Honor 600 Review: A Mid-Range Phone That Gets Most Things Right

Quick Verdict: The Honor 600 is a strong AED 1,599 mid-ranger let down by a strong iPhone inspired design and shaky low-light photography.
What works: 7,000mAh battery stretches close to two full days, Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 keeps things smooth, MagicOS 10 is one of the best Android skins, IP69K rating, 80W wired charging.
What doesn't: The orange colourway is a transparent iPhone 17 Pro homage, low-light photos fall apart despite the 200MP sensor, no wireless charging.

There was no Honor 500, so the Honor 600, the company's new budget phone, is picking up right where the Honor 400 left off about a year ago. The numbering has jumped, but the phone itself is more of a refined step forward than a generational leap. You still get the 200MP main camera sensor (albeit with some upgrades), and a 6.57” AMOLED display, but Honor has swapped in the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 (instead of the Gen 3), stuffed a 7,000mAh battery inside (up from 6,000mAh), and loaded the phone with its AI Creative Editor 2.0 suite and retains the AI button on the side. Durability gets a bump too, going from IP65/IP66 to IP69K, and the display now claims a peak brightness of 8,000nits.

The Honor 600 retails at AED 1,599, which slots it right next to the Nothing Phone 4a - another mid-range phone at the same price tag that I recently reviewed. And it makes for an interesting face-off because the two phones go in somewhat different directions for the money. The Nothing Phone 4a sticks closely to Nothing's signature design language with its distinctive transparent aesthetic (which when compared to the Honor 600…well, we will get that to the next section), packs a sharper 6.78" 1.5K AMOLED display, and offers a more versatile camera system a 50MP periscope telephoto at 3.5x optical zoom and runs NothingOS, which remains one of the cleanest Android skins out there.

The Honor 600 counters with a significantly larger 7,000mAh battery compared to Nothing's 5,080mAh, a beefier 200MP main sensor versus 50MP, faster 80W wired charging against 50W, and Honor’s full suite of AI photo and video editing tools. Where the Honor 600 aces, however, is in day-to-day usage and longevity, where it holds its own in spades against its closest competition - but more on that as we go through the review.

Design and Features: A Familiar Face, Substantial Build

Look, Honor. Please, stop this.

The Honor 600, especially in the orange colourway that we received for this review, looks like an iPhone 17 Pro knock-off. There is really no polite way to put it. The orange hue is strikingly close to Apple's Cosmic Orange, the rounded rectangular camera island is arranged in a similar fashion, and the overall silhouette of the phone - when you glance at it from a couple of feet away - could easily pass for Cupertino's work.

Except it doesn't quite pull it off. Where the iPhone 17 Pro's camera module flows seamlessly from the aluminium body, the Honor 600 uses what looks like an acrylic-glass housing over the two camera lenses, the flash, and what I think is the colour temperature sensor. The "AI Camera" and "200MP OIS" lettering printed directly on the module is a curious choice too — I'd rather Honor had let the design speak for itself.

This frustrates me because I really like Honor as a smartphone brand, and I know they can do better than this. The Magic series consistently produces great-looking devices, and the Magic V foldable line is gorgeous. Even the Honor 400, the phone this one replaces, had a design that felt closer to Honor's design language - and it was great! Honor has proven time and again that it has designers who can craft something with its own identity and character. So, watching the company fall back on copying the iPhone 17 Pro for its mid-range series is disappointing.

I understand the strategy - the Honor 600 is a wink and a nudge to those who want the iPhone Pro look without the iPhone Pro price - but the end result is a phone that feels like it's admitting the competition has better design sensibilities. And I would much rather Honor prove them wrong with something original than prove them right by copying them. 

If you can look past the aesthetic mimicry, the Honor 600 is actually a well-built phone. The fibreglass back has a smooth, refined texture that doesn't feel plasticky, and the one-piece sculpted metal frame gives the phone a solid, cohesive feel in the hand. At 200g, it's a touch heavier than the Honor 400, but it carries the weight well and never feels ungainly or top-heavy. The camera bump does protrude, causing the phone to wobble slightly on a flat surface when you tap the corners, but that's true of pretty much every phone with a sizable camera module these days.

