Honor 6X review

Battery

Well, the most interesting thing is how does this wonderful screen and processor behave with the 3340 mAh battery installed in this smartphone? The answer is excellent!

The device lasted 12 hours 11 minutes without the power saving mode turned on. The result is not even bad, especially against the backdrop of frankly weak competitors even at the end of 2020 and, frankly speaking, not many can compete with the Honor 6X.

Battery — 3.4

The autonomy of Huawei Honor 6X can be called quite high. In any case, it is noticeably higher than that of its predecessor.

During our tests, the phone lasted us for a day of fairly intensive use and even a little longer. With moderate use, two days of battery life won’t be a problem for it. The smartphone’s battery capacity is 3340 mAh, which is typical for phablets of this size. For comparison, the Asus Zenfone 3 Laser or Meizu MX6 has a lower battery capacity — 3000 and 3060 mAh, respectively. Although the same Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 has a much higher capacity — 4050 mAh.

As for the tests themselves, the results are as follows: the smartphone lasted 9.5 hours when watching HD video at maximum brightness, and if you turn down the brightness, you get the 11.5 hours promised by the manufacturer. For comparison, the long-lasting Asus Zenfone 3 Max lasted only 8.5 hours.

Shooting a 30-minute Full HD video took only 10% of the battery, which is also not much. The phone lasts about 4 hours when playing games, which is also better than the average result. Even in talk mode, the device lasts about 23 hours, which is also quite good. The only test in which the Honor 6X failed was the player mode, only 49 hours.

Dimensions and design — 3.9

Huawei Honor 6X is a large 5.5-inch phablet with a metal body. The new product is cute, but similar to any other smartphone from the company—Huawei came up with this design quite a long time ago and uses it in the same way.

From the front, Huawei Honor 6X resembles the Asus Zenfone 3 Laser and is not much different from the budget Honor 5A — the same rounded edges, touch buttons on the screen and the inscription on the bottom frame. You can only highlight the 2.5D glass curved at the edges, but firstly, it is barely noticeable, and secondly, it is a popular feature that has managed to become hackneyed in a short time.

But the back of the Honor 6X looks unusual due to two cameras and a fingerprint scanner. All three are lined up in a vertical row, which is a bit reminiscent of the solution in the Xiaomi Redmi Pro. True, in this case the lenses are united by a common rim and protrude from the body. Bold, unusual, but together with the scanner, the design looks like a jumble of elements.

Huawei Honor 6X measures 150.9 x 76.2 x 8.5 mm and weighs 166 grams. The new product is slightly thicker and heavier than models such as Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL and Oneplus 3, and in terms of compactness it is closer to its predecessor Huawei Honor 5X. It is possible to operate the device with one hand, but it is quite difficult.

Huawei Honor 6X can be purchased in three colors: gray, gold and silver. Its Chinese version also has a blue variant.

Design

Nothing new awaits us here. I have already expressed my opinion more than once that a laconic, albeit not entirely new, design is not bad. When smartphones are released almost every month, it’s quite difficult to come up with something radically new in design without it being repulsive or inconvenient.

The front side is occupied by a 5.5-inch screen framed by a frame. Below, below it, is the logo of the smartphone line. There are no touch keys, system keys are used.

At the top there is an LED indicator, speaker and 8 MP front camera lens. Our sample was covered with a protective film, which is quite rare among “expensive” brands — they focus on a good oleophobic coating. Due to the 2.5D glass, the film does not cover the entire display area.

At the back we see inserts along the edges covering the antennas. In the center there is a 12 megapixel dual front camera, framed in metal and covered with glass, below it is a fingerprint scanner, also edged with a thin strip of metal. There is an LED flash on the side of the camera.

A small, neat Honor logo also fits a little lower.

On the right side there are small volume and power keys. On the left is a slot for SIM cards. You will have to make a choice — either a memory card or a SIM. On top there is a 3.5 mm headset jack, a noise canceling microphone, and on the bottom there is MicroUSB for charging and connectors for speakers and a microphone.

Honor 6X is available in two colors: silver and gold. We received the gold version for testing.

To summarize, the design can be called laconic and simple — the only controversial point for me is the location of the camera, which your finger clings to every time you unlock it. Otherwise, the weight and proportions can be called quite comfortable.

