Huawei P60 Pro review – A strong camera smartphone even without Leica

The Huawei P60 Pro is a direct successor to the P50 Pro and has always been the Chinese manufacturer’s flagship camera smartphone. Price-wise, it sits about in the middle of the P60 series and as of currently, it is the only model of this series which is available to buy in the Western market. The P60 Art , whose features include an even better camera, a bigger battery and more storage, might follow at a later date.

The Huawei P60 is still only available to purchase on the Chinese market. The Huawei P60 Pro in both of its storage variants is available to purchase in Europe. The model with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB of internal storage is on sale for $1,179 and the one with 12/512 GB currently retails for $1,299.

The Huawei smartphone comes without Google services and 5G – the same as it has always been in the last few years. In this review, you can find out whether the phone is still worth purchasing. Outside of Asia, the Huawei P60 Pro comes in black and Rococo Pearl.

Purple and green are only available in the Asian market. Our test device is in the color Rococo Pearl, which isn’t quite white – instead, it has a pearlescent sheen to it, which is unique to each individual phone. Huawei apply a mineral pearlescent powder to the phones by hand – however, this technique is not further specified.

This feature isn’t just an eye-catcher – it is also a real joy to hold. The display is protected by Kunlun glass – which is supposedly ten times stronger than regular glass. Even so, the phone comes with an additional screen protector installed on top.

The screen is curved along all four sides – the same as could already be seen on the Honor Magic5 Pro . The phone is built very well – there are no gaps and its construction is smooth, with the exception of a tiny gap between the back and aluminum frame on our test device. The Huawei P60 Pro is IP68-certified, meaning it is dust- and waterproof.

The Huawei P60 Pro has a fast USB 3. 2 port (Gen 1) which allows for high data transfer rates. In our copying test, this port achieved transfer rates of 368.

49 MB/s on average. You can also use it to output picture – you can either mirror the screen or make use of a dedicated “Desktop Mode”. Aside from this, the phone also has NFC, and IR blaster as well as Bluetooth 5.

2 – though unfortunately it doesn’t have an audio jack. The Huawei phone utilizes an in-house NanoMemory card slot, which supports up to 256 GB as well as exFAT. Its transfer rates were similarly fast in our copying test – although, the rates were slightly lower than expected in our Cross Platform Disk test.

In Europe, the Huawei P60 Pro comes with EMUI 13. 1, which is based on Open Android. In the Asian markets, the phone utilizes Harmony OS 3.

1, which isn’t really built any differently and looks about the same. Huawei haven’t given any detailed information on update delivery – in the past, it has always been decent. At the time of testing, the latest security patch was from 1st March 2023 – not totally up-to-date.

The same as it has been for the past few years, the P60 Pro continues to be missing Google services and the corresponding apps. Many apps will be familiar if you take a look at Huawei’s AppGallery – but some of the big American ones such as Meta, Netflix and Disney are nowhere to be found. You can use the Petal search function in order to download these apps from other platforms, but for less technically proficient people, this seems like a massive hassle.

A better alternative could be GBox, which is easy to install and makes the Play Store available to use – meaning you also have the option to get ahold of a lot of Google services. Unfortunately, this can lead to higher battery consumption and you have to be a little wary of data protection when utilizing this route. The Huawei P60 Pro supports Wi-Fi 6 with VHT160, which means it can utilize 2.

4 and 5. 0 GHz frequencies – but not 6. 0 GHz.

Connection via our reference router, the Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000, was stable – but speeds lay behind our expectations. We would have expected speeds of over 1 GBit/s with regard to the phone’s specs. Using mobile data, the best you can get is LTE, but still no 5G.

Its frequency coverage is quite good, though, which means you can make use of the phone all around the globe. The Huawei P60 Pro is the first smartphone which supports the GNSS bands E5b (Galileo) and B2b (BeiDou). Locating via satellite is fast and a precise location is quickly determined.

