Review of the Honor Band 6 fitness bracelet with smartwatch functions

Honor Band 6 is a budget fitness bracelet with a large display and basic smartwatch functions. With an SpO2 sensor and stress measurement tools, it is well suited for those who are looking after their health.

Huawei sold the Honor brand in November 2022, so the Band 6 is a transitional product, although the wearable still works with the Huawei Health app like previous models.

Characteristics of Honor Band 6

Bottom line

Of course, with HUAWEI Band 6 you can wash in the shower - it can withstand water pressure of up to 50 atm. The tracker uses all sensors to monitor the health and activities of the owner, and where necessary it provides recommendations and even links to scientific help - all this in the HUAWEI Health application.

Initially, I thought of keeping the Xiaomi Mi Band 6. Its display is a little better: rounded and with a higher pixel density: 326 versus 284 ppi. In addition, among the watchfaces there is my favorite Patrick. The HUAWEI tracker looks paler and more utilitarian in comparison.

However, time and experience of use have put everything in its place. HUAWEI Band 6 turned out to be more comfortable to use in general and on the hand in particular. It also needs to be charged 2-2.5 times less often, but it offers the same functionality as Xiaomi. Perhaps, for these advantages it is worth overpaying a conventional thousand rubles - 3,990 or 3,490 on pre-order. NFC is still neither here nor there, so I personally choose a gadget that is more comfortable over a long distance.

Honor Huawei HUAWEI Band 6 Smart Watch Smart Bracelet Fitness Tracker

Features and changes

Regarding Band 5, little has changed in the new Honor Band 6. The only noticeable difference is the screen - its diagonal has increased from 0.95 to 1.47 inches. A bright AMOLED screen, curved on the sides, which is rarely seen on budget devices.

Band 6 costs from 3 thousand rubles, and with it you can measure heartbeat, sleep, steps and even dive under water to a depth of 50 meters without taking it off. However, the gadget still has many problems and bugs that prevent it from competing with other devices in the segment.

Operation and training

The first thing worth noting is that the bracelet is almost not felt on the hand, despite its slightly increased dimensions. A very soft silicone strap, hypoallergenic and non-irritating to the skin, also helps with this. When turning the hand, the body also does not rest against it, which does not interfere, for example, with doing push-ups while wearing a bracelet (many fitness watches cause discomfort during such exercises).

HONOR Band 6 measures heart rate quite accurately. In training mode, you can easily rely on its readings to understand what heart rate zone you are in. It is very convenient that when you start any workout, the display displays a separate screen displaying heart rate, distance and heart rate zones with bright color differentiation.

There are 5 stages: warm-up, fat burning, aerobic, anaerobic and critical - all limits can be adjusted in the application. In addition, the training time is calculated.

The bracelet also has an auto-detection function for training. It usually kicks in after 20-30 minutes of walking or other activity, so it may be useful in a limited number of cases.

At the same time, training records are available from the bracelet itself, with graphs and almost all the same information as from a smartphone.

All that remains is to say a special thank you to the developers for such detail, especially for the graphs on the bracelet display and the breakdown of the workout over time in different heart rate zones. It’s very convenient to find out after a run how well you did it. Also, for example, when jogging, the bracelet reacts with vibration for each kilometer covered and shows the pace for it.

The distance is not always displayed correctly if the workout does not use GPS, but when it is completed, the bracelet prompts you to adjust the final distance so that you can achieve acceptable accuracy.

The only difficulties when using the HONOR Band 6 arose during the “bicycle” type of training with GPS: the bracelet tries to determine the location for a very long time and it does not always succeed. As a result, you can’t count on building a normal track or you’ll have to wait a long time for weather by the sea. Perhaps the problem is in the current firmware or interaction with a specific smartphone with old Android 5.2.

The autonomy of HONOR Band 6 is quite decent - in practice, the bracelet lasts about 10-12 days of use in active mode. Since the display is AMOLED, light images will consume more power, so economical covers have a black background.

The battery is charged using a magnetic connector through contacts on the case. Interestingly, the bracelet supports fast charging. It charges up to 50% in literally 10-15 minutes and in about an hour - up to 100%.

Design and screen

Externally, the Honor Band 6 leaves a pleasant impression. The main advantage is the large and colorful screen. It takes up 85% of the front of the case and is reminiscent of more expensive models from competitors.

The display has high touch sensitivity, so using the wearable gadget is very pleasant. There are plenty of watch faces to choose from that look great with rich color tones. Most of them also provide additional information, such as steps or calories burned, in a convenient way.

