows for a seamless file transfer across devices as well as some multi-tasking features.

Honor share

We would go as far as saying that the current state of the software feels rather unfinished. Basic features are missing, along with the ones that used to make Magic UI unique. But at least we see multi-tasking features with the floating windows return again, and those weren't available last year. Swipe from either the left or right edge of the screen and hold to open up the sidebar and choose what apps to open in floating windows. You can open just one app at a time, but all active apps remain docked on the edge of the screen for fast and easy access.

Multiti-tasking

However, we weren't able to find any of the Android 12-intrinsic functionalities, such as notification history and expanded privacy features.

To finish this section on a high note, we want to point out that the Magic UI feels snappy and responsive, and animations don't really get in the way. Mostly a clutter-free experience that may appeal to many Android users that are not necessarily after the high feature count.

Benchmark performance

This isn't the first time we meet the new Snapdragon 695 5G chipset, which is a successor to the Snapdragon 690. Despite the small incremental numeric change in the model name, this chipset is actually totally revamped. Along with the newer, more powerful CPU cores and GPU, the chip boasts 5G connectivity support and is based on a more modern 6nm manufacturing process by TSMC, unlike the older Snapdragon 690.

The main two Kryo 560 Gold (Cortex-A77) cores are replaced with Kryo 660 Gold (Cortex-A78) cores clocked at 2.2 GHz, while the six energy-efficient Kryo 560 Silver (Cortex-A55) clocked at 1.7 GHz remain the same. There's only a change in the name, now called Kryo 660 Silver. The Adreno 619L GPU has been replaced with a full-fledged Adreno 619. The SD695 now supports faster LPDDR4X memory at 2133 MHz as well.

The whole hardware upgrade is supposed to boost CPU performance by up to 15% and GPU by 30%. We put that to the test in our usual synthetic benchmarks. We've also put it against other competing SoCs available in similarly-priced rivals.

There's one considerable drawback to it, though, and that's the ISP. It doesn't support 4K video recording, so phones with this chipset lack the feature - downright unacceptable in 2022, if you ask us.

GeekBench 5 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2
  3487
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  2943
• Google Pixel 6a
  2876
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  2694
• Snapdragon 695 average
  1981
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  1912
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  1906
• Galaxy A53 5G
  1891

GeekBench 5 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2
  1131
• Google Pixel 6a
  1047
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  785
• Galaxy A53 5G
  743
• Snapdragon 695 average
  687
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  667
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  666
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  493

AnTuTu 9

Higher is better

• Realme GT2
  810512
• Google Pixel 6a
  712092
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  619610
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  528905
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  387250
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  387218
• Galaxy A53 5G
  379313
• Snapdragon 695 average
  360341

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2
  56
• Google Pixel 6a
  51
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  42
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  29
• Galaxy A53 5G
  19
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  18
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  17
• Snapdragon 695 average (1080p)
  16

GFX Car Chase ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Realme GT2
  68
• Google Pixel 6a
  66
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  51
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  33
• Galaxy A53 5G
  23
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  21
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  21
• Snapdragon 695 average
  19

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (offscreen 1080p)

Higher is better

• Google Pixel 6a
  116
• Realme GT2
  115
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  81
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  54
• Galaxy A53 5G
  38
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  35
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  35
• Snapdragon 695 average
  34

GFX Manhattan ES 3.1 (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Google Pixel 6a
  60
• Realme GT2
  60
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  55
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  50
• Galaxy A53 5G
  35
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  29
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  29
• Snapdragon 695 average (1080p)
  29

3DMark Wild Life Vulkan 1.1 (offscreen 1440p)

Higher is better

• Google Pixel 6a
  6066
• Realme GT2
  5879
• OnePlus Nord 2T 5G
  4653
• Xiaomi 12 Lite
  2483
• Galaxy A53 5G
  2292
• Honor Magic5 Lite
  1212
• Honor Magic4 Lite
  1211
• Snapdragon 695 average
  1209

As you can see, this year's Magic5 Lite once again falls short of the competition in terms of raw performance. Pretty much all competitors in the mid-€300 price category offer substantially better chipsets with more capable ISPs too. In fact, the Magic5 Lite scores a bit lower than your average Snapdragon 695-powered phone, but since the difference is rather negligible in most cases, it's within the statistical margin of error.

Sustained performance

We ran our standard CPU stress test to see how the Magic5 Lite handles continuous loads. As expected, we found no issues. The chipset maintained rather stable clock speeds for the better part of the test, only to tone down to around 80% of its theoretical performance after 40 minutes.

CPU throttle test: 30 min • 60 min

We didn't notice any unpleasant surface temperatures either. The handset felt cool throughout the whole test. But to be absolutely fair, the Snapdragon 695 SoC isn't a demanding one, so keeping it running at maximal loads should be an easy task.