Honor 200 review: The best camera phone to buy under INR

After trying out the Honor 200 for a few weeks, I can confidently say that it’s worthy of your attention. In the competitive smartphone market, brands often face a difficult choice: build a phone that excels at one standout feature, making it easier to market, or develop a well-rounded device that makes it difficult to price competitively. The Honor 200 strikes a good balance between these two approaches and falls squarely into the third category – a really great phone.

The base model of the phone is priced at Rs 34,999 and comes with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage; but we tested the higher-spec variant, which is priced at Rs 39,999 and comes with 12GB RAM and 512GB storage. Apart from the impressive camera setup, one of the highlights of this phone is its design. The pill-shaped camera module ensures that the Honor 200 doesn’t disappear in the crowd.

There’s a lot to talk about the Honor 200, but I want to highlight a few key aspects that, in my opinion, make this phone worth recommending. Let’s start with the display. The Honor 200 features a 6.7-inch AMOLED quad-curved display with a 120Hz refresh rate, 435 PPI pixel density, and 4,000 nits peak brightness. As a result, the viewing experience feels like it belongs in a higher class. Complementing the display is a massive 5,200mAh silicon-carbon battery, ensuring that the phone can easily last a full day even with heavy usage. Despite the large battery capacity, the phone weighs just 187 grams.

The Honor 200 also supports 100W fast charging, although there is no charger included in the box. It has Type-C USB connectivity, supports dual SIM, runs MagicOS 8.0 based on Android 14, and comes with a spare transparent protective case. In short, the Honor 200 leaves no stone unturned in terms of providing value.

But what really makes this phone stand out is its excellent camera configuration. The front 50MP selfie camera exceeds expectations, the rear 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera with autofocus also allows you to do macro photography, the main camera is 50MP, and the highlight is the 50MP telephoto camera with both OIS and EIS. This telephoto lens offers 2.5x optical zoom and 50x digital zoom and is equipped with a Sony IMX856 sensor. While the hardware itself is impressive, the excellence of the camera lies in the AI-based processing that is initiated after the photo is clicked.

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Although the processing takes a second or so, the final image is impressive regardless of the shooting conditions. This is especially true for portraiture, where the camera can outperform phones that cost twice as much. Video performance is also solid, though it tends to preserve more contrast than I would like.

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Overall, the Honor 200 impresses in every way. From the all-day battery life, stunning curved display to top-notch camera performance, this phone is great value for money. During our time with the Honor 200, we never expected more from it – a rare achievement for phones in this segment. If you’re looking for an all-round smartphone, the Honor 200 comes highly recommended.