However, if not handled carefully, the screen may no longer be so attractive. Because it is very easy to scratch. There is also no automatic brightness adjustment mode, which can be a problem - the light is strongly reflected from the glossy finish. Fortunately, the standard brightness is quite high, so the contents of the display are easy to see.

Otherwise, the Band 6's design is simple and practical. The rubber strap fits comfortably on your wrist, and there's a single control key on the right side that takes you back to the home screen or opens the menu.

Motivation

Personally, I don’t need additional motivation for physical activity, because its benefits are obvious, and the improvement in well-being comes even before the end of exercise or training in the gym. However, manufacturers are trying to encourage wearers of fitness bracelets to lead a more active lifestyle and do this in different ways.

So Mi Band 6 can calculate the PAI coefficient, which in one number clearly shows your activity over the last 7 days. If you have scored 100 or higher over the past 7 days, you are active enough to maintain a good level of overall health and well-being. If it is lower, you should increase your activity.

This coefficient includes any type of physical activity, from walking to running or exercising on exercise equipment in the gym.

PAI is very convenient, and most importantly, it is recognized by WHO, which means that this is not a marketing idea from Xiaomi, but a completely serious indicator that should be taken into account.

In turn, Huawei Band 6 has a flexible system of achievements and medals for them. You yourself set a goal for a week or a month, and the bracelet tracks it, and if you succeed, you receive a new achievement and medal.

The inconvenient thing is that the goal must be entered independently, and for this you need at least a basic understanding of physical activity standards, as well as your desire to become stronger, faster and healthier.

Conclusion: despite the flexible achievement system in Huawei Band 6, I will give the victory for motivation to Mi Band 6, because... The PAI is clear, simple and recognized by WHO, which means it works.

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Workout Tracking

Unfortunately, the Honor Band 6 fitness bracelet does not perform its main functions very well. It may seem to you that the tracker is not measuring your physical activity at all.

It turns out that all the information is collected and stored in the “Steps” section of the Huawei Health application. It is shown as a percentage divided between walking, running and climbing stairs. Starting to track your running is also not as easy as we would like. The device will constantly report that it does not have GPS.

The only way to record your route is through a smartphone. Of course, you shouldn't expect built-in GPS at this price. But what’s the point of such a device if you need to constantly take your phone with you when you go jogging? Moreover, GPS tracking is only available on Huawei and Honor smartphones.

The Honor Band 6 smart bracelet offers us only 10 types of workouts, unlike the Huawei Band 6. Among them: running on a treadmill and outdoors, walking, cycling or an exercise bike, swimming in the pool, strength training and a few more basic ones. There's not a lot of choice, and there's no weight training, yoga, aerobics or other popular forms of exercise. The category “Others” is allocated for them.

The recorded data is also not too much, although it is no less than on other budget fitness trackers. You will see your heart rate zones and the number of calories burned, and after some time, your VO2 max. Unfortunately, you won't be able to download heart rate data from the app.

The Huawei Health app isn't good enough either. Although the interface is nice, I would like separate tabs for frequently used functions. On the other hand, everything in the application is intuitively simple and clear.

Review of the Huawei Band 6 fitness bracelet

In general, now you can get confused with all these fitness bracelets and smart watches. Previously, everything was somehow clearer: fitness bracelets had a narrow display, rather limited functionality and were cheap.

Smartwatches had a large display, noticeably more advanced functionality and cost two to three times more than fitness bracelets.

Yes, there, of course, there were heated debates among users and specialists about whether watches on proprietary systems, whose capabilities were not too different from fitness bracelets, could be considered fully “smart” (I wrote about this in detail in this review ), but nevertheless the difference was quite obvious.

At some point, Huawei released an interesting model called Huawei Watch Fit. The device had a fairly narrow and elongated display, was inexpensive, looked like a “bloated” fitness bracelet, but in its capabilities it was not too different from the Huawei Watch GT2, that is, it was still a smart watch.

Huawei Watch Fit
After this, Honor released the Honor Band 6 fitness bracelet, which seemed to continue the popular line of Honor Band bracelets, but Band 6 was much more similar to the Huawei Watch Fit than the Honor Band 5, and it worked on the same operating system Huawei Lite OS system, same as Watch Fit.

Honor Band 6

Nevertheless, the Honor Band 6 was still a fitness bracelet, and not a smartwatch, because its functionality was reduced to the maximum, there was no GPS and an always-on display (AOD) mode, and it actually cost like a fitness bracelet. so it made sense to purchase it, because such a device was certainly much more convenient to use than a fitness bracelet.

