In April 2021, after more than a year and a half, Honor finally presented the sixth version of the Honor Band in Russia. The smart bracelet has significantly changed in the new generation.

His design has changed, and the screen has become larger. The fifth version also looked stylish and offered enough features, but the Honor Band 6 looks much more interesting. It’s time to get to know this accessory better.

We will give away three such bracelets in our Telegram channel. The drawing has already started!

Packaging and appearance

The new generation smart bracelet comes in a small box, inside which you can also find a charging cable with a magnetic holder and all kinds of documents. The Honor Band 6 comes in several colors: Meteorite Black, Coral Pink and Sand Gray.

Dimensions: 43 × 25,4 × 11,45 mm, weight – 18 grams. The body is elongated and slightly curved. In the case of the Huawei Watch Fit or Huawei Band 6 with a similar design, the plastic bezel very cleverly follows the steel surface. There is no such thing here.

The screen smoothly turns into black plastic – it looks stylish, and by tactile sensations I would not say that everything is bad. On the contrary, the surface of the bracelet itself is pleasant. On the inside there are optical sensors and magnetic contacts for charging. The charger connector holds securely with them.

On the right side there is a mechanical button with a characteristic red insert – I think it was possible to do without this “ingenious” design element. However, the button itself is moderately springy, it is easy to press it. On the left side there is the Honor logo, in the presence of which I also don’t see much sense.

The detachable silicone straps are very flexible and soft. Practice has shown that in this design, the material does not cause irritation on the skin, even if you run and sweat a lot. Although the straps can be detached, replacing them with other universal solutions will not work due to the proprietary fastening.

It should also be noted that the Honor Band 6 case is protected from water according to the 5 ATM standard, so you can swim with it in water with immersion to a depth of 50 meters. The bracelet can be used at temperatures ranging from -10 ° C to + 45 ° C. In severe frost, I think the device will slow down or turn off altogether.

Display

The screen here is protected by 2,5D glass. It has an excellent oleophobic coating, the finger glides smoothly, fingerprints almost never remain on the screen. After almost a month of operation, I did not observe any small scratches on the front surface, and this is very good.

The diagonal of the AMOLED display is 1,47 inches, which is 148% more than that of the Honor Band 5. The resolution here is 194 × 368 pixels. The pixel density is high – 283 ppi, individual dots can be seen, but during normal use it is not striking.

For comparison, the new Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6 has a much higher AMOLED screen: a diagonal of 1,56 inches, a resolution of 152 × 486 pixels, and a pixel density of 326 ppi. However, the advantage of the Honor Band 6 is rather that the screen is stretched in width here, which partially makes it closer in design to a smartwatch.

What is important, there are absolutely small frames around the screen, which are completely invisible if you use dials with a black background. Overall, the display has a rich color gamut and good viewing angles. The brightness of the screen is enough to comfortably use the bracelet in the sun. There are five divisions of brightness adjustment here.

Smartphone Sync

To work with the watch, you need to install the proprietary application “Health” – it can be downloaded both on iOS and Android. Synchronization takes place via Bluetooth 5.0. Unfortunately, there are problems with the connection. Sometimes I notice that notifications from the applications specified in the settings for some reason do not come.

I have already encountered such a problem in the closest analogue of the Huawei Watch Fit type. Everything is as usual – a couple of times a day, or even more, you have to visit the application for the connection to be restored.

When a notification comes, for example, from Telegram or Tinkoff, as for me, the font turns out to be a bit large for such a diagonal, so sometimes you have to scroll through a small text. Perhaps this is some kind of software error, because with some programs, for example, with Gmail, the text of the notifications is displayed on the whole screen.

True, you cannot respond to notifications directly from the bracelet, although I still believe that someday such gadgets will be modernized so much that there will be a corresponding keyboard with swipe-input, and the screen will be slightly larger. There is not even a microphone here.

Also, Honor Band 6 does not allow loading any files into memory and, accordingly, does not have the ability to play songs. Actually, the built-in “smart alarm clock” works with the help of a vibration motor. Its peculiarity lies in the fact that it can wake up in an interval of ten minutes – at a time when the user is not in the deep sleep phase.

