Honor WIN Hands-On Review: A 10,000mAh Gaming Beast with a Built-in Fan and 3x Telephoto
Have you been paying attention to Honor lately? The brand, often associated with exquisite craftsmanship, eye-care screens, and a strong offline presence, has just released a truly astonishing gaming phone at the tail end of 2025. That's right, I'm talking about the newly launched Honor WIN.
Looking at the spec sheet for the first time was slightly bewildering: the 5th Gen Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition, a colossal 10,000mAh Qinghai Lake battery, Honor's Dongfeng Turbo active cooling fan, and the self-developed HONOR C1+ RF enhancement chip. The combination of these features with the Honor logo feels almost surreal. It's hard to believe that a mainstream manufacturer known for its steady progress would take such an aggressive approach to create a pure gaming device. After a full 24 hours with it, here's a deep dive into what makes this top-tier performer stand out in a market dominated by flagships focused on imaging and AI.
Minimalist and Comfortable Aesthetic Design
The Honor WIN diverges from the ultra-thin aesthetic of the Magic series. From the moment you pick it up, words like 'quality' and 'solid' come to mind. It follows a design philosophy of 'simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.' It's minimalist, comfortable, and packed with a premium feel.
Despite housing a 10,000mAh battery and a full-fledged turbo cooling system, the Honor WIN maintains a body thickness of just 8.3mm and a weight of 229g. Paired with a matte metal mid-frame, it feels comfortable, simple, and refined in hand. The back panel avoids the flashy gimmicks of traditional gaming phones, instead opting for an ultra-light and thin fiberglass process with a new-generation horizontal design that looks more minimalist and high-end. There are no RGB lights, making its understated design more enduring than those with circuit board patterns.
A flat screen is always the ultimate choice for gamers. The Honor WIN features a 6.83-inch 1.5K Honor Oasis Eye-Care flat display with a 185Hz refresh rate and 5920Hz PWM dimming, ensuring your eyes won't feel strained during long gaming sessions. The ultra-high 185Hz refresh rate is a must-have for competitive players, keeping gameplay silky smooth and visuals fluid. Honor's excellent color tuning provides a transparent and natural picture, complemented by perfectly symmetrical bezels that eliminate any distracting 'chin,' offering an immersive viewing experience.
Active Cooling, Genuinely Cool
Beyond its design, the phone's most compelling features are its performance and cooling. Honor has integrated a physical fan into the WIN, cleverly placing the vent within the camera module to blend seamlessly with the other lenses. This design maintains the phone's aesthetic integrity while allowing a sophisticated mechanical structure to direct cool air through dual 360° surround air intake channels, right onto the SoC's heat source.
At its core is the most powerful chip in the Android camp: the 5th Gen Snapdragon 8 Supreme Edition. While this processor is already efficient, the Honor WIN's performance is simply on another level with its physical cooling buffs. In our test, running *Honkai: Star Rail* for half an hour at the highest settings and 60Hz, the frame rate remained locked at 60fps with no signs of thermal throttling. In a 24°C room, the back of the phone reached only about 38°C. In another test with *CrossFire*, which supports the 185Hz refresh rate, the phone averaged 184.8 fps with a maximum temperature of just 34°C. The active cooling design truly elevates the Honor WIN's performance to an industry-leading level.
10,000mAh, Battery Life is Truly Solid
Beyond gaming, the Honor WIN's other major selling point is its battery life. A 10,000mAh battery is unprecedented in a mainstream smartphone. To illustrate its real-world endurance: I started the day at 9 AM with a full charge. After a 30-minute video commute, some morning gaming (*League of Legends: Wild Rift*), an hour of Bilibili during lunch, regular messaging and calls in the afternoon, and another 30 minutes of *Wuthering Waves* on the way home, I checked the battery. It was still at 54%. This 'two-days-on-a-single-charge' experience is a game-changer for heavy users, frequent travelers, and gamers. It even supports 27W reverse charging, allowing you to help out your friends. The only minor drawback is that even with 100W wired and 80W wireless charging, filling this massive battery still takes about an hour.
Imaging Isn't Bad, But Not Groundbreaking
Honestly, I didn't expect much from the Honor WIN's camera. However, Honor delivered a pleasant surprise. Instead of neglecting the camera system like some competitors, it's equipped with flagship-level hardware. The main camera features a Sony LYT-700 sensor, which produces excellent image quality with pleasing colors in good daylight and solid night performance with well-controlled highlights. The biggest surprise, however, is the 50MP 3x telephoto lens. Yes, a gaming phone with a 3x optical zoom and up to 100x digital zoom. This means you have a true optical lens for framing shots, whether you're capturing a whiteboard from the back of a classroom or a teammate on the field, rather than relying on digital cropping from the main sensor. In good lighting, this lens is incredibly stable and infinitely more practical than the 2MP macro lenses often found on gaming phones.
Conclusion: Smooth Gaming, Worry-Free Usage
The Honor WIN embodies a design philosophy of pushing every specification to its absolute limit, making it the best choice for a performance-oriented phone at the end of 2025. Its key advantages are its outstanding 10,000mAh battery, incredible performance powered by active cooling, and a gamer-friendly eye-care flat screen. If you're a hardcore mobile gaming enthusiast or someone who works outdoors and suffers from battery anxiety, like a delivery driver or ride-share driver, then this phone—essentially a flagship Snapdragon chip inside a power bank—is an absolute dream come true.
