HONOR Magic V5 Review - The BEST Folding Smartphone of 2025 #HONORMagicV5 #smartphone #tech

So now that we've had every big company come out with our foldable smartphones for the year, this still has to be my favorite for 2025. This is the Honor Magic V5 which technically has been out in China for the past couple months. Globally available as of today when you're watching this video so you can technically grab it in Europe. In North America you'd still have to order it through third-party but you can still get it if you want and the big reason for this being my favorite, this is technically the thinnest and lightest foldable smartphone on the market. Kind of disclaimer because it comes in a couple different variants or color options. This one is in Dawn Gold which is my favorite of the bunch but if you get it in white that is 8.8 millimeters when it's fully folded shut and 4.1 millimeters when it's open. The other colorways for some reason maybe due to the finishing, this one is 4.2 millimeters when it's open and 9 millimeters folded shut. So very negligible for example the Galaxy Z Fold or the Z Fold 7 for example finally has been updated with a thinner design with what Honor has technically been doing for a couple years now and when it's completely unfolded it's a 7.95 inch display and I feel Honor has always kind of got it with their crease design so even as we kind of tilt it here in the light of the studio can kind of see the thin edge of that crease kind of shining through in the light but when you're watching content when you're using it day to day you actually don't see it that much. It uses actually a reinforced carbon fiber hinge. It has an IP rating of IP 58 and 59 whereas the Samsung Fold 7 is only IP 48 so it's really durable so I think this is good for up to 500,000 folds. You'll probably ever never get that in the lifetime you're using a phone even if you use this for 5, 6, 10 years and I even did this crazy hinge test with some weights and dumbbells so this phone can technically hold up to 30 kilograms of weight which I slowly built up to and initially I was a bit scared with some of the flex but you can still see after the heaviest dumbbell the screen was still perfectly fine so there's really no compromise here with having the thinnest folding phone but it's still really durable. I think the hinge will last longer than the rest of the components like the battery which we'll get to in a second. On the front the actual cover screen this is 6.43 inches and once again Honor has kind of been in this space. They've been leaders in the foldable series I think for the past couple years. Samsung has finally adopted something a bit larger to match this but in day-to-day usage over the past couple months that I've had this you are using the cover screen 95% of the time to do your regular day tasks whether you're just browsing the net in the morning you're checking news updates stocks when you're playing simple games every morning I crush my Pokemon TCG we're gonna pull a pack on video camera good luck here we go I mean we always can't get lucky I know that technically you would rarely do this but even compared to you Samsung this game is actually thicker there are certain games I played like clash of clans for example which can fully utilize the larger display which I think is really great once again gotta do the second pull come on full screen good luck no luck on video sorry guys like I said the majority of your usage will be on that cover screen because it's so usable in this form factor and if I bring up say my 16 pro max which is pretty iconic for a candy bar style phone you can actually see the thinnest profile here it is almost the same thickness as one phone you've got no weird gap it's like millimeters larger than a candy bar style phone and if it's in your pocket you actually won't notice that extra thickness to it so I think the design of it is really great like I said they actually match kind of in color ways to the titanium or desert titanium to the dawn gold you can see some of the banding around the outsides but for the rest of the design you can see this little diamond pattern which I really like a bit more premium say compared to the hero flagship color of the Samsung which is in blue which we actually found scratched quite easily like on the back like after like three days of testing we had some scratches whereas this holds up really nicely and what I really like about honor devices if you guys haven't seen them yet they still come with extra little goodies in the box you can actually see from this when we did the unboxing a while ago you still actually get some usable goodies in it for example this sweet little case which isn't just a cheap flimsy clear case it's actually color match feels premium it has that same kind of gradient and you actually get this little ring which you can use as a kickstand depending how you view your phone typically you'd only see this from third party you probably pay like 50 60 bucks for it but the fact that they still include it inside of the box I know that we're moving away from some of the extras with say like the iPhone from Samsung but it is still nice to see brands give you extra stuff for the money that you're spending which is really nice the next big thing around performance is the camera modules on the back so quite large here and once again compared to the Samsung the placement of that was quite weird that you would get this really bad wiggle or wobble because they were all stacked on one side this one you can still put on a desk and you don't