After some time, Huawei also released its own fitness bracelet of this type, which is called Huawei Band 6. At first I didn’t even want to buy it for the test, because I thought that it was a pure twin brother of Honor Band 6, but it turned out that between them There are some differences, and I decided to find out how they differ.

the Huawei Band 6 fitness bracelet

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Specifications

Display: AMOLED, 1.47″, 368×194 pixels, touch, 2.5D glass Operating system:

Huawei Lite OS
Compatibility:
Android from 6.0, iOS from 9.1
Wireless connection: Bluetooth 5.0 Battery: 180 mAh (active use 10 days, normal use 14 days - according to the manufacturer) Dimensions: 43 x 25 x 11 mm Weight: 18 g without strap, 29 g with strap Speaker/microphone: no Position determination: no NFC: no Vibration:
yes
Monitoring:
sleep, physical activity, training, heart rate, blood saturation (including continuous monitoring)
Sensors:
6-axis IMU sensor (accelerometer and gyroscope), optical heart rate sensor,
Water resistance: up to 5 atm (swimming, short-term diving) Case colors:
dark gray, gold
Strap colors:
black, green, pink, amber
Price: approximately 3,500 rubles on Yandex.Market
Color options.

There is also a version of Huawei Band 6 Pro: it has Wi-Fi (but no GPS), NFC and a microphone. It should sell for €59 in Europe, but is not on sale anywhere yet.

Contents of delivery

Modest packaging.

Delivery set: bracelet, charging cable and user manual in many languages, including Russian.

Appearance and features

The display is elongated, the body is made of plastic, and the bracelet has a single control key.

The bottom cover contains sensors and two charging contacts.

To remove the halves of the strap, you need to use a thin flat screwdriver to pick up and pull out the plastic plugs, after which you simply push the half of the strap up with pressure (this is if you look at the display; if you look at the bottom cover, then, accordingly, move it down).

Well, it is clear that for this bracelet on Aliexpress you can find a wide variety of types of straps: silicone, nylon, metal, and so on. (For Honor Band 6 they are exactly the same.)

The charging head of the adapter is securely magnetized to the bracelet body when charging.

Display

There is a good quality AMOLED display installed here, but it is clearly inferior to the Huawei Watch Fit display, at least in that the image is difficult to see in direct sunlight. (Honor Band 6 has the same story.)

The glass has an oleophobic coating, so touching your fingers won't stain the glass too much. Working hours

The bracelet fits well on the hand, its size is perfect for narrow wrists and will certainly appeal to lovely ladies: it looks not bulky and more or less elegant, especially if you choose some kind of cheerful colored strap for the bracelet.

When turned on, the bracelet displays a QR code that needs to be scanned in the Huawei Health app to connect the Huawei Band 6.

Connected bracelet in the application (there can be several devices - fitness bracelets and watches from Huawei/Honor, you can switch between them).

Device page and types of settings.

Dials. There are about hundreds of them.

Types of monitoring (sleep, heart rate, stress), setting up notifications.

Smart alarm clock, regular alarm clocks. Device settings.

Main page of the application with measured data, step counting.

Sleep measurement.

Measuring stress and blood oxygenation levels.

Heart rate chart.

Training.

Now let's talk about how it looks on the watch.

Dial (any choice can be installed, of course).

When you swipe down, there is an area of ​​quick switches and settings. Icons for night mode, searching for a smartphone, turning on the screen for a certain number of minutes (set in the settings) and alarm clock.

Settings: screen, vibration, do not disturb, workout settings, system.

In the screen settings, you select the watch face, favorite applications (these are those that are looped by swiping left and right from the watch face), brightness, when to turn off the screen, how long to keep the screen on.

What’s interesting is that the list of applications (widgets) that appear when you swipe left or right from the watch face is practically not customizable here: there is an activity ring, music, weather, stress and heart rate, and you can only remove some widgets.

From the watch face, swipe down - all notifications, when you click on a specific one - view. It is very convenient to read the text of notifications on such a screen. I note that you cannot respond to notifications, even using some standard phrases, here.

Incoming call.

There seems to be an opportunity to answer a call with a message, but I have a suspicion that this will only work for Huawei/Honor smartphones, because with other smartphones the bracelet at first seemed to send a message, but nothing came, and then it even started writing , that he cannot connect to the Huawei Health application (although it was connected perfectly), so he cannot send anything.

Press a button on the watch face - all applications: workouts, training history, heart rate measurement, SpO2 measurement (oxygenation level), activity, sleep, stress, breathing exercises, music, messages, weather, stopwatch, timer, alarm clock, flashlight, find phone, settings .

