What Honor’s G200 and G500 lenses do, and which Magic 9 phones they fit

Honor has priced its clip-on telephoto lenses for the Magic 9 series. They are now on sale in China in limited numbers. The G500, a 500mm lens, costs about USD 370 or KES 48,300 with Honor’s imaging grip. The G200, a 200mm lens, costs about USD 150 or KES 19,300 on its own. A Photography Master Kit that bundles both lenses with a 16GB and 1TB Magic 9 Pro Max costs about USD 1,640 or KES 212,000.

Earlier this month, we reported that Honor was building a 500mm lens for the Pro Max, but Honor hadn’t given prices then. The phones themselves also launched today. We’ve covered the prices and specs for all three Magic 9 phones separately.

What a clip-on lens does

A phone’s zoom camera is limited by how long a lens fits inside the body. The Magic 9 Pro Max’s periscope telephoto is equivalent to an 85mm lens on a traditional camera, and the standard Magic 9’s is 80mm. A teleconverter is extra glass that clips over that camera and magnifies the image before it reaches the sensor, the way a telescope sits in front of your eye.

Digital zoom crops into the picture and throws pixels away. The G500 enlarges the image optically instead, about 5.88 times on the Pro Max’s 85mm camera, so a 500mm shot uses the whole sensor. Honor quotes a range of up to 14,000mm, but its footnote says the zoom across that range comes from digital cropping, so only the 500mm starting point is optical.

So if you shoot birds or sport from the stands, the G500 gets you real detail at 500mm. Anything beyond that is the same software zoom the phone already has.

Prices

Prices are from the launch price lists. Honor’s own store lists the G500 only with the grip, so the USD 300 lens on its own may be harder to find. The G200 comes in two versions: on its own for the Magic 9, and with the grip for the Pro Max. The grip adds about USD 70, or KES 9,700, to either lens.

The G500 set and the Magic 9’s G200 also come with a protective case for the phone, an adapter cover the lens mounts to, lens caps, a storage bag and a shoulder strap. The case holds Honor’s magnetic accessories.

The G200 and G500

The G200 weighs about 88g without its caps and is about 81mm long, with 15 glass elements. Honor says it’s 55% lighter than its previous generation. For comparison, the extender in the Magic 8 Pro’s imaging kit weighed 207g for the same 200mm reach. At 81mm, the G200 fits in a pocket.

The G500 fits the Pro Max only. It has 16 glass elements and a 46mm thread on the front for standard camera filters. Honor hasn’t published its weight, but calls it the first 500mm lens of its kind for a phone. The longest before it was the 400mm teleconverter for vivo’s X300 Ultra.

The imaging grip charges by cable and has a standard 1/4-inch thread for a tripod. The HONOR SmallRig kit is a cage with handles and mounting points for extra gear such as microphones and lights. SmallRig is a camera accessory brand that makes rigs for video crews.

What’s in the USD 1,640 kit

Honor’s packing list for the Photography Master Kit:

• Magic 9 Pro Max, 16GB and 1TB
• G500 lens and G200 lens
• Imaging grip
• Protective case and shoulder strap
• Adapter cover for the teleconverters
• Lens caps and a storage bag
• 1/4-inch bracket for mounting the lenses
• Charging cable for the grip

The SmallRig cage, filters and an external microphone aren’t in the box. Honor only sells the G200 for the Pro Max with a grip, at about USD 220. So buying the 1TB Pro Max at about USD 1,260, the G500 with grip at USD 370 and that G200 set separately comes to about USD 1,860 or KES 241,000, and leaves you with two grips. The kit costs about USD 220 less, or KES 28,900.

The ARRI side

ARRI is the German company that makes the Alexa cinema cameras, which are widely used in film and television. Honor and ARRI announced their partnership in March, and the Magic 9 and Pro Max both carry ARRI’s logo on the camera module.

The Pro Max records video in LogC3, ARRI’s log format, in ARRI Wide Gamut 3 colour, at up to 4K and 60 frames per second, and the standard Magic 9 records LogC3 too. Log footage looks flat and grey straight out of the camera because it keeps more detail in the bright and dark parts of the picture, and it’s meant to be colour-graded afterwards. The Pro Max also records 10-bit 4:2:2 video in APV, a professional format that keeps more colour information than normal phone video.

The Pro Max comes with 14 ARRI Looks, which are colour presets that make the footage look finished without grading. ARRI’s full library of 87 Looks is a manual download from Honor’s or ARRI’s website. The Pro Max adds a directional microphone that Honor says picks up sound from up to 20 metres away, across a 120-degree arc in the direction the rear cameras point.

So if you edit video, footage from these two phones drops into the same grading tools film crews use for ARRI cameras. If you post straight to social media, the Looks do the work for you.

Which phone gets what

The cheapest Magic 9, the Super Edition, gets none of it. Its telephoto is a 50MP 3x camera, and its product page lists no ARRI features and no lens support.

Honor says Pro Max launches in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Southeast Asia “will be announced shortly”, and ARRI says more markets will follow China “shortly thereafter”. Neither has said whether the G500 and the kit will be sold outside China. Lens prices outside China would most likely come with those announcements.