Honor Band 6
A superb choice for owners of Honor and Huawei phones in particular, with stunning quality for the price
“A 15-minute charge took the Band 6 from 6% to 62%, so a full week’s worth of life. It took just under an hour to fully recharge”
When people ask me to recommend fitness trackers, I’ve tended to play it safe and say Fitbit. However, products such as the Honor Band 6 are shaking my faith. First, there’s the question of price; consider that the closest equivalent to the Honor Band 6 is the Fitbit Luxe, which costs £130. Second, Fitbit’s screens can be hard to read. I recently recommended the Fitbit Charge 4 ( see issue 309, p71) to my septuagenarian stepfather, but he struggles to see its black-and-white AMOLED screen outdoors.
Judged on those two metrics alone, the Band 6 is a stone-cold winner. The price speaks for itself, but the 194 x 368 AMOLED display deserves lavish praise. Not only is it vivid enough to see in the bright outdoors, although you’ll still need to squint in direct sunshine, but it’s beautifully sharp (282ppi) and large at 1.47in.
The screen is touch-sensitive, but it can be a pain to swipe when you’re running due to sweat and rain. To make things easier, Honor provides a button on the right-hand side, which sensibly changes usage depending on context. In everyday use, it will activate the screen (although I found lifting up my wrist worked 99% of the time), but if you’re on a run, say, pressing it will offer onscreen options to pause or end the exercise.
Honor packs in the sensors too.
I’m sceptical of how accurate an SpO2 monitor is on any wrist-worn device, but even if it’s a couple of percentage points out it will allow you to track your levels over time. I also advise adding salt (metaphorical) to the
Band 6’s stress-tracking claims, but have greater trust in the optical heart-rate monitor, which closely matched my Garmin Fenix 5X.
The star of this sensor show is Honor’s TruSleep tracking. With TruSleep switched off, the watch will simply monitor deep sleep and light sleep; switch it on and you’ll find out how many times you woke up, get a breathing quality assessment and be awarded a “deep sleep continuity” rating. “So what?” you may think, but
Honor provides tips on improving your sleep and you now have a way to measure their efficacy.
Honor keeps TruSleep off by default because it will reduce battery life and stamina is yet another factor in the Band 6’s favour. Honor claims a maximum of two weeks, which is based on light use with TruSleep off. This matches my experience: on first charge, my Band 6 lasted for over 13 days before needing to be topped up. But that was when I had a calf injury to nurse and wasn’t really exercising. The next time, which included a long cycle ride and two short runs, battery life dropped to 11 days.
That’s still exceptional, while a 15-minute charge took it from 6% to 62%, so a full week’s worth of life. It took just under an hour to fully recharge. The only downside is that Honor uses a proprietary charger; I always prefer USB-C. And when I say “charger”, really it’s a short USB-A cable with a magnetic interface that clamps onto the watch with ease.
Earlier, I praised the Honor Band’s simple interface, but that’s also a reflection of the relatively limited functionality compared to a full-on fitness watch, Android Wear device or Apple Watch. SMS notifi notifications ti are limited to displaying messa messages, with no auto-replies, and I found the Band 6 most usef useful for rejecting calls; a glance at the watch shows who’s calling, with a big red “X” to press when you see it’s an unrecognised number.
As I frequently lose my phone, I found the “Find
Phone” option useful too.
Fitness fanatics should look elsewhere, though. For example, workouts are limited to five gym-friendly options – indoor running, walking and cycling, plus elliptical and rowing machines – and indoor swim tracking. Note that this band is water-resistant up to 50m with an IP68 rating.
Other options include outdoor running, walking and cycling, but there’s no built-in GPS. The Band 6 will take a (wild) best guess as a last resort, but you will need to connect your phone for accurate results. Connected GPS works with Honor and Huawei phones, as well as iPhones, but Honor has confirmed that it can only be manually activated from other Android phones on the phone itself – a pain because it’s much easier to trigger gger (and stop) activities directly on a watch. Note that the “Remote shutter” option only works with Honor/Huawei nor/Huawei phones too.
Despite the fact that Huawei sold its Honor brand in 2020, the Band 6 still relies on the Huawei Health app. The good news is that your data isn’t locked away: if you download Google Fit and link the two, you can sync data with third parties such as Runkeeper and Strava. It’s no match for the easy familiarity of Fitbit’s community, but I will remind you of the Honor Band’s price.
That said, there are even cheaper fitness bands. The Amazfit Band 5 costs around £30 and offers similar battery life and features, while Amazon sells the Xiaomi Band 5 for £21. But the Honor Band 6 is a step up in class when it comes to design and screen, so I don’t think you’ll regret investing the extra cash.
This is particularly true if you own an Honor or Huawei phone, because I don’t want to gloss over the problems with Connected GPS on other Android phones. But I come back to the Band 6’s strengths: superb battery life, the best screen I’ve seen on a sub-£100 watch, and simplicity at its heart. The next time someone asks me for a budget fitness tracker recommendation, this will be it.