Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max review

Display

The Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max packs a 6.9-inch LTPO OLED screen with 1,308 x 2,880 pixels (460ppi), 10-bit color depth, and 120Hz refresh rate. The display supports HDR content.

Kunlun Glass keeps the display panel safe.

The only official specs Huawei has shared besides the resolution are support for a dynamic 1Hz-120Hz refresh rate, up to 300Hz touch sampling, and high-frequency PWM dimming.

We measured 1,192 nits of maximum brightness on the Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max display with our usual 75% white patch displayed. When using a 10% white patch, brightness peaked at 1,777nits. Those are solid numbers, though not the best we've seen.

The minimum brightness was just 1 nit, an excellent performance.

Refresh rate

As per the official pages, the Pura 90s Pro Max supports dynamic refresh rate between 1Hz and 120Hz. The available user options are High mode (up to 120Hz with using the maximum possible RR), a Standard mode (up to 60Hz), and a Dynamic mode (up to 120Hz, but smart switching for longer battery life).

We saw the refresh rate drop down to 60Hz when idling and in certain scenarios such as video streaming. If you have Dynamic mode on, you may see 90Hz across a limited number of apps.

The refresh rate tracker integrated in Android showed only 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz, so we cannot really confirm if the screen can really drop down to 1Hz.

HDR and streaming

The display of the Pura 90s Pro Max supports HDR10 as per the hardware scanning apps. YouTube (via GBox) successfully streams HDR clips on the phone. Netflix was also able to stream FullHD HDR10 movies for us when installed through GBox. Nice!

Battery life

The Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max battery capacity varies depending on the region. The Chinese unit gets a 5,850mAh rated battery (typical 6,000mAh), while the European one has a 5,270mAh rated capcity (unknown typical value but our best guess is anywhere between 5,400-5,500mAh). The phone itself reports 5,550mAh capacity if that any indication.

In our set of battery tests, the phone posted a good overall Active Use Rating of 13:02 hours. It did very well on the call scenario, the web browsing and especially on the video streaming test, but the gaming runtime was only average.

Charging test

The Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max supports 100W fast wired and 80W fast wireless charging. It can also do reverse wired and wireless charging.

The phone should ship with a 100W SuperCharge power adapter, though we didn't get one. Still, we had one from before, so we were able to test the charging speed with a proper adapter.

Unfortunately, the Pura 90s Pro Max was not very fast to charge - it went from 1% to 100% in 61 minutes. We also clocked 39% on the 15min mark and 60% of charge on the 30min mark. For some reason, that's slower than the Pura 80 Ultra charging speed, a phone with a similar battery and charging support.

You can enable Smart Charge and/or charge limit if you want to prolong the battery's lifespan.

Speakers - loudness and quality

The Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max has a stereo speaker system with a large bottom speaker and an amplified earpiece with a secondary top-facing outlet completing the pair.

The Pura 90s Pro Max speakers scored a Very Good mark on our loudness test. The audio quality is good with well-presented high-frequency range, and good enough vocals and thump. We've certainly heard better, though.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.