get any of that weirdness because the camera module is quite circular and it's placed in the middle so for this one you've got three different sensors so you have a 50 megapixel main 50 megapixel ultra wide and a 64 megapixel telephoto I'd rather have that than the 200 megapixel main on the fold 7 which in my opinion it's a bit of a stat pattern like it's a good camera it's decent but they also compromise by having a 10 megapixel telephoto and a 12 megapixel ultra wide and not to mention it only zooms up to 30x whereas the honor v5 gets up to 100x and has a I super zoom as well to sharpen those photos I feel like there is a big sacrifice for those other two cameras whereas these since you are paying like $1,500 to $2,000 depending on the spec of a folding phone it should have the best camera sensors in it and for these across all three you're just having more versatility when I've used this like out and about on my like day to day when I take it with me when I've taken photos outside when I've taken it to concerts having all three cameras perform well without having that sacrifice is really good so I've left some sample shots that I've kind of used over the past little bit I'll let you guys be the judge on them it's also loaded with a ton of AI features obviously like every smartphone I honestly haven't used every single one of them but compared to say the iPhone something as simple as removing people from a background of a photo for whatever reason Apple still struggles they're like Apple intelligence is just not good at image recognition but if you do have an iOS device for example like an iPhone honor has a seamless cross device connectivity which is literally tap to share between the two different devices so next off there's a lot of AI features to get through you've got a couple different options to remove passers-by you can still circle to remove people and of course the other options of AI upscaling you've got AI cutouts AI out painting and this was actually the first phone to feature AI image to video so it's powered by Google's VEO AI model this kind of caught me off guard to be honest but it's really cool on what you can create from still photos and it also has AI call translation which is on device and can translate up to six different languages way more AI features once again tied in with Gemini makes this a better AI phone in my opinion so the next big thing around foldables is obviously performance so this has the latest chip sets inside so it's running the snapdragon 8 elite it's got 16 gigs of RAM and 512 gigs of storage and I would say maybe the second reason why you would use this kind of unfolded is for multitasking so say you are someone that really loves to say watch content you can really multitask well so for example I've got just this one running YouTube on one side I'm kind of browsing the net on the other and you can even swipe over to have say a game running in the next screen so those are all technically running at the same time and using that extra real estate of this large display it really makes a lot of sense you can do this a bit more when you're seated maybe not as much like on the go when you're kind of commuting when you're moving around but even say when I was traveling like on a plane you're kind of sitting down for a long period of time you don't actually have to have two devices like a separate tablet you can kind of all get things done on one screen which is really nice super fluid very easy to get around and once again once you want to close that just to use the main cover display it's simple just to go back to that one screen and the last really good thing about this device is the battery so 58 20 milliamps and since you might be replacing your tablet you're combining two devices into one you might be using it a bit more your screen on time might be longer this has the benefit of having a silicon carbon battery once again unlike the fold 7 you can see here that the silicon carbon battery content has been up to 15% so it just makes it better for more energy higher density and it actually has faster charging so 50 watts wireless 66 watts wired charging so it has fast charging speeds even if you are the heaviest of power users this will easily last you the entire day I've never once got it close to dropping below 5% in a heavy day's usage which says a lot being you know in the content space being on your device scrolling the endless loops of social and ripping Pokemon packs the entire day this phone has been great like I said folding phones aren't technically for everyone they're really for someone that wants that extra versatility of having that inside screen I feel like companies now have made them so much more usable in terms of the fitness in terms of the lightness you don't actually feel like you're sacrificing or compromising on something compared to say a candy bar style phone they literally almost feel the same and you just have that extra usability of having that cover display and I know that Apple is also potentially coming out with something in 2026 I've seen some leaks some rumors and typically Apple does come late to the party but clearly there is a very strong segment and they want to capitalize on the folding phone craze which I think is at that point now where you can recommend them as your main device so curious to hear your thoughts on the honor magic v5 like I said I think it's the best folding phone of the year I would definitely take this over the fold 7 but curious to hear your thoughts and I will catch the rest of you in one of my next ones peace