The workouts here are quite modest: running outside, running on a treadmill, walking outside, walking indoors, cycling outside, exercise bike, swimming in the pool, elliptical trainer, strength training, etc.

Start a workout: by swiping up you can get windows with various information about the workout. Switching to playback control from a smartphone is also available. But there is no multitasking: during training, in addition to the player, you can only switch to the window with a pause or stop the training.

Battery life

There is no always-on screen mode here, because it’s a fitness bracelet. (Theoretically they could add it, but they obviously won't.)

In my usual regimen - tracking heart rate and sleep, turning on the screen with a turn of the wrist, one hour of training a day - the bracelet lasted about 8-9 days, so it’s very similar to the promised 10 days of good activity.

I turned off the screen by turning my wrist and got about 11 days.

Observations during operation and conclusions

An important point is that this bracelet does not have GPS, so if you want to get tracking of the activity, as well as reliably receive distance data, then you need to use it with a smartphone: in this case, the workout is launched on the smartphone in the Huawei Health application, and information and control of the workout ( pause, completion) go on the bracelet. However, unlike Honor Band 6, for some reason this mode did not work normally: the passage of only half a kilometer was recorded (in reality I walked 5) and the corresponding tracking was shown - pay attention to the duration and distance. And this happened several times, I specifically checked.

Perhaps, of course, this was a glitch of a particular bracelet, but I could not help but mention this.

When I started tracking the workout from the bracelet itself, everything was tracked more or less decently: heart rate and time were measured quite normally, but the distance was noticeably overestimated by the bracelet (like Honor Band 6).

The bracelet measured the pulse in a calm state quite accurately, and under load it also did not go particularly wrong (if the strap was well tightened). It tracked sleep perfectly (Huawei devices, in my opinion, track sleep better than all other manufacturers), it measured blood oxygenation, not to say very accurately, but with strict adherence to the instructions (hand on the table, dial up, the strap is well tightened, the user does not move during the process measurements) the data was more or less similar to the pulse oximeter measurements. I checked how oxygenation was measured in a constant mode - well, it was measured, but I don’t see any point in this, because from time to time, due to measurement errors and conditions, values ​​of 94-95% were given (here it was like the alarm had to be sounded) , but, of course, this is purely due to error. So this is a purely marketing thing, like this “stress tracking”, which I also don’t see any point in yet.

Otherwise, everything worked as expected, there were no surprises.

What can I say about this fitness bracelet? The differences from Honor Band 6 are minimal; they are actually the same device. Huawei Band 6, however, has an option to answer a call with an SMS, but it didn’t work for me. At the same time, Honor Band 6 normally tracked workouts launched on a smartphone and controlled from the bracelet, but here there were obvious problems with this.

What is the result? In my experience, the Honor Band 6 looks a little better as a fitness bracelet (and costs about the same), so I would recommend buying it over the Huawei Band 6.

Body metrics tracking

The Honor Band 6 is a smart bracelet that tracks sleep well, relying on the TrueSleep algorithm that has been used on other wearables from Huawei and Honor. The Band 6 version can accurately detect when you fall asleep, and the final results are almost identical to the best competitors.

But you won’t have much general information collected; you won’t even see heart rate indicators at rest. Honor says the app will provide “sleep tips” based on your data. However, in reality this is just the time at which it is recommended to go to bed, nothing more.

SpO2 monitoring is a nice bonus that may be useful for some. Of course, if you frequently exercise at high altitudes, you'll likely have a more expensive sports smartwatch. You need to start measuring blood oxygen saturation manually, which is not very convenient. For example, in Huawei Band 6 SpO2 tracking occurs continuously, without user intervention.

Determining your stress level seems like a useless feature to me. In many situations, Honor's Band 6 will show that you are doing well when you clearly feel that you are not. There is also tracking of women's health (menstrual cycles).

Design

Appearance is not a parameter that can be measured or clearly stated that one design is better than another.
Therefore, I will express only my subjective opinion. I liked the Huawei Band 6 bracelet more because its screen is wider, and if you often read the text in notifications or navigate through the menu, it is more convenient than the narrow but tall screen of the Mi Band 6.

Huawei also has a physical button on the side for unlocking the device and navigating the menu.

In turn, Mi Band 6 stands out because its screen is oval and occupies the entire front area of ​​the device, which means it is unique, there are no others like it on the market.

For any other bracelets, the screen remains rectangular, and although this does not greatly affect the functionality, visually the Mi Band 6 solution looks very advantageous and pleasant.

Conclusion: everyone chooses the design according to their own taste.

