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Honor Magic5 Pro
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Honor Magic5 Pro Audio test

OTHER AVAILABLE TESTS FOR THIS DEVICE

We put the Honor Magic5 Pro 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 center, bottom right)
  • No jack audio output
  • DTS: X Ultra technology

Scoring

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

Honor Magic5 Pro
Honor Magic5 Pro
138
audio
135
Playback
130

158

130

149

144

162

121

162

119

157

143
Recording
111

147

132

146

140

159

150

170

143

145

142

166

Playback

Pros

Cons

Recording

Pros

  • Extremely efficient side-rejection when using audio zoom
  • Very good dynamics performance
  • Pleasant and natural timbre in most use cases

Cons

  • Underwhelming wind noise reduction
  • Inconsistent processing and therefore performance across use cases, especially for timbre

With a score of 138, the Honor Magic5 Pro delivered an excellent result in the DXOMARK Audio tests, thanks to strong performances in playback and recording alike. In playback, the Honor did very well across all use cases, making it a great option for listening to music, watching movies and gaming.

In recording, there was more variation between use cases, especially in terms of timbre. Overall, the device did best when recording with the main camera. When using the front camera or voice recorder app, our experts observed a slight drop-off in quality, but the Honor Magic5 Pro still performed on a high level. There was some room for improvement in terms of wind noise reduction, but the Honor Magic5 Pro is overall a great smartphone for audio playback and recording, earning itself our Gold label for Audio.

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 Magic5 Pro

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 the DXOMARK Audio tests, the Honor Magic5 Pro delivered a very good playback performance. The tonal balance lacked some low- and high-end extension but was overall natural and pleasant. Dynamics performance was good as well, with precise attack, good bass precision and good punch at nominal and soft volume. The built-in speakers generated decent wideness, but given the device’s fairly large dimensions, there’s some room for improvement. Individual sound sources were fairly easy to pinpoint in the sound scene, but localizability could be a little blurry, especially with complex audio content that mixes many sound elements, such as movies or symphonic music. Balance was perfectly centered, and distance rendition was accurate, but the depth rendition could have been better, with the sound stage sounding shallow, especially when listening to classical music.

While the phone’s maximum volume setting was loud enough in our tests, the minimum setting was slightly too low in some instances, making it hard to hear quieter sound elements. Our testers noticed very few unwanted audio artifacts, only some distortion at maximum volume. We also found the Honor not to be particularly sensitive to hand occlusions of the speakers.

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

Honor Magic5 Pro
Honor Magic4 Pro
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
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 Magic5 Pro performs in playback use cases compared to its competitors:
Playback use-cases scores

Timbre

130

Honor Magic5 Pro

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

130

Honor Magic5 Pro

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

144

Honor Magic5 Pro

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

121

Honor Magic5 Pro

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 Magic5 Pro 69.5 dBA 66.4 dBA
Honor Magic4 Pro 72.3 dBA 69.2 dBA
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra 74.8 dBA 71.8 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

119

Honor Magic5 Pro

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 Magic5 Pro

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.

The Honor Magic5 Pro was excellent as a recording device in our tests, offering pleasant timbre and a nice tonal balance, especially in front-camera recordings and with the voice memo app. Only when recording with the main camera did our testers find loud musical content sounding a touch nasal and lacking bass. Dynamics performance was very good overall, but varied somewhat with the use case. When recording loud concerts, our experts found attack to be notably less sharp, and plosives more dull than in other use cases.

Distance rendition was very good across all use cases, with voices appearing at the correct distance. Localizability of individual sound sources and wideness of the sound scene were on an average level. Loudness was very good in all test scenarios, but the objective measurements indicated that the Honor may slightly struggle with recordings at high sound pressure levels, such as live concerts. Like in playback, our experts observed very few unwanted audio artifacts in recording. Finger noises were barely audible, and if they accidently covered the microphone while recording, it hardly had an impact on audio quality. Background rendition was good, with a nice tonal balance but lacking some bass.

Here is how the Honor Magic5 Pro performs in recording use cases compared to its competitors:

Recording use-cases scores

Timbre

111

Honor Magic5 Pro

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

132

Honor Magic5 Pro

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

140

Honor Magic5 Pro

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

150

Honor Magic5 Pro

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 Magic5 Pro -23.9 LUFS -20.3 LUFS -19.4 LUFS -19.5 LUFS
Honor Magic4 Pro -22.3 LUFS -19.8 LUFS -18.1 LUFS -18.8 LUFS
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra -26.5 LUFS -21.8 LUFS -22.4 LUFS -21.6 LUFS

Artifacts

143

Honor Magic5 Pro

145

Black Shark 5 Pro

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

142

Honor Magic5 Pro

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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