We compared the phone with a Garmin Venu 2 on a bike trip. On our 10-kilometre long journey, both devices were used 90 metres apart – we noted that the P60 Pro wasn’t quite able to trace our exact route as well as the fitness smartwatch, even with its much wider GNSS support. Even so, it still did a pretty good job at the end of the day.

The Huawei P60 Pro supports functions such as VoLTE and WLAN calls – an SIP account control was not implemented into the system. Call quality is very good with the phone held up to your ear and louder ambient noises are effectively filtered out. Loudspeaker mode also made a good impression – it echoed a bit at times though.

The Huawei P60 Pro’s front-facing camera takes good selfies with a customizable bokeh which distinguishes the line between subject and background well. While the P50 Pro featured a quad-camera, the P60 Pro has one lens fewer and got rid of the monochrome sensor entirely. Its main camera impresses with its balanced photos – the phone doesn’t over-sharpen subjects too much and the photos have a nice dynamic.

Low-light photography is also possible, but it outlines subjects a little too harshly at times. The P60 Pro also features automatic aperture control, which automatically sets the aperture between f/1. 4 and f/4.

0. You can manually control this feature via Pro Mode – a feature which we already know well from the Mate50 Pro . The smartphone’s ultra-wide angle lens is one of the better ones, even though it only has access to 12 MPix – it achieves lovely depth of field and good levels of detail.

The periscope camera not only has access to high resolutions, it is also very light-sensitive with an aperture of f/2. 1. It has an 100x digital zoom, but hit isn’t exactly the best.

From around 10x zoom you already start to notice quite a few deficits – nevertheless, good enough for social media. You can record video on both the front-facing and main camera at a maximum of Ultra HD and 60 FPS, as long as you take them in 16:9 format. If you want to record in 21:9, you are limited to Full HD (60 FPS).

HDR videos can be recorded using all resolutions and formats, however, they are limited to 30 FPS. The Huawei P60 Pro comes with a modular 88-watt power adapter, a USB cable (Type-A to Type-C), a SIM card tool and a transparent silicone case. The charging adapter has a USB-A and USB-C port – but only one port can be used to charge the device at a time.

The Huawei phone comes with a 24-month warranty which can’t be extended. The phone’s capacitive touchscreen comes with a pre-fitted screen protector and has a high sampling rate of up to 300 Hz. This makes inputs smooth and precise.

Its gliding properties remain good, even with the applied screen protector. The P60 Pro supports a variety of gestures and smart features such as knuckle gestures, double tapping the screen to wake it, and a one-handed mode. Its linear vibration motor (z axis) releases subtle but exact haptic feedback.

An optical fingerprint sensor is responsible for biometric security – it recognizes fingerprints reliably and unlocks the phone quickly. You can additionally (or alternatively) activate facial recognition using the front-facing camera, which works quickly and can even be used in the dark – although it is slightly less secure. The Huawei P60 Pro’s screen continues to rely on LTPO OLED technology with an expanded Full HD resolution, which gives it great levels of sharpness.

Its refresh rates are automatically set by the system and range between 1 and 120 Hz. The HDR standards HLG, HDR10 and HDR10+ are supported. The screen’s brightness is greatly improved compared to the phone’s predecessor and when the screen is fully white, it achieves a maximum brightness of 1,188 cd/m² – as long as the ambient light sensor is activated.

In manual mode, it achieves rates of 612 cd/m². With an even distribution of light and dark areas (APL18), these rates are barely any higher at 1,233 cd/m². The P60 Pro’s panel supports PWM dimming at 1,440 Hz, which should reduce the strain on sensitive users by quite a bit.

Using an oscilloscope, we were still able to measure a relatively constant frequency of 120 Hz – although this could be because of a possible screen burn protection or black frame insertion. Ex works, the Huawei P60 Pro has quite natural color depiction, which we used as a base for our measurements. Gray tones are depicted very accurately and only start to show deviations in the lightest shades.

