Folding phones are still too expensive to be a viable option for many people, but if you have saved up the cash and have your eye on a book-style folding gadget, is this new effort from Honor the one to go for?

The Honor Magic V3 is a marvel in the hand. It’s the thinnest folding phone on the market at an astounding 4.4mm thick when opened. When closed, it truly feels like a ‘normal’ phone with a regular sized outer display, unlike the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 with its oddly thin external display and design that makes it feel like a remote control.

Both have their advantages, and Samsung is ahead when it comes to software best optimised for the folding form factor. But if I had a chunk of change to put down I think I would go for the Honor. At £1,699 that’s no easy decision, so let me explain.

Because I review technology for a living, I get less excited by incremental smartphone upgrades year over year. Sure, the iPhone 16 is lovely, but it looks and feels mostly similar to the iPhone 12 from 2020. It’s the opposite feeling when opening the Magic V3. It’s a very well built device with matt back glass and brushed metal curved side rails that are easy to pry apart when you want to use the large 7.92-inch internal screen.

This showpiece display hides the necessary screen crease better than the Z Fold 6 though the Magic V3 has a monster camera module on the back that increases bulk. I grew to appreciate it though as the cameras here are excellent, better again than those on the Z Fold 6. If you really want top drawer cameras on a foldable, the V3 is still third behind the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the OnePlus Open, though.

What’s most impressive is just how solid the construction of this phone feels considering it folds in half. The hinge has a satisfying clunk to it and is the best feeling foldable to open. Who knew these things made a difference? Compared to the other folders out there it’s comfortably better. When you spend this much on a device, these things matter.

The long and short of it is when this phone is closed, it feels like a slab phone with a big camera bump. The outer screen has a zippy 120Hz refresh rate, just like the one inside, and I can comfortably type on it with two hands. I found myself doing all my messaging and emailing on this screen. Opening up was reserved for viewing (and sighing at) my work calendar, or taking a video call with Slack opened up next to it.

The large display is not just for the business crowd though. Streaming video looks great, even if the close to square screen necessarily adds letterboxing to all. Social media such as Instagram looks good when scrolling through normal photo posts, but in the age of vertical video content and tall thin X feeds, most social media is actually better viewed on the smaller display.

That’s not Honor’s fault though. The firm has improved its Android software, which it calls MagicOS. Version 8 on the Magic V3 probably changes a bit too much for the sake of it, and things have a distinctly iPhone feel to them. But no matter, iPhones are pretty good last time I checked, and I found using the V3 intuitive enough. It’s easy to split-screen apps on the inner screen to view side by side, and a slow swipe up from the bottom shows a taskbar a little like you’d expect on a PC.

From here you can tap and drag any app on the bar (or select from all your apps thanks to a shortcut) and open them in full, half or floating windows. I don’t find opening more than two apps actually useful but you can do it. Honor also has some simple AI software features such as Magic Portal that lets you tap and drag text or images from any app into a sidebar that appears so you can drop it into another app. It’s advanced copy and paste, which isn’t sexy on paper, but in practice it’s very useful. I much prefer this sort of so-called AI to erasing people from photos, though you can do that too.

Less exhilarating is the bloatware the phone ships with. Booking.com, Ali Express, WPS Office, TikTok and a slew of other unwanted apps are preloaded. We should be past this now, and Honor should not ship phones with so much cruft. It takes away from the premium feel of the device when it’s trying to get you to play some awful free game or book a holiday.

Better are the cameras. Photos from the 50MP main lens look great, if a step below the very best. I turned off all the beauty and AI tuning Chinese phones tend to have on by default and happily snapped away. The ultra-wide camera isn’t great, which is a shame, but having a dedicated 3.5x optical zoom lens here is welcome.

Performance is great all round thanks to the high-end Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip paired with 12GB RAM. You also get a generous 512GB storage. Battery life is also more than acceptable, and I never ran out during a full day of use, but annoying there’s no charger in the box. Companies are trying to be greener but it’s a shame when this phone can charge superfast at 66W speeds. You’ll have to fork out for the right charger or the right wireless charger, as the V3 can juice up wire-free at a zippy 50W too.

Like with all folding phones there are worries. How long will the display last before folding inevitably shows its wear? And though the Magic V3 has an IPX8 water resistance rating I would not recommend taking this thing anywhere near the bath.

The software could do with a little more polish, but that’s true of all foldables. Faster, more efficient use of the phone comes with time, and though Samsung has more foldable specific features, Honor is hardly lagging behind - and it’s streets ahead in terms of hardware quality. If you have the money to spend on a book-style folding phone, you should seriously consider the Magic V3.