Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max review

The competition

The Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max may not win any awards for its name, but it makes a strong first impression with its unmistakable design and unconventional camera setup. More importantly, that camera hardware delivers excellent photo and video quality.

Unfortunately, there's more to a flagship than good looks and great cameras. While the Pura 90s Pro Max impresses with its design, display, and imaging capabilities, its chipset and software are likely to be deal-breakers for many buyers. The €1,199 asking price doesn't do it any favors either.

Let's see what the competition has to offer.

Naturally, the first that comes to mind is the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. It features the most powerful Snapdragon chip, much faster than the Kirin inside the Huawei, and comes with a better screen, cameras (with continuous zoom), and battery life. Let's not forget the complete Android OS with all Google services. All for the same asking price or lower than the Huawei's proposition.

Then there is the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, which also impresses with flagship-grade design, screen, and Elite chip. Its camera department has two telephoto cameras for better versatility and a high-resolution selfie imager for better photo quality. Just like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra, the Find X9 Ultra is one of the best phones on the market, but it's quite a bit more expensive at €1500.

Of course, we cannot help but mention the vivo X300 Ultra, which is even more expensive than the Find X9 Ultra but is an equally good cameraphone (or even better, depending on who you ask).

The one thing the Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max has that the rest don't - it's the variable aperture on the main camera. However, the benefits of that feature outside a few very specific use cases are dubious.

Xiaomi 17 Ultra • Oppo Find X9 Ultra • vivo X300 Ultra

Our verdict

The Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max is a solid smartphone - it impressed us with its design, it has a great screen for multimedia, and the speakers are quite good, too.

The Pura 90s Pro Max offers a versatile camera set with excellent photo and video quality across the board. We do appreciate the effort to bring 10x magnification, but we think settling for the maximum possible of 8x would have been much better. At least the phone deserves an 8x shortcut inside the camera app.

The selfies turned out to be very good, too, even if coming from a more basic sensor.

The Kirin chip is still a mid-range one, worse, its GPU performance has gone downhill since the last Huawei we've tested - the Mate X7. And while it will do just fine for the occasional game, it's just not worthy for a flagship phone with a €1000+ price tag. At least the connectivity department got an upgrade with 5G and Wi-Fi 7.

And then comes the EMUI, the universal dilemma of leaving behind everything Google. Can you live with it? Well, for most people the answer will be positive. First, it's got an Android 16 core, and you can install pretty much anything on it. Then GBox allows you to get GMS and use your favorite GMS-reliant apps. EMUI is also quite powerful in terms of customizations and features.

Sooner or later, though, you'll run into an app that simply won't work. And not everyone wants to deal with downloading and installing apps from outside the official app store. As things stand, Huawei's phones still lack broad mainstream appeal and are likely to find their audience among users who deliberately choose to stay outside Google's ecosystem.

Overall, the Huawei Pura 90s Pro Max is an intriguing smartphone, but it's also one with a very specific target audience. If its camera system is your top priority, its compromises may be easy to forgive. If not, there are more complete flagship experiences available for the same money.

Pros

• Likable design, premium build.
• Bright HDR screen, high-resolution.
• Good battery life.
• Loud stereo speakers, very good sound output.
• Excellent photos from all cameras, variable aperture on the main cam.
• Superb videos and video stabilization from all cameras.
• EMUI is now based on Android 16.
• 5G support.

Cons

• Mid-range performance, still throttles.
• Charging speed could be faster.
• No Google Mobile Services.
• 8x zoom should have been the standard instead of 10x.