Long-teased and long-hyped, the Honor Magic6 RSR is now here, offering a sportier, more luxurious version of the excellent Magic6 Pro. And oddly, there may be something here for average phone buyers outside of fans of Porsche Design-branded ware.
You'll have to get over the sticker shock first. The Magic6 RSR, which goes on sale May 2, costs £1,600. That's £500 more than the standard Magic6 Pro, and just £150 less than a Galaxy Z Fold 5 in the U.K.
Honor launched an RSR variant of its Magic V2 foldable earlier this year, which changed little other than the design and storage capacity. But there's more to see in the Magic6 RSR, where Honor has tweaked some of the standard Pro model's other specs to make a phone that's arguably another full tier on the Magic6 series, rather than a simple luxury edition of the phone.
To see what difference having the Porsche Design touch has made, I tried out the Magic6 RSR and its altered features against the familiar Magic6 Pro. And there is indeed more to this phone than just its new outfit, even if it's hard to notice at times. But whether it's worth the extra money is another matter entirely.
Design
The Magic6 Pro strikes the right balance between subtle and shouty design, with its wavy vegan leather back and watch face-like camera block in the top center of the phone. The Magic6 RSR meanwhile goes for a sportier look that's more likely to draw eyes, and maybe even compliments.
It starts with a choice of two exclusive colors either Agate Gray or Frozen Berry pink. That's applied to a smooth–textured back panel with a mean-looking hexagonal camera array, ringed in trendy titanium. From there, a central "flyline" ridge heads from the block's bottom corner down to the phone's bottom edge, featuring the Honor and Porsche Design logos on either side.
From the front and around the sides, there's nothing to help you tell the RSR and Pro models apart, at least not with the screen on. Honor has tweaked its MagicOS interface to make the logos match the color of the phone, and added some custom boot-up and charging animations on top. None of this was present when I first set up the phone, so I was initially very disappointed to see the familiar green wavy background and regular app icons, but now everything's been tweaked to be jet black with gold highlights, the phone feels as unique as you'd hope from a special edition device.
The package
A special edition phone would not be special if it didn't come in a fancy box, and sure enough the Magic6 RSR comes in a jet-black, two-layered presentation box. Inside the box, as well as the phone, there are two chargers (one European, one U.K. in my case) and two USB-A to USB-C cables, so you can get the full 100W charging experience more easily when traveling.
You'll also find a custom SIM tool and a luxurious leather-likecase with a fabric interior and stitched exterior design.
It's not the most sumptuous selection of goodies, but it at least is all useful. The default Magic6 Pro doesn't even come with one charger, let alone two.
More RAM and storage
Honor doubled both the RAM and storage of the Magic6 Pro to give the RSR model 24GB and 1TB respectively. But with the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset still on board, how much difference does that make?
Looking to the benchmarks, the answer appears to be a little, but not too much. The Geekbench CPU result is noticeably lower on the Magic6 RSR than it is on the Pro, which is odd since both use the same chip. However the RSR does score a small win on the 3DMark GPU test.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Magic6 RSR | Magic6 Pro |
| Geekbench 6 score (single-core /multicore) | 1,915 / 5,431 | 1,927 / 5,927 |
| 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited (score / fps) | 5109.3, 30.59 | 5,065 / 30.3 |
Also, it should go without saying that 1TB of storage is a huge amount for a phone. The 512GB of the Magic6 Pro was already roomy, but you needn't fear running out of room on the Magic6 RSR any time soon.
Cameras
Honor touts two main camera upgrades for the Magic6 RSR over the Magic6 Pro. The first of these is improved LiDAR autofocus for quickly homing in on the subject of an image. This is hard to demonstrate, but trying both phones side by side, I could definitely tap to switch between subjects in the viewfinder faster on the RSR than on the Pro.
The other is improved HDR in photos, which ensures more of the range of colors in an image, from the brightest whites to the darkest blacks, are all captured and displayed properly. While there is a difference when you compare the shots, it's subtle, and hard to see you're looking at a photo normally and not trying to play spot the difference.
Overall the RSR's photos are a little darker, and its exposure times are faster when you pull up the images' metadata. Both of these are presumably to keep the brightest parts of an image in check, allowing them to render as a color other than pure white, which is what HDR is all about.
Display
The last main upgrade area for the Porsche edition phone over the standard one is its screen. First off, the Magic6 RSR's display is rated at 5,000 nits for peak HDR brightness, the same as the Magic6 Pro, but a higher 1,800-nit global peak brightness, compared to the Pro's 1,600 nits. It's easily visible when you hold the phones side-by-side.
The RSR edition also features a dual-layer OLED panel (explained in this rumor story about future iPads using the tech), which Honor states is an industry-first use of the feature. It's something that will apparently give the screen greater power efficiency and a longer life span. Sadly I can't time travel, so can't tell you if this is true or not, but it sounds like a good addition for users who want to keep their new phone for as long as possible before their next upgrade.
So is it worth it?
To my surprise, there there are more meaningful differences between the Magic6 RSR and the Magic6 Pro than just the look of the two phones, although it's questionable whether the increase in price is worth it for the minor gains.
A quicker-focusing camera that can handle lighting better, a display that's brighter and longer-lasting, extra storage and RAM capacity and a thoughtful bundle of included accessories are all good things to have when comparing a top-tier phone to the next model down in its line. A unique look is arguably worthwhile too, if only for bragging rights. But at £500 over the standard edition, that's some expensive gloating you'll be doing.
The Honor Magic6 Pro is quite easy to recommend (unless you're in the U.S. where it isn't sold), so if this feature's piqued your interest, it's the one you should go looking for now. The Magic6 RSR meanwhile is certainly a good phone, but you're going to have to be the rare sort of person who's willing to pay for exclusivity to feel like you're getting your money's worth.
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