Honor 200 Lite Review — Punching Above its Weight?

The mid-range smartphone market is one of the most popular segments in today’s tech landscape, and Honor’s 200 Lite (priced at R9,999) is a smartphone that aims to straddle the line between a midrange and higher-end option, offering customers something well worth the price-tag. And for the most part, the Honor 200 Lite does this to great success.

Featuring a standout design that includes an admittedly eye-catching sparkly back with a metal wrap on the sides, the Honor 200 Lite houses a gorgeous 6.7-inch AMOLED display with 2,000nits of peak brightness. It’s vivid when indoors and extremely clear when exposed to sunlight too, making it a handy device for those who love indulging in some video or social media while on-the-go.

The device features 8GBs of RAM and 256GB of storage space, putting it in that echelon of devices with enough oomph and space to do just about anything you need it to; barring some seriously strenuous gaming. It doesn’t have an expandable memory slot, but the internal memory should be more than enough for most users.

In terms of snappers, the Honor 200 Lite features a 108MP Main Camera, a Wide & Depth Camera, and a Macro Camera, as well as a 50MP Front Camera, and for a phone in its price-range, it delivers really sharp and well-adjusted photos that aren’t overexposed or oversaturated. It’s not going to take on the top-end devices on the market, but for a phone that can grab a pic of any landscape, social gathering, or anything straightforward, it’s more than capable.

Running on Android 14 on Honor’s MagicOS 8.0 (which is a really clean and simplified version of the UI), the device feels as premium as the top-end options, responding in a slick and responsive manner to any and all gestures and requests.

Another handy ease-of-ease feature that is present on the Honor 200 Lite is the Magic Portal feature of MagicOS 8.0. What this essentially does is create shortcuts on the side of the screen to apps like maps, shopping, Google and others. You can then press and hold text, pictures, or files and drag them to screen edges to drop that selected item straight into another app, such as pulling an address from a text message and throwing it straight into Google Maps, without the need to copy and paste.

Rounding up its specs, you also get a fingerprint sensor on the side, NFC integration, and the device is certified by SGS with a 5-star rating for its drop resistance. Now, we don’t want to test this, but its sturdy feel, thanks to the durable materials and solid build, makes it feel like it can take a few knocks, as opposed to most glass-covered devices you’ll find on the market today.

Honor’s 200 Lite is priced at R9,999.