TL;DR: The Honor 7X is an impressive feat at an even more impressive price point. The only downside is a minor legacy gripe — and it can’t bring this beast down.

It’s no secret that I enjoy Huawei’s technology. From their watches, to the impressive Huawei Mate10 Pro, they’re innovating in ways we’re not really seeing from other Android phone makers. Hell, the Huawei P20 Pro had three freakin’ cameras, and it worked really well. It’s a shame I couldn’t get my hands on it.

So, why am I talking about Huawei in a post about Honor tech? That’s because Huawei owns the Honor brand, which is considered a “budget” line, and likes to sneak their cool tech into their sister brand’s phones and still keep the price down.

The Honor 7X is a great phone, and should be near the top of the sub-$200 shortlist if you’re in a pinch or your budget won’t allow for flagship prices.

HONOR 7X DESIGN

The first thing I noticed pulling the Honor 7X out of the box is how premium it feels. It’s silly to say that, and I usually roll my eyes when I see other outlets use that way to describe a feel of a phone, but it’s unmistakable here. The brushed metal was smooth, and it has some heft, and it has a really pretty design.

Not only that, but the giant screen — almost 6 inches at 2160 x 1080 FHD+ — is wonderful to look at, even if it doesn’t have the punch that the LG G7 ThinQ or iPhone X has. But, the Honor 7X is also hundreds of dollars less than both phones.

On the back of the phone is a fingerprint reader and dual lenses (16MP + 2MP). On the side of the phone you’ve got the volume rocker and the sleep/wake button.

The bottom of the phone houses the speaker, headphone jack, and the Micro-USB port for charging. That’s right. Micro-USB in 2018.

IN USE

With 3gb of RAM, the Honor 7x can handle most games and tasks. I would by lying if I said it didn’t slow down once for me, though, where it froze up trying to get to the app switcher. Beside that one time, though, it was smooth sailing.

Videos looked crisp, music sounded great over headphones, and Android looked just as good as it does elsewhere, even with the EMUI skin on top of it.

So how does it handle the handful of things that everyone uses a cellphone for? Texting is fine, phone calls are clear, Instagram looks great on the screen, and Reddit is Reddit, I suppose.

CAMERA

Even though the Honor 7x costs a fraction of what other flagship phones do, the camera isn’t much of a slouch. Of course it isn’t as great as the more expensive competition, but it’s better than other phones in its price range — like Motorola’s G5S Plus.

The only issue I had other than general image quality was a bit of sluggishness opening the camera app, but it wasn’t a dealbreaker, and just some struggling in low light. No phone really does great in low light, though, let’s be honest.

Here are some sample shots:

BATTERY LIFE

The Honor 7x will last you a full day and a good portion of the next. Not quite a day and a half like they advertise, but the 3340 mAh battery is big enough to handle a power user for an entire day, that’s for sure.

On top of this, it’s nice that Honor includes a quick charger in the box. It’s not the fastest I’ve used, but it’s quick enough in a pinch.

DOWNSIDES

Guys, why are you still making Micro-USB phones? There’s no excuse — USB-C has to be cheap enough by now to include in every device to make life easier. I don’t care that we all have a thousand Micro-USB cables lying around, what I want more than anything is to be able to throw them away for good.

Also, there’s no wireless charging, but that will never be a dealbreaker for me because plugging in a cable isn’t all that hard in the scheme of things, right?

FINAL THOUGHTS

You can buy the Honor 7X for $199 right now on Amazon.

If that isn’t enough to sell you, which is kinda mind boggling, consider these things:

It has 3gb of RAM, so it’s pretty fast. You can expand the 64gb of memory up to 256 with a microSD card. It has a dual camera that works pretty well. The screen is almost 6 inches and it’s so good it has no business being on a phone that’s less than $200.

For more information, head on over to Honor’s site here. Or, you know, just check it out on Amazon — it’s almost cheap enough to be an impulse buy.

The “budget” phone space has some of the most exciting competition happening right now, and Huawei is taking no prisoners.