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Smart features

The Honor Band 6 can be used as a smartwatch, however, there are few such functions here.

The main smart option is viewing notifications. Thanks to the large display, messages are clearly visible, a lot of text fits here, and high brightness ensures comfortable readability. Other smart functions of the Band 6 bracelet include: smartphone search, stopwatch, weather and flashlight.

Pulse

There is almost no difference in the accuracy of pulse measurement between bracelets; there is a slight error, but it is minimal, it can be neglected if we are not talking about a medical device, but about simple activity monitoring.

But there are more interesting details, so in the Mi Band 6 settings you can specify different time ranges for automatic heart rate tracking: 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and 30 minutes.

There is also a “Heart rate monitoring” function, if you turn it on, provided that when the bracelet understands that physical activity has begun, the frequency of measurements will automatically increase and begin recording it in the application.

Huawei Band 6 does not have such capabilities, is there a constant monitoring option that can be activated, but the frequency of measurements will be set by the bracelet itself based on your physical activity, so you can never be sure with what frequency the measurements take place at any given time.

Both gadgets have heart rate alerts, but the Mi Band 6 only has an alert for maximum heart rate, but Huawei Band 6 can display notifications for both maximum and minimum heart rate. We are talking about those cases when the bracelet does not see obvious activity, but the heart rate becomes abnormally high. If, for example, you are running or doing something else quite actively, and your heart rate has increased, the alarm will not be raised, because the increase in heart rate is obviously associated with increased activity.

Conclusion: I give the victory to Mi Band 6.

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Autonomy

The battery life of the Honor Band 6 is quite high. According to Honor, the gadget will have enough energy for 14 days in standard mode, and 10 days in intensive mode.

I received the fitness tracker with 85% battery right out of the box, and it took me about a week before having to charge the gadget when there was about 9% left. After I charged the battery to 100%, about seven days later, there was still 48% left. But, this week I trained less often, which may have helped the battery. In any case, you won't have to worry about charging this smart bracelet very often.

Auto activity detection

Both heroes of this article now have a function to automatically detect activity and launch the appropriate program to track it. For example, if you went outside and walked, the bracelet will understand this and offer to launch a program to track your walking. If you run, this will also be recognized and the running program will be started.

Both gadgets can do this, but they do it slightly differently.

The automatic recognition function must be enabled in the bracelet settings; by default it is disabled, because consumes a significant portion of the battery charge.

During testing, I noticed that the Mi Band 6 quickly recognizes a pattern of movements and launches the desired program, but the Huawei Band 6 is slower. What’s surprising is that while with the detection of running or exercising on an ellipse the difference in recognition is about one minute, then for some reason Huawei has great difficulties with the detection of normal walking; it was able to determine this type of load only after 10 minutes, and this is already a bad indicator.

Conclusion: auto-detection of physical activity on Mi Band 6 is much more accurate and faster.

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Cost of Honor Band 6 and alternatives

It may seem that the Honor Band 6 has too many shortcomings, however, you need to remember the price. Our Honor fitness tracker costs from 4 thousand rubles, although you can buy it on AliExpress from 3 thousand. It is much cheaper than many other similar devices from well-known brands.

The main competitor among budget models is the Xiaomi Mi Band 6, which costs about the same and boasts a 1.56-inch AMOLED display. The range of functions and capabilities of these wearable gadgets is approximately the same.

If you're willing to spend a little more, I recommend going for the Huawei Band 6. Although the 1.47-inch screen is almost the same, you'll get constant blood oxygen monitoring, TruRelax 2.0 stress detection, and a whopping 96 workout modes.

We should not forget about the cheaper Honor Band 5. Its functionality is almost the same as in Band 6, but the screen is smaller.

Display

On the one hand, the screen is what we interact with every time we need information from the bracelet, and therefore the better it is, the more pleasant it is for us.

On the other hand, the approaches of Xiaomi and Huawei in this matter are very different, and therefore, although I have identified a winner, you may not agree with my conclusion.

First of all, pay attention to the shape, the Mi Band 6 display is narrow and elongated, while the Huawei Band 6 is wider, but not tall. And it seems that everything is clear, it is more convenient to read information from the Huawei display, but not everything is so simple.

The Mi Band 6 has a higher pixel density than its competitor, 326 versus 282 pixels per inch, which means the font looks sharper, cleaner and smoother. And although the display is not so wide, the text looks nicer.

Conclusion: I will give the championship to Huawei, but this is not clear; for many, the convenience of the shape of the Xiaomi gadget can more than outweigh the slightly more convenient display of a competitor.

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