Review | Huawei P40 Pro Plus review: 10x optical zoom camera is truly innovative, but at US$1,600 this phone is a luxury
- The Periscope lens of the Huawei P40 Pro Plus takes longer zoom images that are noticeably sharper than other phones’ thanks to its 10X lossless optical zoom
- Its body is ceramic rather than glass, making it heavier than the Huawei P40 Pro and giving it a more durable feel
Considering that the Pro device already sported a camera system that is arguably the best on the market, there was plenty of excitement about what the Pro Plus would bring. It’s here now, and we’ve been testing a pre-release unit for a couple of days.
Pro vs Pro Plus: what’s the difference?
The Pro Plus outshines the Pro in two areas. The first is an improved camera zoom system, which comes via the addition of a fifth camera, an 8-megapixel telephoto lens, and a more advanced version of Huawei’s Periscope zoom lens that is noticeably larger.
The second upgrade is to the body of the Pro Plus: it is ceramic, whereas the Pro body is glass; this makes for a slightly heavier build (226g, compared to the Pro’s 209g) and it feels denser in the hand.
Huawei says it is more durable – a claim that is creditable; the Pro Plus suffered two small drops during our testing (falling about six inches, from an elevated stand onto a glass table top) and there is no sign of dings or scratches. Everything else about the Pro Plus is unchanged from the Huawei P40 Pro: the 6.6-inch 90Hz OLED screen, the Kirin 990 5G chip, and the main and wide-angle cameras are identical.
Huawei P40 Pro first look: the best lowlight camera available
The improved zoom system
This extra room for travel allows image information to be magnified organically before the phone’s brain even takes in the image.
The Periscope zoom on the Pro Plus has that information travelling further, by adding a U-shaped turn, a set of prisms and more magnifying lenses. The sensor also has optical image stabilisation – I can see the lens inside move along with the phone as I rotate my hand.
In practical terms, this means the souped-up Periscope lens of the Pro Plus can achieve 10X lossless optical zoom, compared to other Periscope lens which can only manage 5X optical zoom.
This means longer zoom images captured by the Pro Plus are noticeably sharper than those taken using other Periscope zoom lenses. In the sample below, notice the 60X zoom shot captured by the Pro Plus is significantly better than the same shot captured by Samsung’s Galaxy S20 Ultra and the Oppo Find X2 Pro.
Like Samsung’s flagship phone, the Pro Plus can zoom up to 100X, but image degradation at that point is high. Even at 80X zoom, though, the Pro Plus does quite a good job of maintaining image integrity.
As for images that rely just on optical zoom, 10X zoom images captured by the Pro Plus are really sharp, and make the same shots captured by a non-Periscope camera like that of the Apple iPhone 11 look bad.
There is also the new 3X telephoto lens, which helps covers the shorter focal length (2X to 9.9X) not covered by the Periscope lens. Shooting at an equivalent of 80mm, the 3X lens is ideal for portrait photography. Between the Periscope zoom lens and the 3X zoom, the P40 Pro Plus covers a broader spectrum of focal length than any other phone on the market.
The performance of the main camera and wide-angle camera of the P40 Pro Plus is identical to that of the P40 Pro, which means the strengths and flaws are the same too.
While its wide-angle lens captures more detail than competitors thanks to its higher megapixel count and narrower field of vision, it cannot capture sweeping landscapes like an iPhone’s wide-angle lens, and Huawei’s image processing is still too heavy-handed on human skin tones.
Still, all things considered, the camera system of the Huawei P40 Pro Plus is objectively the most versatile, and arguably the best performing.
A big price jump
The improvements come at a price: the Huawei P40 Pro Plus will go on sale in Europe soon at €1,399, a big jump from €899 for the P40 Pro. For most consumers, the price gap is probably too large, and the standard P40 Pro, whose camera system is already very capable, is the better purchase.
That’s not really the point – the Pro Plus is a luxury item aimed at those with the cash to spare.
