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Honor Magic Vs
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Honor Magic Vs Audio test

OTHER AVAILABLE TESTS FOR THIS DEVICE

We put the Honor Magic Vs through our rigorous DXOMARK Audio test suite to measure its performance both at recording sound using its built-in microphones, and at playing audio back through its speakers.

In this review, we will break down how it fared in a variety of tests and several common use cases.

Overview


Key audio specifications include:

  • Two speakers (Top left, bottom left)
  • No jack audio output
  • DTS:X Ultra technology

Scoring

Sub-scores and attributes included in the calculations of the global score.

Honor Magic Vs
Honor Magic Vs
137
audio
135
Playback
130

158

126

149

150

162

120

162

116

157

143
Recording
129

147

139

146

134

159

156

170

145

Best

125

166

Playback

Pros

Cons

Recording

Pros

  • Pleasant and natural midrange restitution
  • Great dynamics performance, good signal-to-noise ratio across all use cases
  • Excellent audio zoom

Cons

  • Quite muffled timbre, unpleasant midrange resonance
  • Only average spatial performance, blurry localizability and limited wideness
  • Compression artifacts at high sound pressure levels

The Honor Magic Vs delivered a good performance in the DXOMARK Audio tests. For a folding device, the results were particularly impressive in recording, thanks to very effective background noise cancellation and a very good audio zoom. However, our testers found the Honor to be sensitive to wind noise, and sonority could be slightly underwhelming in both playback through the built-in speakers and recording.

In playback, the Honor Vs achieved the best results when used for listening to music but also did very well as a gaming device or when watching videos and movies. Audio recordings were most impressive with the main camera app, but  the front camera’s and the memo app’s audio quality was not far off.

Test summary

About DXOMARK Audio tests: For scoring and analysis in our smartphone audio reviews, DXOMARK engineers perform a variety of objective tests and undertake more than 20 hours of perceptual evaluation under controlled lab conditions.
(For more details about our Playback protocol, click here; for more details about our Recording protocol, click here.)

The following section gathers key elements of our exhaustive tests and analyses performed in DXOMARK laboratories. Detailed performance evaluations under the form of reports are available upon request. Do not hesitate to contact us.

Playback

135

Honor Magic Vs

163

Black Shark 5 Pro
How Audio Playback score is composed

DXOMARK engineers test playback through the smartphone speakers, whose performance is evaluated in our labs and in real-life conditions, using default apps and settings.

In our playback tests, the Honor Magic Vs delivered a decent timbre performance. Our testers noticed a nice lower treble presence but some lack of high-end extension. Midrange sounded a bit thin but natural, and bass rendition was correct. Overall, the tonal balance was a little thin, with a lot of focus on the midrange. Dynamic performance was good, thanks to pretty sharp attack and decent punch. Bass precision suffered from a lack of sustain, partly due to insufficient low-end extension.

In terms of spatial characteristics, the built-in speakers created a sound scene with wideness that was acceptable but lagged behind some other devices in this class, especially in regard to the Honor’s dimensions. On the plus side, individual sound sources were easy to pinpoint, and the distance rendition was accurate. However, underwhelming depth rendition resulted in a very flat stereo scene. Our experts also found the minimum volume setting too low, making it difficult to hear some soft sections in classical music for example. The maximum volume step was loud enough. In terms of unwanted audio artifacts, our testers observed some significant distortion at maximum volume. They also found the speakers to be easily occluded when handling the device, in both its folded and unfolded state.

Listen to the tested smartphone’s playback performance in this comparison with some of its competitors:

Honor Magic Vs
Xiaomi MIX Fold 2
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4
Recordings of the smartphones playing some of our music tracks at 60 LAeq in an anechoic environment by 2 microphones in A-B configuration, at 30 cm
Here is how the Honor Magic Vs performs in playback use cases compared to its competitors:
Playback use-cases scores

Timbre

130

Honor Magic Vs

158

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Timbre score represents how well a phone reproduces sound across the audible tonal range and takes into account bass, midrange, treble, tonal balance, and volume dependency. It is the most important attribute for playback.

Music playback frequency response
A 1/12 octave frequency response graph, which measures the volume of each frequency emitted by the smartphone when playing a pure-sine wave in an anechoic environment.

Dynamics

126

Honor Magic Vs

149

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Dynamics score measures the accuracy of changes in the energy level of sound sources, for example how precisely a bass note is reproduced or the impact sound from drums.


Spatial

150

Honor Magic Vs

162

Black Shark 5 Pro

The sub-attributes for spatial tests include pinpointing a specific sound's location, its positional balance, distance, and wideness.


Volume

120

Honor Magic Vs

162

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Volume score represents the overall loudness of a smartphone and how smoothly volume increases and decreases based on user input.

