Here is the HONOR 400 5G. You might have seen its twin brother, the 400 Lite, that one has a camera button at the side, which is the highlight of that phone. And there is also a Pro model, that one is at the top of this series, if you want to check out that one. For the 400 I have here, this one sits in the middle, but still has some highlights. There is the SnapDragon 7 Gen 3, good display, good cameras. So this one should perform well in the long run. now let’s look at it together in this review.
Design
First about the design, this version we have is a black colored. The back panel is a matte black glass, it is fine made and also does not attract finger print at all, certainly the grip is better even if you use it in the hot summer day for a long time. Then the frame is plastic, the finish is still good btw. The camera module, has carried over the design from the HONOR 300 series, not sure if the 300 was released in your region or not, but that phone was a good photography machine. So if you see the same design, it is a hint that the photo capability should be good, and we will talk about it soon in this review.
So on the front, it is a flat screen with a hole punch camera at the top. The bezels are very slim, although the bottom bezel is a bit thicker, but visually it does not make much difference in everyday use. I think there are at at least another two colors for this model, you may want to take a look at those.
Performance
About the performance, it has the SnapDragon 7 Gen 3, which is a typical mid-range chipset you can see on a lot of phones. I have been using this phone for a few days, and honestly, under some daily use scenarios, it performs fine and never encountered any hiccups. In case you want to game on it.
Camera
The camera setup is about a 200MP main camera, and a 12MP Ultra Wide camera, no telephoto lens. But before we talk about the physical performance of the cameras, let’s discover the AI feature of it.
There is AI image to video feature, if you take a photo of a person, if there is a certain gesture, the photo will be turned into a video. Like for this Lotso I took, you can see him moving like a movie. Awesome right? So if you get this phone, definitely try this feature.
The camera overall is very easy to use. There are different profiles to choose from, to suit your own style. I have taken the same subjects in different profile, what do you think about the style? There is also moving photo feature, which will take about 2 seconds of video, so it can be used for some social media Apps. There is also Google Lens integrated in the camera App, so you can search for things you want.
When it comes to photography, since it does not have a telephoto camera, the main camera is used for 1x 2x and even 4x. In regular photo shooting, the 1x and 2x can snap a good photo, but in 4x there is definitely some AI work on the image. It is not a bad thing, since it compensates the cropping.
At the portrait mode, it allows you to adjust the bokeh, from F1.2 to F16, so you can choose to have a plain portrait photo, or make the people more stands out.
When shooting videos, it supports up to 4K 30fps, the video quality overall are good in 1080P 60fps, and 4K 30fps. Only the stabilization lost a bit at the higher specs, but still a good performance.
The front camera also support up to 4k 30fps, and I am surprised to find that there is certain image stabilization on it. As you can see, when you move fast, there is good stabalization that even the iPhone does not have. So this could be good for Vlogging.
Daily Experience
So for daily use experience, it has been good. The fingerprint unlock area is a bit low to the bottom, can’t blame it, for such budget friendly phone. But the unlock speed is good, and it works even my finger is wet.
For the battery, it is 5300mAh, fairly big, for daily use, it can easily last for a day. And it supports 66W wired charging, and 5W reverse charging. It is a good feature, but unfortunately there isn’t a charger included in the package.
The peak brightness of the screen is 5000 nits, and the refresh rate can be 60Hz or 120Hz, or dynamic. Two things that are very interesting with the screen is the ebook mode, and video enhancer. In the ebook mode, your phone will turn into a gray screen, so if you want to read books, or you are tired of vivid colors and pictures, this mode can be very useful. There are two choices in the video enhancer, the super dynamic display and the vivid display. These two options will significantly make the videos brighter and more contrasty, and the experience is a lot better, and I am sure you can spot the difference here.
The SIM card tray can hold two SIM cards, but not TF card.
The only regret of the use experience is that, there isn’t a camera button on this phone. There is one on the 400 Lite, so I am not sure why.
Verdict
So this is the HONOR 400, a solid budget-friendly phone, that still packs a lot of useful features. I like the build quality of this phone, very simple but reliable. The screen is the same level as the flagships from HONOR, where you can definitely appreciate the use of it. The camera performance is also very good, day-to-day photography will be pleasant.