Design, case materials, dimensions and weight

The body is almost entirely metal, not counting the plastic inserts on the top and bottom. Well assembled. Available in grey, silver and gold. Due to its streamlined shape, it looks stylish and fits well in the hand. Case dimensions and weight: 150.9 x 76.2 x 8.2 mm, 162 g

The front part is covered with 2.5D glass. To the right of the front camera and earpiece there is a light indicator for notification of missed events.

The Honor logo is on the platform at the bottom of the screen, and the navigation buttons are displayed on the screen. Button display options are customizable according to user preferences.

Buttons for controlling power and volume are located on the right side.

Display

Honor 6X is equipped with a 5.5-inch screen with FullHD resolution, made on an IPS matrix. This is not to say that the smartphone screen is amazing in resolution or incredible color rendition. Users are spoiled by these features. We have before us a smartphone with a good screen, without pixelation (403 PPI), without excessive contrast, with bright (display brightness 450 nits), saturated colors and wide viewing angles. There is an eye protection mode. There is nothing to complain about here.

Cameras — 3.2

Huawei Honor 6X cameras can be called solid and of good quality for their price.

One of the main features of Huawei Honor 6X is its dual cameras. The phone has a main one of 12 MP and a secondary one of only 2 MP. Unlike the flagship version, the Mate 9, the Honor 6X cameras were developed without the participation of Leica. And if the second camera of the Honor 8 and Huawei P9 was black and white, then here it simply allows you to use the blur effect.

In addition, Honor 6X received fast phase focusing, it works quickly and is almost always correct. The sensor used is SONY IMX386, the same one used by Meizu MX6. The cameras have fairly large pixels (1.25 microns). For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S7 has 1.4 microns and the iPhone SE has 1.22 microns.

As for the photo quality, it is quite high in good lighting, with decent detail and clarity. But sometimes the camera sets the exposure too high, causing your photos to look brighter than they should be. However, this can be corrected manually in the settings. Things are worse with color rendering: some colors look oversaturated, others too pale.

When shooting indoors or outdoors in the evening, the camera still makes noise. But to see noise, you need to zoom in, and this is already good for a mid-priced model. The camera has a fairly wide dynamic range, which may be why the HDR mode is not that useful. At least we didn’t notice much difference between a regular photo and a photo in HDR.

In “Manual mode” you can only select a fairly long shutter speed, up to 8 seconds. For shooting with blur, a separate window is offered in the camera application, but by and large this is pampering for a few times. It will warn you that the effect works at a distance of up to two meters, but all the “magic” happens with the help of software processing.

So, you take a picture and then choose the focus point. It is curious that if you cover the second camera, then the distance data is lost and the entire frame around the selected point is blurred. In the case of shooting with both cameras, those areas that were at the same distance with the desired focus object will be clear.

The front camera of Honor 6X has a resolution of 8 MP and a wide-angle lens. As usual, she knows how to take panoramic selfies and beautify faces. Footage taken with a front-facing camera is quite suitable for social networks. They have good color rendition, fairly high detail and a relatively wide dynamic range.

Both cameras record Full HD video at 30 frames per second.

Competitors

For spring 2020, Huawei Honor 6X can be purchased at a price of 15-16 thousand rubles. Taking into account the characteristics, we will call its competitors Huawei Honor 5X and Xiaomi Redmi Note 4.

Honor 5X — a little wider, taller and lighter, but a little outdated. The devices have similar displays, body materials, and both have a fingerprint scanner. But the Honor 6X has a dual camera, a more recent powerful processor and a battery with a higher capacity.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 — a little wider, thicker and heavier, but more productive. It also has a fingerprint scanner, a Full HD display and a metal body, but does not have a dual camera. The Redmi Note 4 has a much higher battery capacity, more powerful graphics and an IR blaster. Honor 6X can stand out due to its interface features, a good camera with a blur effect and a functional fingerprint scanner.

Productivity

Along with the presentation of Honor 6X, Huawei showed the world a new HiSilicon Kirin 655 processor (16 nm process technology, 8 Cortex-A53 cores with a frequency of 1.5-2.1 GHz, 65 bit), on which the hero of our review runs. The chip is equipped with a Mali 830 (MP2) graphics accelerator and 3 or 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM. It is noteworthy that the audio path of the Kirin 655 processor is built on the basis of a high-quality DSP HiFi-3 DAC, which provides excellent sound quality in headphones.