Functionality and fitness

The hardware has nothing surprising – there is a heart rate sensor, pulse oximeter, accelerometer and gyroscope. The NFC module for contactless payment was not delivered, well, okay.

The Honor Band 6 has a classic interface: I like that in this model it is very nimble and without brakes. Animations, transitions and scrolling are smooth. A huge plus for dozens of all kinds of dials and the ability to use any image as a dial.

Inside – dozens of utilities, including a stopwatch, timer, weather and phone search. There is also a flashlight that increases the brightness of the screen and reveals a white background. The Breathing Exercise mode allows the user to come to their senses within one minute, and the Stress section allows you to see when you really need to sit down and exhale.

Pleases application “Health”: here you can track the results of monitoring sleep, stress, heart rate, number of steps, calories burned and weight. However, all these things are recorded directly in the bracelet itself, so you can easily track the current situation by activity directly from it.

Continuous heart rate monitoring works using TruSeen 4.0 technology – it allows you to report the detection of abnormalities in the measurement, which may become a reason for a doctor’s visit.

But I would not trust the data on measuring the level of blood oxygen saturation SpO2 at all – even though the accuracy here is quite high in comparison with similar bracelets and watches, it is worth remembering that this is still not a medical device.

By the way, there are ten training modes: walking on the street, walking, running on the street, treadmill, cycling, stationary bike, swimming in the pool, rowing machine, ellipse and more.

The bracelet stably switches to training mode if it has just visited the application – in other situations it may not start training. Again, it all boils down to smartphone connectivity issues.

Almost everything is fine with sleep tracking using TruSleep technology. You can find out not only the total sleep time, but also the duration of deep, light and REM sleep, as well as the number of awakenings and the quality of breathing. For all these parameters, the quality of sleep is determined – if there are any shortcomings, then the application will give appropriate recommendations.

The optimal time for sleep is from 22:00 to 6:00. If you go to bed at six in the morning, the application will count the first 1,5-2 hours as a daytime sleep. In this case, the beginning of night sleep will be counted from eight in the morning. This is not a problem if you actually lay down for a couple of hours nap in the middle of the day.

Among other things, owners of Android smartphones have the ability to control music directly from the bracelet. But those who walk with Honor smartphones running the Magic UI 2.0 shell have even more privileges. For example, you can remotely control your smartphone’s camera, as well as track your menstrual cycle and ovulation.

Autonomy

The bracelet charges a 180 mAh battery using a USB cable with a special magnetic holder. The battery has become larger than that of the previous generation, and this is good news. Even with the most common power adapter, the Honor Band 6 charges from 0% to 50% in about 15 minutes. But from zero to one hundred charging will take about 45-50 minutes.

The company itself says that 10 minutes of charging will be enough for three days of use. In terms of autonomy, the gadget really shows itself very well. The manufacturer’s data indicates that it lasts ten days with intensive use and exactly two weeks with standard use.

The very “intensive operation” in practice can be different for everyone, but if you use the automatic measurement of heart rate and sleep activity, as well as periodically turn on the blood oxygen level check mode and work at least once a day in one of the training modes, then Honor Band 6 will last.

This is also possible because the GPS module is not built in here – the bracelet receives data from a smartphone. Longer vigorous training may lower this figure slightly.

If the screen brightness is not set to the maximum, exclude training, constant heart rate measurement and checking the amount of oxygen in the blood, then in reality the bracelet can last more than ten days without recharging.

Cost and opinion

The Honor Band 6 Special PRP is 3490 rubles… By the way, you can take it even cheaper if you use points in “M Video”. The smart bracelet has an updated, strict and pleasant design and, in comparison with the previous generation, has many advantages.

They consist not only in a really cool appearance, but also in the presence of a large AMOLED screen, as well as increased autonomy. However, there are practically no differences in functionality. And the disadvantages, I would say, are typical for this brand: the still unclear connection problems and the lack of NFC are alarming. 

What is important, the Huawei Band 6 has an obvious advantage over this bracelet with almost the same price – it has as many as 96 training modes, and there are no unnecessary inscriptions on the edges of the case, which have a coating that looks more like steel. Regardless, the Honor Band 6 is a pretty good gadget for me.