Honor Watch 6 Review: Ultra battery life

Design and Display

Some won’t like this change, others will, but the Honor Watch 6 now ditches the square form-factor and goes for a classic round dial.

Weight just about 40 grams, the Watch 6 is light enough to feel effortless and convenient on the wrist, but just substantial enough to not feel cheap.

I’m testing the Twilight Brown model, which comes with a silver, 316L stainless steel body, and I very much love the look and feel of it. The silver bezel around the display glass is slightly elevated, so if you choose to put a screen protector on it, it won’t be protruding much.
Speaking of the 1.46” OLED screen, I had no issues viewing it out in the sun. Thanks to a peak brightness of up to 3000 nits, it stays nice and visible.

Another unique advantage of the Honor Watch 6’s display is it remains operational even if your fingers are wet. Just a nice little convenience feature to make your life easier.

The 60Hz refresh rate of the screen is definitely not the smoothest out there, but it’s still responsive enough, plus it surely helps with battery life.

Software & Features

Battery life

The big, 980mAh battery in the Honor Watch 6 is a significant upgrade over the 515 mAh battery in the Watch 5 Pro, or the 480mAh one in the Honor Watch 5.

Honor claims you can get up to 35 days in the long-endurance mode and 17 days in typical use, and while I’m still testing the watch, I feel these estimations will turn out to be correct.

Of course, there are multiple factors at play when it comes to your smartwatch’s battery life, like GPS usage, workout tracking, AOD usage and many others.

Regardless, it’s a really impressive feat by Honor to put such a big battery into such a compact device. Even if you tend to be a heavy sports-tracking user, you’re still looking at more than a week between charges.

There’s a proprietary charger in the box – don’t lose it! The charger is nothing impressive in terms of build quality, which is OK, since you won’t be using it that much, thanks to the Watch 6’s industry-leading battery life.

Sports and heart-rate tracking

There are numerous sport modes you can track with the Honor Watch 6, ranging from essentials like running, cycling and swimming, to more exotic things like Taekwondo, Body combat, and Belly dance…

Most of these won’t have anything else aside from time, heartrate and calorie measurements, but it’s good to have them.
In my experience, sports tracking was pretty accurate in measuring my heartrate and calories burned, but the step counter appeared to be overly generous.

The pros and semi-pros practicing football (soccer) and badminton would be delighted to find the new special tracking modes, which bring much more advanced metrics and insights.

For example, professional football mode offers cool post-session data such as top sprint speed, average speed, and pitch movement heatmaps.

Meanwhile, badminton mode analyzes performance across 5 dimensions like power, offense, defense, interception, and endurance. There’s also swing speed, shot power, forehand/backhand ratio and more! Really cool stuff for badminton players.

Should you buy it?

The Honor Watch 6 retails for around EUR 270 in Europe, but there are frequent discounts that bring the price down substantially. This is considerably cheaper than Apple’s or Samsung’s wearables.

Huawei’s Watch GT 6 line is a close alternative, and it tends to offer a slightly more comprehensive set of features. That said, there are unique advantages to each, so you’ll need to consider what is important to you, in order to make the right decision. Is it weight management and fitness plans (Huawei), or is professional football mode and Body Energy (Honor)?

With the Honor Watch 6, you don’t get state-of-the-art sports or health tracking, but for most users out there, these features will be accurate enough. And when you factor in the superb battery life, likable design, bright display and bonus goodies like wet touch control, it makes for a very competent smartwatch that won’t break the bank.