Honor Play 50 Plus Review: specs and features, camera quality test, gaming benchmark, user opinions and photos

Honor Play 50 Plus - controversial competitive advantages

Smartphones in the mid-price segment are among the most popular on the modern market. A reasonable price, fairly broad functionality, and photo capabilities that are improving every year make such devices more attractive to the end user. The hero of today's review, unfortunately, does not have all the listed qualities and does not focus on the most important things.

The appearance of the device is difficult to seriously criticize. Relatively thin display frames, beautiful colors of matte polycarbonate cases, the current design of a double photo module, and ergonomic placement of a fingerprint sensor on the side face create a successful exterior. The 6.8-inch IPS screen also makes a good impression. An excellent brightness reserve of 850 nits for the technology used, a resolution of 2412x1080 pixels sufficient for the diagonal, and an image refresh rate increased to 90 hertz allow IPS panels to be on par with analogues from most opponents. However, an AMOLED display would look significantly more interesting in terms of picture saturation and contrast.

The technical characteristics are the latest MediaTek Dimensity 6020 CPU, as much as 12GB of RAM and the Mali G57MC2 video accelerator. However, do not be confused by the release date of the chipset and the amount of RAM, because this is not a particularly productive solution in the price category. An AnTuTu benchmark score of 350,000 guarantees a smooth Android 13 interface, but app launches aren't always instantaneous and gaming options aren't unlimited. Thus, truly resource-intensive projects like Genshin Impact are able to produce stable gameplay only with low graphic presets. But even in this case, friezes will be noticeable when loading locations. The advantages of the processor are the modem’s support for 5G networks and energy efficiency. Together with a 6000mAh battery, it will make you forget about looking for sockets and power banks for a couple of days. The battery also has fast charging at 35W. The ROM has been increased to 256GB, but the slot for MicroSD cards has not disappeared.

The situation with cameras is not good. The simplest 50- and 2-megapixel main sensors sometimes make mistakes even when shooting stationary objects during the day, let alone more complex photo shoot scenarios. Photos will be full of noise, white balance errors and other problems. But they didn’t skimp on the sound, because the installed stereo speakers are not devoid of volume and bass. Contactless NFC payments on the spot, which cannot be said about the FDD-LTE B7. Thus, 4G performance in the CIS countries and Europe will not always be ideal. As a result, we got a strange new product, the obvious advantages of which are adjacent to the same shortcomings.