All the physical controls are lined up on the right side of the phone. You have a single-piece volume rocker, a power button, and the AI Button, a dedicated hardware key that can be customised for single-press, double-press, and long-press actions. You can assign it to launch the camera, trigger AI Screen Suggestions, open AI Photos Agent, invoke Honor AI, access AI Memories, or simply leave it set to none. It continues to be a decent addition if you find yourself using Honor's AI tools frequently, but I would have still liked Honor to open up the button to allow it to launch other apps than just AI stuff.

The Honor 600 also carries an IP69K rating for dust and water resistance along with SGS 5-Star Certification, which is a step up from the Honor 400’s IP65/IP66. Other hardware niceties include dual stereo speakers, NFC, an infrared sensor, and eSIM support.

On the camera front - and we will dive deeper into this in the camera section - the Honor 600 sports a 200MP main sensor with OIS with CIPA 6.0 rating, paired with a 12MP ultra-wide and macro lens and a colour temperature sensor. Up front you get a 50MP selfie camera. There's no periscope telephoto here, so you are relying on digital zoom beyond the 4x lossless crop, which can reach up to 30x. 

The display is a 6.57” AMOLED panel running at 2728x1264 resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate, 458 ppi, and support for 1.07 billion colours across the DCI-P3 gamut. Honor claims a peak brightness of 8,000 nits, which I suppose is achieved with the new Sunlight Mode that extends high brightness when you are under “strong outdoor light”. It seems to work seamlessly  - I never noticed it kicking in specifically, and the display is bright and clear even under harsh sunlight.

Compared to the Honor 400, you are going from a 6.55” panel to a 6.57” panel, from 5,000nits to 8,000 nits peak brightness, and the bezels have been trimmed to 0.98mm - which Honour claims are the narrowest in the industry. In daily use, the Honor 600's display is excellent - bright, punchy colours, deep OLED blacks, and sharp enough that text and UI elements look crisp at any viewing distance. It's a great display, and the eye-comfort features like the AI Defocus Display, Natural Tone, and Circadian Night Display are welcome additions, as always.

The dual stereo speakers get the job done, but won't blow anyone away. They get loud enough for casual consumption - reels, YouTube videos, the odd podcast - but they lack the richness and fullness you get from better speakers. There's a thinness to the sound that becomes noticeable when you are listening to anything with a bit of low-end, and the bass response lacks the roundedness I would have liked.

Camera: Brilliant by Day, Frustrating by Night

The Honor 600 carries a dual rear camera setup headlined by a 200MP main sensor. It's a 1/1.4" sensor - customised in collaboration with Samsung  -with an f/1.9 aperture, optical image stabilisation rated at CIPA 6.0, and support for 4x lossless zoom with up to 30x digital zoom.

Alongside it sits a 12MP ultra-wide and macro camera with an f/2.2 aperture, a 112-degree field of view, and 0.6x zoom capability. There's also a dedicated colour temperature sensor next to the main lens, which works with Honor’s AI Color Engine to analyse the ambient lighting conditions and adjust white balance for more accurate colours. Up front, you get a 50MP selfie camera.

On the software side, Honor has leaned heavily into AI processing for the camera. The phone uses a 12.4 billion parameter night photography enhancement model that powers a suite of low-light features - AI Ultra-night Engine for general night scenes, AI Ultra Night portrait for people shots in dim conditions, and AI Super Zoom 2.0, which is designed to maintain clarity when zooming in at night, something the previous Honor 400's AI Super Zoom 1.0 could only manage during the day. There's also a 30x AIGC Clear mode that uses generative AI to enhance detail at extreme zoom levels.

