Honor 6X

The Honor 5X from early 2016 was one of the best low-end phones you could buy last year – we even gave it four out of five stars.

Honor wants to replicate that success in 2017 with the Honor 6X, with a few minor improvements and a similarly low price point to encourage you to go with the up-and-coming Chinese brand.

There are a lot of specs here that not so long ago you’d have expected to only feature in upper mid-range to high-end phones, yet Honor has managed to pack them into something substantially cheaper. 

But things progress quickly in the world of phones, and these days there's strong competition at this end of the market from the likes of the Moto G4 and Moto G4 Plus, so can the Honor 6X compete?

Honor 6X price and release date

• The Honor 6X costs a little more than the Honor 5X did this time last year
• It's still not expensive at $249.99 (£224, about AU$390)
• Out now in the US and UK, no sign of Australia

You can buy the Honor 6X now in the UK and US while it's not currently clear if Honor will be bringing the phone to Australia in the foreseeable future.

Pricing-wise Honor has set the 6X price at $249.99 (£229, about AU$390), which is more than the launch price of the Honor 5X, as that cost just $199.99 (£189.99, about AU$275).

In the US, there was a flash sale in January 2017 that brought the price down to $199.99, but there's no sign of Honor running the same promotion again. We've also seen the Honor 6X slightly cheaper at around the £224.99 price mark at a few different retailers.

Key features

• Limited key features compared to flagship phones like Honor 8
• Useful fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone
• Honor's signature dual-lens camera, but not as we've seen it before

The Honor 6X isn’t packed full of the latest smartphone features, but it has a few key highlights that mean it stands out against a lot of the competition.

One of these is the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone. Phones at this price point still don’t all have the added security of a fingerprint scanner, but this one does and it's one of the speediest around.

Being on the back means it’s in a useful position for when you have the phone in your hand, but it can get irritating if you put your phone down a lot on desks.

Another key highlight is the camera – there's a dual-sensor shooter on the back of the Honor 6X and this is one of the first times we have seen this kind of setup on a budget phone.

It means you can use the wide-aperture mode to focus your shots on objects in the foreground and blur the background of each photo. It’s a great little trick and one you won’t be able to get on any other modern smartphone that costs as little as the Honor 6X.

Design and display

• Metal unibody design, but may be too big for some people
• Full HD 5.5-inch display offers a bright and clear picture

Unlike most of the phones at this price point, Honor has managed to include a metal unibody design here that gives the 6X a slightly premium feel.

The build quality isn’t fantastic and it doesn’t sit as comfortably in the hand as the Honor 8 or Huawei Mate 9, but it does still feel more premium than, say, the plastic-backed Moto G4 Plus.

Those with small hands may find the Honor 6X a little difficult to hold with its 5.5-inch screen in the middle, but we enjoyed using it.

It’s a touch thicker than we’d hoped for at 8.2mm, but it’s not unweidly at that thickness.

The power button on the right hand side of the phone is easy to reach with your thumb, while the volume rocker sits just above it and again is easy to tap. 

There’s a fingerprint sensor on the back of the phone and the dual camera sits just above that, jutting out more than we'd like.

It means the phone doesn’t sit flat when placed on a surface, but it’s a better choice than making the entire handset thicker.

The corners of the phone are rounded off well and don’t feel uncomfortable when you hold it. It’s also worth noting the 3.5mm headphone jack at the top right of the handset.

This is in a good position for when you’re listening to music on the go and want to keep your phone upright in your pocket.

Color-wise you’ve got three options on the Honor 6X. There’s a silver, a gold and a gray version. The differences between gray and silver are minimal though and the gold version isn’t particularly eye-catching.

That's not necessarily a bad thing though. For the purposes of this review we had the gold version of the 6X, and it never felt embarrassingly flashy like some gold or rose gold colors can on phones.

As for the Honor 6X's screen, for what it costs you'll likely be happy with the setup.

It's a large screen at 5.5 inches, offering up a 1080p resolution. You could get a slightly clearer image by opting for a phone with a QHD display, but that's not going to happen at this price point.

The Honor 6X has a nicely bright screen with good viewing angles. Colors look OK and the brightness can go up to a great level.

