Window of Opportunities: Huawei Band 6 Fitness Bracelet Review
Huawei Band 6 is a follow-up to the Watch Fit series. The appearance of Huawei Band 6 is either an undersized smartwatch, or an oversized smart bracelet. The device is somehow between the categories, and this is a pretty good place, actually. The price of the model is reasonable, as Huawei is positioning it as a bracelet. For $55 the user gets a royal AMOLED screen, standard smart bracelet features like heart rate monitor, pedometer, notifications, organizer elements, workout tracking, sleep and cycle monitoring, etc., and additionally - non-stop blood oxygen level monitoring.
Pros:
- Gorgeous large screen
- Battery life up to 7-10 days with permanent monitoring
- Not too sporty design
- Constant monitoring of the level of oxygen in the blood
Cons:
- No contactless payment
Any Serious Cons?
I do not know. In my opinion, Huawei Band 6 is good at everything. If you find fault, then you can remember that this model does not and will not have contactless payment. But so far in the bracelet segment, this is so rare that it is definitely a nitpick.
Huawei Band 6 Design
Dimensions
Huawei Band 6 has outgrown the usual bracelet screen dimensions. Here we have 1.47-inches and resolution of 198x368 pixels (larger and more comfortable for reading texts), and unambiguously sporty appearance. Overall dimensions are 43x25x11 mm. In the hand it does not look too big and does not bother in everyday life.
The black version (the one we got for the review) looks sporty, but the other colors are a fishing rod into the territory of the Apple Watch, though without explicit copying.
Strap
The strap of the device, however, remains sporty. It is flexible, soft, comfortable and replaceable.
Body
The black bracelet has a black body (made of polymer), although it looks like ceramic. The colored ones are gold.
The bracelet is completely non-sticky. This is true for the case and the strap, and the screen with a good quality oleophobic coating.
Controls and charging
There is one control button, located on the right side. Of course, a separate button to activate training would have been more convenient. But we are dealing with an inexpensive bracelet, not a watch, so there are no complaints. On the back there is a heart rate monitor and pins to connect the charger. It is small and neat, holds on good magnets.
The only question to the manufacturer is why the black bracelet come with a white charger?
Huawei Band 6 Screen
The excellent oleophobic coating and large screen size have already been mentioned above. In the settings, you can choose from five gradations of brightness. This model does not have a permanently switched on display. But you can configure so that the screen does not turn off for 20 minutes.
The colors are rich and bright, and the resolution is high enough to put a picture on the background screen saver. It is not possible to organize your own photos and color gamma settings, like in the Xiaomi bracelet. But there are dials in the large base that can display any required parameters, there are even dials where the options can be selected. But these are pay versions.
Due to the wider screen, the manufacturer was able to increase the size of the icons - now it has become even more convenient to get into them. The font is also moderately large. It is convenient to read, although the screen is not as wide as on the watch.
Functions
Huawei Band 6 is an evolution (not a revolution) of Huawei wearable devices. The interface has become a little more user-friendly due to the ability to remove unnecessary desktops and sports widgets.
If you've used the brand's devices before, the settings for this bracelet will automatically adjust. This means that you don't have to re-select which notifications you want to receive, etc. The only thing is that you will need to turn on permanent monitoring of blood oxygen levels if you want this feature to work all the time.
For sports you can set goals (it has been there for a long time). The bracelet supports 96 sport modes, of which 11 are professional, 85 are customizable, whatever that means. The release gives the example that in the jump rope mode, the bracelet itself counts the number of jumps and the number of jumps in a row.
I did not have a chance to try jumping rope, only the standard ones - strength training, orbitrack, walking. For me, as a user of Huawei wearable devices, there is nothing new here, everything is usual, clear and convenient. By the way, the bracelet is able to track the beginning of activity and offer to switch on the corresponding mode (one of six: running, walking indoors and outdoors, orbitrack, rowing machine). But if you turn this feature on, it strikes another blow to your battery life (like if you walk a lot, for example).
