Fresh off the back of the Honor 400 Lite review, I have another Honor device to unbox and review. This time, it is the midtier of the series, the Honor 400. There have been some changes from the Honor 400 Lite that are worth investigating, particularly the camera and its controls.
So, without further ado, let’s look at the unboxing video before we do our customary full 360 tour.

Now that we have viewed the eye-catching unboxing, let’s hone in on some of the finer details in our tour of the device.

Starting on the right-hand side is where we will find the power button, which performs multiple duties as a sleep/wake/lock/unlock and Google assistant key. This is accompanied by the ubiquitous volume rocker that sits just above the power key. There is no discernible difference in texture between the two keys, which means it is easy to misidentify the buttons by feel. Fortunately, muscle memory kicks in pretty quickly to avoid confusion. What the eagle-eyed will have observed is the lack of a camera shortcut key, as this is no longer present on the phone I am not sure of the reasoning behind this decision, but it is slightly baffling that it was found on the lower-tier Honor 400 Light and not found here.

Moving around to the base of the phone, we find the usual array of loudspeaker grill, USB Type C 2.0 port, noise-cancelling microphone for calls and then the dual SIM card slot. This slot does have a waterproof gasket around it, as the phone is IP 64 rated. There is no support for video output from the USB Type C port, and it will support Honor’s Supercharger protocol when used with the correct charger, which, sadly, as we saw in the video, was not to be found in the box on our review unit. When used with he appropriate cable and charger, you can expect up to 66W charging speed and up to 5W reverse charging.

On the left-hand side, we are met with a barren expanse of black matte metal.

On top of the phone, we get a little bit more interesting as we have got the secondary loudspeaker (which is actually the front-firing earpiece) and IR blaster and another noise-cancelling microphone. 

Moving around to the front is where we have our display, which measures in at a reasonable 6.55″ and is an AMOLED panel. The screen-to-body ratio is 88.8%, which does mean we do have some bezels, but they are not too obtrusive, especially in the back colour way I have. The front is also home to the 50MP front-facing camera, which has an aperture of f/2.1 and is set to be a wide-angle camera. Above the camera is a n earpiece slit to allow for you to hear cleary on voice calls.

The display, as already mentioned, is an AMOLED affair, but it is a very bright panel and it will reach up to 5000 nits in HDR peak brightness, although expect this to be lowered when the screen is measured as a whole. I dont have the equipment to measure this, but I can say that the screen has been bright enough in direct sunlight to use without too much bother, both with and without sunglasses on, which is a good measure in my opinion. In similar conditions, my work phone Samsung Galaxy A34) is not as bright.

Moving around to the rear is where we have another key difference between this and the Honor 400 Lite. The camera array, which is made up of a triangular module this module contains a 200MP camera with f/1.9 wide-angle aperture and Phase Detection Auto Focus and Optical Image stabilisation. The secondary camera is comprised of a 12MP shooter with a f/2.2 aperture and a 112-degree angle, making it ultra wide, and this only has Auto Focus. The third component is an LED flash, which is the smallest of the three components.

The whole camera module sits proud of the back panel, which itself is glass with a colour treatment that happily does not seem to be too prone to fingerprints as it is a matte finish on the black colour way that I have. I expect that in the full retail package, you will have an optional TPU case included to alleviate that issue and provide some protection for the device.

The phone does give off a slightly greenish hue in certain lighting conditions, but I can assure you that it is black, as can be seen from this image below.

So that concludes my unboxing and the tour of the device; all that remains is for the obligatory spec dump for those who like to read between the lines.

Check back soon for the full review.