Auto-brightness on the Honor 6X works well too and we found it best to just leave that on and let it do its thing.

The bezels around the screen on the Honor 6X are quite thick, but this doesn't make it any more difficult to use the phone and only impacts upon the look of the handset rather than how it works.

Interface and reliability

• Has been updated to Android 7 Nougat, which includes Honor's EMUI 5.0
• Latest update brings along app drawer, if that's your thing
• Looks very different to stock Android, but offers a lot of extra functionality

The Honor 6X is running its own Emotion UI 5.0 software, which is now built on top of Android Nougat. It previously launched with Android 6 Marshmallow, but has recently been updated.

As far as new features go, you can expect a slightly refined user interface throughout and as Honor puts it, you'll have "strengthened security" no matter what you're doing. Always a good thing! Additionally, an app drawer has been added in case you prefer the feel of the stock Android experience.

If you’ve used Honor or Huawei phones in the past, you’ll know what the software is like. There are a lot of big, bright colors and Honor has its own apps to take over a lot of tasks, such as playing videos or music.

In previous iterations, Honor included a lot of bloatware apps on its phones, but the Honor 6X is rather light in terms of software.

It has Twitter and Facebook pre-installed, alongside a few games, but compared to the mass of apps we’ve seen on previous handsets this is quite an improvement.

Unlike a lot of other Android devices, the Honor 6X doesn’t include an app drawer. That means all your downloaded apps appear over a series of pages on the home screen. If you’re switching from iOS you may find this software easy to get used to as it works in a similar way.

If not, you may miss being able to search for your apps with ease in an app drawer.

Honor includes a lot of features a lot of other phones don’t though – the customization in the software is second to none and you’ll be able to benefit a lot from the changes you can make to it.

There's an app called Themes that allows you to change the whole look of the software from color, to design of apps and your background pictures.

Music, movies and gaming

• There's still a 3.5mm headphone jack, but you can also use Bluetooth
• Speakers are OK - but nothing too exciting
• 32GB of storage, which offers 21GB after software is included

Honor has included its own Music app on the 6X, and that’s there alongside Google Play Music, so anything you upload directly to the phone is going to be easy to play.

The Honor-made Music app doesn’t add much to the music playing experience, but it works perfectly functionally and is easy to use.

There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top of the phone so you can use wired headsets, but you can also connect via Bluetooth with wireless headphones.

The process is simple and we found Bluetooth devices connected up well and didn’t break off without warning like they can do on some phones.

The speakers on the Honor 6X aren’t anything that phenomenal, but they will do the job if you’re listening to music or podcasts as you walk around your home. They won’t be impressing anyone at a dinner party though.

Watching movies on the Honor 6X is an enjoyable experience with the large, bright display and OK speakers. Again, the phone won’t give you incredible sound quality, but it’s suitable for watching movies and TV on.

For your own videos, if you store them locally you’ll find the Videos app is the best way to play them.

All of the features are simple to find and a tap on the screen while you’re watching will bring up the option to scrub through the TV show or movie you’re watching.

We’d also recommend downloading Netflix or Amazon Video onto this phone if you want to watch a lot of movies, as you can now download TV shows and films to your internal storage.

The Honor 6X is advertised as having 32GB of storage, but you won’t have that much to play with. We found that we had 21.4GB of space to use ourselves after software and bloatware apps.

That’s about the same as most modern smartphones, and 20GB of space should still go quite a long way. If you need any more room, you’ll need to buy a microSD card to expand the storage.

This phone only supports cards of up to 128GB, which is a bit of a shame when many modern smartphones now stretch to 256GB, but it’s still plenty.

As for games, Honor has included a few on the 6X to get you started. There’s Asphalt Nitro, Dragon Mania and Spider-Man: Ultimate Power, but the Google Play Store is full of much better games for you to play.

We found ourselves playing Real Racing 3, Reigns, Pokemon Go and The Trail on the Honor 6X, and each worked well without any stuttering or bad performance.

In fact Real Racing 3 worked fantastically considering the price of this phone. It booted up quickly and entering a race took no time at all.

Pokemon Go proved a little bit slower than we’d hoped for, but being used to flagship phone performance it’s no surprise the Honor 6X didn’t shock us with incredible loading times.

