The fitness band market is currently one of the fastest-growing industries. However, some are looking to maintain their health during the crisis while staying at home. The Fitness Band started developing with a more prominent display, bundling many great features to the band and more to offer for an aggressive price point. Today, we will look at Honour Band 6 and share our experience.
First things first, the fitness band itself looks quite impressive for a budget. Before we continue, we also have to look at the Huawei Band 6, as both have identical designs and specifications. Here is a quick look.
Honour Band 6
- 1.47-inch (194 x 368p) AMOLED
- 5 ATM resistance
- 14-Day battery
- 10 exercise modes
- Price: CNY 249 (~$39)
Huawei Band 6
- 1.47-inch (194 x 368p) AMOLED
- 5 ATM resistance
- 14-Day battery
- 96 Exercise Mode
- Continuous SpO2
- Price: CNY 269 (~$42)
Because the Huawei Band 6 is expensive, it includes more modes alongside the Continuous SpO2 monitoring feature.
Design
If we compare it to its predecessor, the Honour Band 5, launched back in 2019, it comes with a slightly more significant form factor, but there is no major change in the strip as it still comes with a silicone strap. Also, it doesn’t look good with the bigger design of the band, and the strip should be a little larger to accommodate the band.
The strip is a traditional loop-buckle design, and it is supposed to fit every wrist. The weight of the Honour Band 6 is 18 grams, which makes it exceptionally lightweight, which means you can wear it for a long time and don’t feel uneasy while wearing it, even when you go to sleep. Thanks to the Silicon Strip, you will not get any skin irritation, and replacing the strip with your own could be your choice. You will find a home button placed on the right side of the band. A button with a red accent makes it delightful. At the same time, there is honor branding on the left side of the band. As this is a fitness band, you don’t have to worry about water. Honour Band 6 is 5ATM certified, suggesting water resistance up to 50 m for 0 minutes. To get the benefit of this, it has swimming tracking functionality.
Display
This is a major upgrade from its predecessor, and it has a 1.47-inch AMOLED display panel with 2.5D glass. A display is the best thing about this band because it allows you to interact with more apps. Despite being interested in apps, you can choose five different applications to make it on your home screen. Widgets include sleep, heart rate, stress, weather, activities, and more.
You can interact with the band by swiping left to right or right to right and swiping up or down. As of now, the widget on the device only allows viewing basic information about your activity. Therefore, the display packs a 194 x 368-pixel resolution with a 283 PPI, resulting in pretty amazing, sharp content. You can view all your important notifications, which you can open by swiping down from the top of the device; however, you can’t take any action considering its fitness band, which seems fine to me.
Likewise, swiping down will open the control center for quick actions like DND, Settings, and so on. Sadly, you can’t customize the control center. You won’t find any visibility issues, and the raise-to-wake-up feature is so smooth. When it comes to visibility, you can choose from 5 different levels of brightness. There is no auto-brightness support at the moment.
The slightly curled display doesn’t hurt your fingers, and there is no complaint about the touch response either. We would appreciate it if they trimmed the bezels slightly more to avoid those heavy bezels. On the other hand, there are many watch faces to choose from, likely 100 watch faces, and you can customize them accordingly.
The companion app
Honor used to be a sub-brand of Huawei, and the Honour band still relies on Huawei technology, including companion applications. You can download and install Huawei Health, available on Android and iOS, and log in with your Huawei ID. Therefore, once you have paired up, you are good to go. The companion application is well-designed and packed with all your activity progress. All the activity widgets are placed neatly, and the notifications and watch faces are instant. You can set different parameters for the notification and set the band according to your preference.
Fitness Tracking
This is where the Huawei Band shines compared to the Honour Band 6. It supports SpO2 but doesn’t support all-day SpO2 monitoring. I believe this is the most important thing in this COVID situation, for this Huawei Band is worth a little more. When it comes to the sleep cycle, it is pretty good with accurate monitoring because of the Sleep Monitor 2.0 algorithm; it potentially seems quite good at monitoring naps and quality of sleep.
As we mentioned, there are 10 fitness tracks to choose from outdoor run, indoor walk, run, cycle, elliptical, rower, and hula hoop. And it can be auto-detected but it is not good at this, and still, the Honour Band 6 didn’t receive any firmware updates to fix this issue. As for GPS tracking, the band doesn’t have it in-built. Instead, you need to carry your smartphone.
As for specific workouts, you can set distances, reminders, and goals. Later, you can check your progress and be notified about your heart rate during the workout. Moreover, it also has music playback support and payment using NFC.
Battery
This device is equipped with a 118 mAh battery. Honor claims 14 days of normal use and 10 days for heavy use. As for the charging solution, it had a bulky connection with a 2-pin charging solution. The change is quite easy and can be charged relatively quickly. You can expect 0–100% within ~50 minutes.