Kirin 655 is superior in performance to most chips in the mid-range segment — Snapdragon 615 and 616, MTK6753. In synthetic tests, Honor 6X scores about 57 thousand parrots (Antutu), and 3293/791 points (Gickbench). The results of the previous generation 5X in Antutu, let me remind you, were 40 thousand points.

The Honor 6X handles heavy games on medium and minimum graphics settings; the smartphone copes with all other tasks perfectly — there is not the slightest stutter in the interface, browser and applications, everything works smoothly and quickly. Thanks to the large amount of RAM, there are no problems with the background operation of applications; programs launched in the morning remain in the cache until the evening, and there is no need to restart them and lose information.

Of the 32 GB of memory in the average version of 6X, about 24 GB is available to the user; the storage can be expanded using Micro SD cards up to 128 GB. The smartphone also supports the USB-OTG interface, which allows you to connect regular flash drives and drives to it.

Productivity — 3.4

The performance of Huawei Honor 6X can be assessed at a level between typical and flagship.

The smartphone received a proprietary eight-core Huawei Kirin 655 processor (4 Cortex-A53 cores at 2.1 GHz and 4 Cortex-A53 cores at 1.7 GHz) and modifications to 3 or 4 GB of RAM. The new Huawei P8 Lite (2020) runs on the same chipset. In terms of parameters, Honor 6X is slightly more powerful than Honor 5C and Huawei P9 Lite, but weaker than current flagships.

The only thing I didn’t like was the relatively weak Mali-T830MP2 graphics accelerator. It handles heavy games, but only on low settings or with occasional drops in frame rate. Heavy toys like NOVA 3, Asphalt or mobile strategies do not run perfectly smoothly, although they are quite playable.

Average games like Thumb Drift or Minion Rush barely noticeably slow down at high settings. As a gaming platform, Honor 6X is still not the best solution. But in daily use there are no complaints about the phone — everything works quickly and smoothly, even if you record video from the device screen.

In various benchmarks, Honor 6X received the following scores:

• Geekbench 4 (processor test) — 3263 points, only half a thousand lower than Xiaomi Mi 5
• Ice Storm Unlimited from 3DMark (graphics) — 11752, a couple of thousand inferior to Huawei Nova
• AnTuTu 6 (mixed test) — 57042 points, slightly higher than Huawei Honor 7
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Screen

Honor 6X received a Full HD IPS display with a diagonal of 5.5 inches with a pixel density of 401 ppi. The screen is good for the middle price segment, the contrast and clarity of the picture is high, the color rendition is accurate (it is possible to adjust the color temperature). There is a slight contrast inversion at extreme viewing angles, but this does not interfere with everyday use.

The range of backlight levels is sufficient for comfortable use of the smartphone in any conditions; additional comfort in the sun is also facilitated by the high-quality anti-glare coating of the screen. There is an “eye protection” mode, when turned on, the image loses blue tones and receives a warm color rendering, which significantly reduces eye fatigue when reading or viewing content in a dark room.

The multi-touch display confidently recognizes 10 touches. Note the fairly aggressive auto-brightness adjustment, which in most cases keeps the brightness at 30-40% to improve the energy efficiency of the system; this does not cause any particular inconvenience. The only disadvantage of the Honor 6X regarding the display is the absence of a high sensitivity mode, which was in the 5X and allowed you to use the smartphone with gloves.

Competitors, conclusion

To sum up the review of Huawei Honor 6X, let’s say that the device turned out to be excellent for its price category. Despite the absence of serious shortcomings, there is something to complain about here — not the loudest speaker, lack of fast charging and USB Type-C, not record performance, hybrid slot for memory cards.

We recommend this smartphone to people who are choosing a smartphone for 2-3 years of use and are not very keen on heavy 3D games — in the long run, the 6X will only please you. Among the competitors of Honor 6X you can see Xiaomi Redmi 4 Prime, and Redmi PRO (also has a dual camera) Meizu M5 Note, as well as the Samsung Galaxy A 2020 line, which, with comparable characteristics, costs an order of magnitude more.

Our review of the honor 6x smartphone

Huawei continues to create confusion with its “synonymous” smartphones. But we figured them out — in this review we counted as many as 3 names of the same model. However, the main thing is that the smartphone turned out to be quite successful. Huawei Honor 6X is definitely designed for photography enthusiasts. This is exactly the case when you need a smart mobile camera, but you don’t want to overpay for a flagship just for the photo capabilities.