Specs and benchmark performance

• Debut of the HiSilicon Kirin 655 system on a chip
• Comes with 3GB of RAM too
• Has impressive benchmarking scores compared to other phones in this price range

Honor has used its parent company's own chipset for the Honor 6X, specifically the Kirin 655 - an octa-core system on a chip clocked at 2.1GHz.

That's paired with 3GB of RAM, which is more than enough to be able to handle your favorite apps and games. There are plans for Honor to launch a 4GB of RAM version of this phone, but 3GB should be plenty for most buyers.

We pitted the Honor 6X against the Moto G4 in our video speed test - check out the results below.

In terms of benchmarking, the Honor 6X unsurprisingly beat the Honor 5X - that phone scored 3105, while the 6X came out with an average multi-core score of 3275.

A close competitor phone, the Moto G4 Plus, got a score of 3047 in the same test - a touch lower than the Honor 6X.

When putting the phone through its paces we found there weren't any stuttering issues and while it may not move as fast as a flagship phone, the Honor 6X will go quick enough that you shouldn't be disappointed.

Battery life

• Impressive battery life, especially considering the Honor 5X was already great
• Will last you a full day with ease, may even stretch to 2 days
• Packs at 3,340mAh cell, which is larger than the Huawei P10

One of the highlights of the Honor 5X was the battery life, so we had big hopes for the Honor 6X – and the good news is it doesn’t disappoint.

There’s a 3340mAh battery powering the phone, and considering it’s only booting up a Full HD screen that's quite a good size.

In terms of day-to-day battery life, we found the Honor 6X would consistently last a full day even when being pushed hard. Once or twice we went to bed with only a few percent left in the tank, but it never died on us within one day.

If you're a limited user and won't be playing many games, browsing the internet lots or watching a lot of video you'll find the Honor 6X could even last you a day and a half or two days.

For our video test, we play a 90 minute video on the phone at full brightness with connectivity options on, and we found the Honor 6X had lost 15% of its battery by the end of the test. 

Last year the Honor 5X lost 19%, while the Huawei Mate 9 we’ve recently tested lost 18% of its charge. The Honor 6X scored remarkably close to the best we’ve seen recently, such as the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, which dropped 13% and 14% respectively.

If you’re after even better battery life than what you'll find on the Honor 6X, you should go for the Huawei Mate 9, which offers stunning performance. It didn’t do so well in our video test, but in terms of day-to-day life you’d be very happy with that phone. 

When it comes time to charge, you'll be using the micro USB port at the bottom of the phone. It feels a little out of place considering Huawei has been using USB-C of late, and the micro USB technology is starting to date.

It does charge quite fast though – we found it took just over two hours to go from zero to 100%. But that’s not true fast-charging, so you can find speedier options elsewhere.

There are also no wireless charging capabilities on the Honor 6X.

Camera

• Only budget phone with a dual-lens camera
• Combines a 12MP lens with a 2MP to make a wide-aperture mode

Honor has been focusing on dual-sensor rear cameras in recent months, and the Honor 6X is no different.

There’s a 12MP camera on the back of the phone that's paired with a 2MP wide-aperture lens. It allows you to blur the background of images for an interesting effect..

According to Honor, this dual-lens setup will also improve the pixel resolution of an image even in low light.

It’s not the same quality dual-lens camera as the Honor 8 with its 12MP color lens and 12MP monochrome sensor, but this is still a good setup that allows you to take wide-aperture shots. That means that, as stated, you can give photos a unique effect where you blur the background or foreground of a photo - here's an example taken by the Honor 6X.

This is something we haven’t seen on a phone with this low a price before, and it works well. 

It doesn’t come out as well as on a lot of high-end phones, but it gives budget photography a different look compared to everything else on the market.

The actual sensor itself manages to capture some great looking shots too. Whenever taking well-lit landscapes we were always impressed by how the photos came out.

When you pixel-peep you start to notice how the handset isn’t taking the best photos, but considering this is less than half the price of our favorite camera phones, it's an impressive setup.

All the modes you’d expect from Honor are here as well, including light painting, HDR and a food mode dedicated to close-up shots of your dinner for Instagram.