In the settings, you can set heart rate limit values after which the Band 6 will alert you of problems. This is an old option.
There is also constant sleep monitoring. As a reminder, Huawei also monitors breathing during sleep and shows in reports if there have been problems with it. Now the blood oxygen level has been added to this indicator as well. I do not know whether this has any practical application, but it is rather interesting, to say the least.
Another nice UI improvement is the ability to customize the timer.
Other features of the bracelet include music control, smart alarm clock, stopwatch, training plans, meditation, cycle tracking, movement reminder (once an hour), breathing exercises. Unfortunately, unlike Xiaomi, you cannot delete unnecessary items from the watch menu.
By the way, now iyou can also set the boundary values of the pace for running training, so that the intelligent assistant helps to adhere to the pace required according to the plan.
By the way, if you took off your wristband or put it on do-not-disturb mode, you can see if there are any missed messages by the letter icon on some dials. If it stands out, it means there is something in the messages.
Battery Life
The claimed battery life of the bracelet is up to 14 days. This factor is affected by the constant activity of sensors, the number of notifications (if you are bombarded with messages all day long, of course, because of the constant vibration the battery will "get tired" earlier) and the screen background. AMOLED likes black and blue, but other colors have a bad effect on it. The bracelet with the out-of-the-box settings worked for 10 days or even a little more. Once I changed the background to a brighter color, it took about 10% of the battery resources.
But still the battery life of the device is very decent. 10 days with constant monitoring of heart rate, oxygen, notifications, etc. - That's a lot. With the automatic activity tracking mode on, the battery capacity started to drain even faster. This is probably how frequent walking tracking affects it.
Huawei Band 6 vs Xiaomi Mi Band 6? Which is better?
Both bracelets are the most up-to-date flagship devices of their manufacturers in the categories. Surely some of our readers are faced with the choice as which one to prefer.
The simplest answer is the brand you already use. Both models are good, but their individual advantages are not a reason to move to a new brand. Especially if you already have a large accumulated database of personal health data and maybe even other ecosystem devices.
If you don't have any of them yet, then there's a lot to talk about.
Benefits of Huawei Band 6:
- Larger and more convenient screen: reading messages is noticeably more comfortable
- Battery: under big load the bracelet works about the same, maybe even a little more
- Continuous monitoring of the state of oxygen in the blood. Yes, it’s an advantage, but I’m not sure that it’s a reason to choose a specific brand, because the accuracy of such a sensor in bracelets is far from medical. If you have a suspicion that something is very wrong with your health, and this is specifically related to blood oxygen saturation, it is better to buy a medical heart rate monitor. If it's just interesting to keep track of it, at least approximately, then you can give preference to Huawei Band 6
- Less sporty design
Xiaomi Mi Band 6 advantages:
- Fine-tuning the dials: not functional, but some users might find it important
- A larger ecosystem and a lower threshold for entry: specifically, there are also many models of smart sneakers with which the bracelet can be paired, and Xiaomi smartwatches are cheaper
- Fine-tuning of the interface: you can remove all unnecessary items from the bracelet menu. It is not a killing feature, but it makes working with the bracelet a little more convenient
- Lower price
- NFC
Summary
Huawei Band 6 is definitely a successful update of the manufacturer's line of smart bracelets. For me, the main reason to choose this device is the design, which is no longer 100% unambiguously sporty. But in terms of software the bracelet also has something to delight you. It has become even more convenient, there is permanent monitoring of oxygen in the blood, which, together with all the other parameters allows you to track the state of health in an even more versatile way. If you are already a Huawei ecosystem user and are not ready to switch to a smartwatch, but are considering an upgrade, I think this model is something that is definitely worth buying.
5 things to know about the Huawei Band 6:
- Flagship fitness bracelet of 2021, an analogue of Honor Band 6 and Xiaomi Mi Band 6
- Less sporty design than most smart bracelets
- Large, user-friendly screen and 5 color strap options
- Constant monitoring of blood oxygen level
- Plenty of training modes and improved interface compared to previous models