Honor 400 focuses on balance and creativity to stand out in the mid-range

In 2025, the mid-range of smartphones is the real battleground of innovation, where competition between incumbent brands and new outsiders results in increasingly complete, affordable and surprising devices. The arrival of the new Honor 400 family - consisting of the 400 Lite (on sale since early April), 400 and 400 Pro (released on 22 May) - is confirmation that today it is possible to have a lot without spending crazy amounts of money, and that virtue, as is often the case, lies somewhere in between.

Honor 400 ranks as perhaps the most balanced and creative model in the range. Its 6.55-inch 120 Hz Amoled display, with a peak brightness of 5,000 nits and a pixel density of 460 ppi, offers an excellent visual rendition, comparable to that of more price-conscious models. Protected by a polycarbonate and glass structure, SGS 5-Star certified for drop resistance, which favours lightness and shock resistance over more refined and expensive materials, it runs a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 (end of 2023), flanked by 8 Gb of Ram and 256/512 Gb of Ufs 3.1 storage: not the top for intense gaming, but more than enough to guarantee the fluidity needed in daily use.

The photographic compartment stands out and makes this smartphone competitive even against its big brother: bright (f/1.9" aperture) stabilised 200 Mp main sensor, 12 Mp ultra-wide and 50 Mp selfie camera (very good photos with effective retouching). The sensor shoots at 50 megapixels and 12.5 megapixels (with a digital zoom that goes up to 30x, using AI and not guaranteeing definition). The quality of the shots is high (the more skilled can try their hand at the rather comprehensive pro interface), the colours are natural. Sometimes they appear a little too neutral (one can resort to the vibrant and authentic options), but the final rendition is satisfying, thanks also to afull AI editing suite, called Magic Retouch: from enhancement, to cropping to isolate the subject and move it around in the image (features that we first saw on Google's Pixel), from the eraser to delete unwanted objects (or people), to expansion to adapt shots to any format. The gallery offers tools that can turn each photo into a small creative project. Artificial intelligence, after all, is the trend in all Honor products. And here we have Magic Text, Magic Portal, Subtitles and Translations in real time, detection of deepfake videos.

The Magic Portal is a well established feature of Honor. What does it do? Examples. You receive an address on WhatsApp: you select the address, drag it onto the Magic Portal and the AI suggests Google Maps to start navigating immediately. You see an interesting product in a photo and with the same system you can search for similar items on e-commerce sites. You want to quickly share a text or an image: again, you drag it onto the Magic Portal and choose the desired app from those suggested.All these everyday activities are answered in durability.

The 5,300 mAh silicon-carbon battery guarantees several hours, between 6 and 7, of autonomy (if you don't stress it, it can exceed 36 hours without any problems) and allows you to start up again in half an hour (if you don't get to zero, but recharge when it is at 20%) thanks to the 66W wired (the Pro has 100). There is no wireless charging (reserved for the Pro), but the user experience remains among the most satisfying in the category. As for dust and water protection, the Honor 400 is IP65 (it resists dust and water, but not submersion, like the Pro, which is IP67 and IP69).