Here are a few sound pressure levels (SPL) measured when playing our sample recordings of hip-hop and classical music at maximum volume:
Hip-Hop Classical
Honor Magic Vs 72.6 dBA 66.6 dBA
Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 72.2 dBA 67.9 dBA
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 71.1 dBA 67.3 dBA
The following graph shows the gradual changes in volume going from minimum to maximum. We expect these changes to be consistent across the range, so that all volume steps correspond to users’ expectations:
Music volume consistency
This line graph shows the relative loudness of playback relative to the user selected volume step, measured at different volume steps with a correlated pink noise in an anechoic box recorded in axis at 0.20 meter.

Artifacts

116

Honor Magic Vs

157

Asus ROG Phone 5

The Artifacts score measures the extent to which the sound is affected by various types of distortion. The higher the score, the less the disturbances in the sound are noticeable. Distortion can occur because of sound processing in the device and because of the quality of the speakers.

Playback Total Harmonic Distortion (Maximum Volume)
This graph shows the Total Harmonic Distortion and Noise over the hearable frequency range.
It represents the distortion and noise of the device playing our test signal (0 dB Fs, Sweep Sine in an anechoic box at 40 cm) at the device's maximum volume.

Recording

143

Honor Magic Vs

160

Honor Magic6 Pro
How Audio Recording score is composed

DXOMARK engineers test recording by evaluating the recorded files on reference audio equipment. Those recordings are done in our labs and in real-life conditions, using default apps and settings.

Our experts found the tonal balance in recording to be average. Recordings had a nice midrange body in most situations, but also sounded muffled, with some resonance impairing midrange rendition. Treble rendition was correct but some additional bass presence would have been beneficial. The Honor did very well in the dynamics category, with an excellent signal-to-noise ratio ensuring good intelligibility of voices in all use cases, as well as good envelope rendition.

Recordings offered only average wideness, with front-camera recordings in portrait orientation feeling particularly narrow. Localizability of individual sound sources left room for improvement as well, with a blurry sound scene and the position of voices in the scene appearing to move. Distance rendition was accurate and natural. Main-camera recording lacked some loudness but volume was good across all other use cases. In addition, unwanted audio artifacts were hardly an issue, with only some slight compression and distortion appearing on sudden loud voices. Background rendition could have been better, as its tonal balance was impaired by noise reduction, as well as some pumping.

Here is how the Honor Magic Vs performs in recording use cases compared to its competitors:

Recording use-cases scores

Timbre

129

Honor Magic Vs

147

Honor Magic3 Pro+

The Timbre score represents how well a phone captures sounds across the audible tonal range and takes into account bass, midrange, treble, and tonal balance. It is the most important attribute for recording.

Life video frequency response
A 1/12 octave frequency response graph, which measures the volume of each frequency captured by the smartphone when recording a pure-sine wave in an anechoic environment.

Dynamics

139

Honor Magic Vs

146

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Dynamics score measures the accuracy of changes in the energy level of sound sources, for example how precisely a voice's plosives (the p's, t's and k's, for example) are reproduced. The score also considers the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), for example how loud the main voice is compared to the background noise.


Spatial

134

Honor Magic Vs

159

Vivo X Fold

The sub-attributes for spatial tests include pinpointing a specific sound's location, its positional balance, distance, and wideness on the recorded audio files.

Recording directivity
Directivity graph of the smartphone when recording test signals using the camera app, with the main camera. It represents the acoustic energy (in dB) over the angle of incidence of the sound source. (Normalized to the angle 0°, in front of the device.)

Volume

156

Honor Magic Vs

170

Black Shark 5 Pro

The Volume score represents how loud audio is normalized on the recorded files and the how the device handles loud environments, such as electronic concerts, when recording.

Here are the sound levels recorded in the audio and video files, measured in LUFS (Loudness Unit Full Scale); as a reference, we expect loudness levels to be above -24 LUFS for recorded content:
Meeting Life Video Selfie Video Memo
Honor Magic Vs -23.3 LUFS -19.2 LUFS -19.1 LUFS -19 LUFS
Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 -25.3 LUFS -22.8 LUFS -19.7 LUFS -20.8 LUFS
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 -25.8 LUFS -21.6 LUFS -22.7 LUFS -21 LUFS

Artifacts

145

Honor Magic Vs

Best

The Artifacts score measures the extent to which the recorded sounds are affected by various types of distortions. The higher the score, the less the disturbances in the sound are noticeable. Distortions can occur because of sound processing in the device and the quality of the microphones, as well as user handling, such as how the phone is held.

In this audio comparison, you can listen to the way this smartphone handles wind noise relative to its competitors:

Recordings of a voice sample with light background noise, facing a turbulent wind of 5 m/s

Background

125

Honor Magic Vs

166

Black Shark 5 Pro

Background evaluates how natural the various sounds around a voice blend into the video recording file. For example, when recording a speech at an event, the background should not interfere with the main voice, yet it should provide some context of the surroundings.

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