Daylight shots are pretty nice with the Honor 600. It has not been sunny in the UAE these days, but even under cloudy skies, the camera captured a decent amount of detail and resolution while presenting a well-balanced colour palette. Since there is no periscope camera here, anything above 4x zoom will result in significant detail loss, and at 2x and 4x you can notice oversharpening in the photos, which is also prevalent in standard 1x shots. But overall, the cameras are quite capable and produce instantly shareable photos.

Nighttime photography is where things get tricky. There's visible banding and heavy compression in most shots, skin tones in portrait mode lean waxy and over-processed, and even 2x and 4x zoom photos come back soft and noticeably compressed. The 30x zoom struggles in low light to the point of being impractical, and getting AI mode to engage on a night composition is hit-or-miss.

Performance and Software: Snappy Chip, Polished MagicOS

The Honor 600 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, a 4nm octa-core chip paired with the Adreno 722 GPU, 12GB of RAM, and 512GB of internal storage. On the software side, it ships with MagicOS 10 based on Android 16. Honor has committed to 6 years of OS and security updates for the Honor 400 series, and while the company hasn't explicitly confirmed the same for the 600 series, it would be safe to expect a similar commitment here, given that it sits in the same product tier.

For benchmarks, the Honour 600 clearly outpaces the Nothing Phone 4a, which makes sense because the Nothing runs on the lower-tier Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 compared to the Honour’s Snapdragon 7 Gen 4. In Geekbench 6, the Honor 600 scored 1,308 in single-core and 4,076 in multi-core, against Nothing's 1,247 and 3,345, respectively.

The GPU gap is similarly wide, with the Honor 600 pulling a Geekbench GPU score of 4,775 versus the Nothing's 3,548. In 3DMark, the Honor 600 posted 757 in Steel Nomad Light and 2,057 in Wild Life Extreme, while the Nothing managed 397 and 1,104 in the same tests, respectively. The Honor 600 also maxed out 3DMark Slingshot Extreme, while the Nothing Phone 4a topped out at 5,513. So across the board, the Honor 600 holds a clear, if not dramatic, performance lead over the Nothing Phone 4a.

In sustained performance, the Honor 600 held up well in the 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test, posting a best loop score of 2,064 and a lowest of 1,952, landing at 94.6% stability. The phone ran hot during the test - climbing from 38C to 49C - but that seems to be the ceiling of how hot the phone gets, and it doesn't feel extremely warm to the touch in use. The frame rate stayed in the 9 to 15fps range throughout.

In day-to-day use, the Honor 600 is a smooth operator. Jumping between apps, scrolling through reels and YouTube, editing documents, using the camera, tossing images and text between apps through Magic Portal, running pop-up windows - it all feels stable and responsive with very little stutter. MagicOS is well optimised in this regard, and I actually noticed better overall smoothness and fewer stutters compared to the Nothing Phone 4a.

The headline software addition on the Honor 600 is the AI Creative Editor 2.0, which is Honor's expanded suite of AI-powered photo and video editing tools. The biggest feature here is AI Image to Video 2.0, which can generate short 5-second video clips from still photos. You can use up to three images, write custom prompts to guide the animation, and even add sound. There are two modes: Freestyle, where you provide images and a text prompt and let the AI interpret them freely, and preset templates like Pet Roleplay, The Embrace, and Life Morph, which come with preconfigured prompts and optimised settings for more predictable results.

Beyond the video generation, the suite also includes a wide range of photo editing tools: AI Eraser for removing objects and passers-by, AI Moving Photo Eraser for cleaning up live photos, AI Upscale for enhancing image resolution, AI Outpainting to extend the frame of a photo, AI Composition for reframing shots, AI Color Enhancement and AI Light Enhancement for correcting exposure and tone, Magic Color for applying artistic colour grades in a single tap, and AI Blur Background for portrait-style bokeh effects. There's also the AI Photos Agent, which lets you enhance photos with a single tap or via voice and text commands to adjust composition and style. 