Color deviations are so minimal that they can’t even be seen with the naked eye. Even though the Huawei P60 Pro can’t quite keep up with the Galaxy S23 Ultra or the iPhone 14 Pro in terms of screen brightness, it is definitely still more than sufficient to remain legible on sunny days. The Huawei phone’s viewing angle stability is also great – if anything, we noticed a slight dip in brightness and slightly warmer color depiction with the phone held at very flat angles.

The phone’s integrated Adreno 730 impressed during the graphics benchmarks – however, a lot of its competitors outperformed this device due to them already using the newer Adreno 740 . At the end of the day, the phone still has more than enough power to run more demanding games and cope with other complex graphic calculations. In idle mode, the P60 Pro’s surface temperatures remain relatively low, but under load, they quickly surpass the 40° C mark across the whole of the phone’s surface.

Although, it should be noted that we used the Burnout benchmark for the P60’s measurements – it is much more demanding than the Stability test, which we used on other smartphones. During the 3DMark stress test, however, the P60 Pro showed weak cooling performance that struggled to keep the Qualcomm chipset under control. We repeatedly saw performance losses of up to 64 per cent.

The Huawei phone’s two speakers create quite a pleasant sound – as long as they are not set too loud. Here, the highs are a little too extreme and the sound becomes a bit hollow. The Bluetooth audio codecs do not include those from Qualcomm.

Users who want to utilize high-res streaming have to resort to using LDAC or Huawei’s own L2HC codec. However, the latter is only supported by the FreeBuds Studio . The Huawei P60 Pro’s power consumption is slightly raised at minimum display brightness and in idle mode – at maximum manual brightness, it is actually considerably raised.

The latter can at least be explained by the comparatively high brightness level. The measurements using adapted display brightness show the phone to be more frugal. The P60 Pro can be charged using a cable at up to 88 watts, wireless charging uses up to 50 watts.

The Huawei smartphone also supports reverse wireless charging. At 4,815 mAh, the phone’s battery is 10. 4 % larger than that of its predecessor, the P50 Pro (4,360 mAh).

This becomes quite noticeable when you take a look at the P60 Pro’s runtimes – they are 34 per cent better and the phone managed over 13 hours in our WLAN test using adapted display brightness (150 cd/m²). In comparison, this isn’t setting any new records, but it is still a very good result. While the Huawei P60 Pro is technically a very good smartphone, it still continues to battle with old and increasingly more problems due to its sanctions.

On a positive note, it has a modern LTPO display which runs at up to 120 Hz, is very bright and has good color accuracy. You can also charge the smartphone very quickly using a cable or by using its wireless charging function. It is also IP68-certified dust and waterproof.

Furthermore, the P60 Pro is the first smartphone that supports the GNSS frequencies E5b and B2b. An awesome triple camera completes the phone’s setup. The Huawei P60 Pro is impressive in many ways – but it is missing out on a few modern radio standards as well as Google services.

The missing Google services and 5G aside, not much more is actually up-to-date about the phone. Huawei may have gone for a high-end SoC – but it is last year’s model which doesn’t support the 6-GHz WLAN band. The display features 1,440 Hz PWM dimming, however, the Magic5 Pro has 2,160 Hz to offer.

Its screen brightness isn’t quite enough for the P60 Pro to come out on top either. Technically seen, Huawei have still manufactured a very good smartphone. Unfortunately, we can’t fully recommend purchasing the device due to its missing Google services.

Huawei may offer substitutes and solutions which utilize third-party services – but this will prove to be a little too convoluted for a lot of users. However, if this isn’t too big an issue for you and you don’t need Google Pay or Android Auto, then the P60 Pro may well prove to be a suitable alternative to the Pixel 7 Pro , Galaxy S23 Ultra and similar phones. The version of the Huawei P60 Pro with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB of storage can be purchased on Amazon for $1,179.

The version with 12 GB RAM and 512 GB of storage can be found for $1,299 . .