There's an 8MP front-facing shooter for your selfies. That's as many megapixels as some rear-facing cameras have at this sort of price, so your selfies are set to be high quality.

There’s a beauty mode, which is on by default, to smooth out blemishes on your skin. You can change this to 10 different levels, but it can also be turned off by sliding across the screen.

The sample below shows beauty mode on level 5, the default setting for selfie shots.

For video recording, the rear camera can either record in 720p or Full HD. You won’t be able to record in 2K or 4K here, but that’s not something you’re going to need with only a 1080p screen to play it on.

Video recording seemed stabilized well, but the highlight is probably the video pro mode the phone offers. It allows you to fully control the look of the video, from autofocus down to the brightness of the shot.

Camera samples

Press on the arrows below to look through our camera samples. 

Honor has covered all the bases with the 6X. This is a phone you can safely buy and be confident that it won't feel outdated any time soon.

With an impressive processor, a solid build and simple to use software the 6X is a good choice if you don’t want to spend much money.

It may not be as cheap as previous generations, but it holds its own in a market full of great budget phones.

Why should I buy the Honor 6X? 

If you’re after a phone but don’t have enough money to pick up a flagship, this is a great alternative.

In a budget market flooded with options, the Honor 6X sticks its head above the water with a premium look and good spec in almost every area.

The chipset will be able to run most of your favorite games and the battery life is solid enough to get you through a hectic day.

With a good camera on both the rear and front, it’s hard to go wrong with the Honor 6X.

Why shouldn’t I buy the Honor 6X? 

This isn’t for everyone – especially if you’re looking for a flagship-feeling phone. If you’re used to a high-end design and the best spec out there you will inevitably be disappointed if you buy the Honor 6X.

You also shouldn’t get the Honor 6X if you’d like simple to use software – if you want that on a budget we’d recommend picking up the Moto G4 Plus.

The Honor 6X is also a touch more expensive than a lot of other phones packing a similar spec, so be sure to see what else is out there and make sure you want to spend that extra $60 or £50 on the Honor 6X before you buy one.

First reviewed: January 2017

Competition

Don't think the Honor 6X is for you? Here are some alternative phones that are also worth a look.

Moto G5

Motorola's latest cheap phone may be a good alternative option for your next phone instead of the Honor 6X. Take a look at the Moto G5 as it should be a bit cheaper than the Honor 6X but offers a similar spec.

It features a 5-inch Full HD screen, 13MP camera, 3GB of RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 chipset and 2800mAh battery. Be sure to read the review to see if you prefer it over the Honor 6X.

Read our full Moto G5 review

Honor 5X

We really liked the Honor 5X, rating it four out of five stars and praising it for a great display, strong battery life and a powerful chip setup.

That’s all you need in a phone, and while the UI and design aren't the best around, they also aren’t huge issues.

The price of the Honor 5X has already fallen and is sure to go down even further with the introduction of the Honor 6X, so it may be worth your while saving a little bit of extra money and missing out on some of the features the 6X provides.

Read the review: Honor 5X

Moto G4 Plus 

The Moto G4 Plus is our favorite cheap phone in the world right now with a great design, gorgeous 5.5-inch Full HD display and a low price.

You’ll be able to pick the G4 Plus up for less money than the Honor 6X as well, so it may be worthwhile checking our review of the G4 Plus before you decide on the Honor 6X.

Read the review: Moto G4 Plus

Lenovo P2

Want two day battery life on your phone? You should consider the Lenovo P2, which costs less than the Honor 6X and offers much better battery life.

It comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD screen, full metal uni-body design, an impressive processor inside and all of the features you'd expect to get on a cheap phone in 2017.

It's currently ranked as our best cheap phone in the world right now too. 

Read the review: Lenovo P2

Moto G4 Play

Motorola is doing so well in the budget space right now, we had to include another version of the Moto G4 here. 

The Moto G4 Play is quite a bit cheaper than the Honor 6X, but may be a good choice if you don't want to spend as much money on your next phone.

It comes with an impressive gaming setup, a 5-inch 720p display and is set to get Android 7 software in the next few months.

Read the review: Moto G4 Play