The Huawei Pura 80 Ultra, with one of the best cameras ever seen in a smartphone and a unique design, is finally on my desk for review. While It’s an awesome choice for Huawei fans and mobile photography enthusiasts, the real question is: does it actually justify its price tag? Let’s dive into the details.
Design
You can get the Pura 80 Ultra in two colors: Prestige Gold and Golden Black. I currently have the Prestige Gold in hand for this review. The front and back are glass, and the back panel is like a mirror, so it’s a massive fingerprint magnet. The camera module bump is quite large. Of course, there’s a case in the box, and if you put it on, the bump becomes a bit less noticeable.
It has an aluminum frame. At the bottom, you’ve got the Type-C port, SIM tray, speaker, and microphone. On the right side, there’s the volume rocker and the power button combined with a fingerprint scanner! I was surprised at first because it’s a flagship phone and the fingerprint scanner is on the power button. At the top, there’s another speaker and mic, and the left edge is completely empty.
This phone has IP68 and IP69 ratings. IP68 means it’s water and dust resistant, and IP69 means it can handle water jets and high temperatures. So if you take it to a carwash, it won’t even flinch, though who would actually do that?
Its thickness is 8.3mm and it weighs 233.5g, making it a heavy flagship, mostly because of that camera module. Overall for the design, I can say the slightly softened frame edges and the module design make the Pura 80 Ultra comfortable to hold but heavy.
Display
The Pura 80 Ultra has a 6.8-inch curved LTPO OLED display. Huawei claims a peak brightness of 3000 nits, but in real life, I feel it’s less than other flagships. You still won’t have any issues using it under direct sunlight though. This 120Hz display supports a billion colors, which is excellent, and you’ll definitely be satisfied with it as a flagship screen.
Battery & Charger
Huawei equipped the Pura 80 Ultra with a 5170mAh battery, but the battery life isn’t that great. Why? Because the phone doesn’t optimize power consumption well. The capacity is good, but it barely gets you through a day of moderate to heavy use. However, since there’s a 100W adapter in the box and it supports 80W wireless charging, you basically won’t have to worry about the battery. Huawei essentially compensated for the unoptimized power drain with super fast charging speeds.
It hits 80% in half an hour and fully charges in under 45 minutes, which is solid. The 80W wireless charging is just incredible, meaning it charges wirelessly four times faster than Apple and Samsung phones, which is really awesome. It also has 20W reverse wireless charging. Overall, the charging package is fantastic, but on the flip side, the power consumption isn’t optimized.
Camera
The Pura 80 Ultra is number one on DXOMARK by a wide margin! But does everyone trust DXOMARK? Well, obviously not. But trust me on this one. The photo quality of the Pura 80 Ultra is exceptionally better than other flagships. The only phone that can compete with it is the vivo X200 Ultra. It easily beats iPhone and Samsung in this competition, but only in photography.
The main sensor is 50MP and the photos it takes are flawless. It’s so good that I’d rather stop talking so you can just look at the sample shots taken with the main sensor in day and night, with human and non-human subjects.
Its portrait shots are incredible. It separates the subject from the background perfectly without any flaws. This same sensor takes fantastic low-light and night photos with minimal noise, great details, and excellent dynamic range.
It has a 40MP ultrawide sensor that captures photos with amazing detail, good dynamic range, great white balance, and no noise. A really cool feature of this lens is the adjustable aperture. You can physically open and close the aperture from f/1.8 to f/4.0. You can see the different aperture stops changing, which helps a lot with focusing and light metering.
Now let’s talk about the telephoto sensor, which is mind-blowing. There are two sensors right next to each other, one does 3.7x optical zoom and the other does 9.4x. What’s really cool is the switching between these two sensors. When you switch, it makes a really cool sound that gives a great vibe, and I really like it.
The telephoto shots at 3.7x are high quality. There is just one catch: in the camera app, after 3.7x, it jumps to 10x. Here is the subtle point, at 10x you’re getting digital zoom. If you want optical zoom, you have to precisely set it to 9.4x. You need to keep this in mind if you want a photo without digital zoom. You might say there isn’t much difference between 9.4x and 10x. That’s true, but at 9.4x you get a higher quality optical shot. I’ll say it again, the telephoto photos are truly incredible. It can zoom up to 100x, but the photos aren’t appealing at 100x.
With these same sensors, besides the amazing optical zoom, you can also take incredibly good macro shots. I can only describe its macro photos as a masterpiece. Just know you can only get as close as 12cm to the subject. If you get closer, you won’t get a good macro shot.
For videography, you can shoot 4K video with all the Pura 80 Ultra’s lenses. It shoots good videos, but I can’t say it’s clearly better than Samsung and Apple here. Honestly, it takes acceptable videos for a flagship. Even though it has stabilization, it doesn’t smooth out all the jitters in some places. You’ll notice a bit more shake compared to an iPhone or Samsung, and this shake sometimes messes with the exposure and sharpness.
You can capture good videos with this phone, but if videography is your main goal, go for an iPhone as it would be a better choice.
It has a 13MP selfie camera that takes truly incredible selfies. Without any color exaggeration, it captures exactly how you look with great white balance, good dynamic range, and tons of detail. The 4K 60fps videos from the selfie camera are also excellent.
Overall, the front and rear camera package of the Pura 80 Ultra is absolutely peerless. Except for the video department, which is just very good, meaning it does have peers.
Processor
The Pura 80 Ultra uses Kirin 9020 chip, and its performance is similar to mid-range processors from other brands. You can play games on it, but after half an hour of playing Call of Duty, you’ll experience a severe performance drop and overheating. However, everything is super smooth in the user interface. It’s great for daily use, but it’s not a good choice for gaming.