Battery Life: A Two-Day Standout

Moving onto battery life, the Honor 600 packs a 7,000mAh cell, which is a substantial increase from the Honor 400’s 6,000mAh and dwarfs the Nothing Phone 4a’s 5,080mAh. Honor claims the battery can endure 1,600 charge and discharge cycles, which should translate to solid longevity over the years. The company's own usage estimates peg it at 25.8 hours of web browsing, 24.3 hours of YouTube, 23 hours of TikTok, roughly 21 hours of WhatsApp, and 11.5 hours of PUBG gaming.

In practise, those numbers track reasonably well. With my typical daily use - scrolling through social media, watching YouTube and reels, chatting on WhatsApp, some document editing, and general browsing - I could comfortably stretch the battery to a day and a half, and on lighter days, easily push it to close two full days before needing to plug in.

When you do need to top up, the Honor 600 supports 80W wired charging via Honor SuperCharge, which gets you back to full relatively quickly. There's also 27W wired reverse charging, though it's worth - and bizarre as it sounds - that the full 27W output is only supported when charging Apple devices - for other brands, including Honor's own phones, you are limited to 5W reverse charging. There is no wireless charging here, which is not a dealbreaker at this price point.

Honor 600 FAQs

How much does the Honor 600 cost in the UAE?

The Honor 600 retails at AED 1,599 in the UAE for the 12GB RAM and 256GB storage configuration. Pre-orders started on 23 April 2026 through Honor UAE, Noon, Sharaf DG, and select retail partners.

Does the Honor 600 support wireless charging?

No. The standard Honor 600 does not have wireless charging — it supports 80W wired fast charging via Honor SuperCharge and 5W wired reverse charging only. Wireless charging is reserved for the step-up Honor 600 Pro.

How long does the Honor 600 battery last?

The Honor 600 packs a 7,000mAh battery and comfortably stretches to a day and a half of mixed use, sometimes closer to two full days. Honor estimates around 25 hours of web browsing or 24 hours of YouTube on a single charge.

What is the difference between the Honor 600 and the Honor 600 Pro?

The Honor 600 Pro upgrades to a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, adds a 50MP periscope telephoto camera, supports 50W wireless charging, and is priced at AED 2,999. The standard Honor 600 uses the Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 and has no telephoto or wireless charging at AED 1,599.

Is the Honor 600 good for photography?

Daylight photography is capable and the 200MP main sensor delivers sharp, well-exposed results. However, low-light performance is the phone's weakest area — night photos can fall apart in ways unexpected from an Honor phone, so heavy night shooters may want to look elsewhere.

Is the Honor 600 water and dust resistant?

Yes. The Honor 600 carries an IP69K rating for high-pressure water and dust resistance, alongside an SGS 5-Star Certification for drop and crush resistance — a step up from the Honor 400's IP65/IP66 rating.

Should You Buy the Honor 600?

The Honor 600 does quite a lot right. The battery life is the standout here - being able to stretch to a day and a half, and sometimes closer to two full days, is not something we see in this price bracket. Performance is strong, the display is excellent, MagicOS 10 remains one of my favourite Android skins, and the AI Tools in the gallery are pretty fun. All of this for AED 1,599 is a pretty compelling proposition.

But the Honor 600 does stumble in a few places, and some of those stumbles are hard to look past. The design, as I stated earlier, is a disappointing lean on the iPhone 17 Pro; the speakers are fine but nothing more, and the camera, despite its 200MP headline sensor, doesn't do justice in low-light photos like other Honor phones. Daylight photography is perfectly capable, but if you take a lot of photos at night, you are going to walk away frustrated more often than not (although I think this will be fixed with an update, or so).

And that's what makes the decision between this and the Nothing Phone 4a so interesting. If you prioritise battery life, performance, and faster charging, the Honor 600 is the easier recommendation. But if your phone spends most of its time taking photos, or if you want something with a bit more personality in its looks and feel, the Nothing Phone 4a probably fits the bill better. Neither is a perfect phone at AED 1,599, but depending on what matters most to you, both make a fair case.

For the step-up model in the same family, see our Honor 600 Pro review.

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