Honor 6X – The Nearly Perfect Budget Phone!

Hey, Everyone!  Today we get to look at an awesome device from our friends over at Honor.  We are going to be looking at the Honor 6X.  The Honor 6X is a great newish (it was released at the end of 2016), unlocked, GSM phone.  It is a solid device with some great things going for it.  I love the Honor 6X and if it weren’t for a few of those quirks, it would be my primary device! 

The Honor 6X is a great newish, unlocked, GSM phone that has been out for a few months now.  It is a solid device with some great things going for it.  I love the Honor 6X and if it weren’t for a few of those quirks, it would be my primary device! 

There are two different versions of the Honor 6X.  The first comes with 32GB of storage and 3GB of memory.  The second has 64GB of storage and 4GB of memory.  Beyond the storage and memory, the rest of the specs are the same.  Both versions come with a 5.5-inch screen with a max resolution of 1080×1920.  You can adjust the resolution down to increase your battery savings, but with the 3,340 battery, you really don’t need to.  Powering all of this is an octa-core Kirin 655 processor.   There are many other features including dual SIM support, micro SD support, dual cameras and more! 

If someone were to ask me why I got the Honor 6X and why I would recommend it, I would give them a list of five reasons I love it, and four things that annoy me about the 6X.  The reasons I love it far outweigh the annoyances but I’ll give you both lists so you can make your own choice.

The Pros

1. The body/build of the phone.  Most 5.5 inch phones don’t feel lightweight or fit comfortably in your hand.  They are either a little too wide, a little too tall, or a little too heavy.  The Honor defies this expectation.  It fits very comfortably in my hand and feels much lighter than I would expect.  It also comes with a metal back and a very slim bezel on the sides.  The 2D glass makes it seem like the bezel is even thinner.  The top and bottom bezels are bigger than I’d like, but compared to similar phones (like the Pixel XL), they are practically non-existent!  
2. The insane battery life!  Huawei and Honor claim that you can get more than two full days of use on a full charge, 23 hours of talk time or 600 hours (25 days) in standby!  I haven’t tested the talk time and I haven’t done a full 25 days in standby, but I have been able to get almost a full two days of light to moderate use before I needed to charge it.  It’s nice not having to worry about charging it after every use or even every day! 
3. The processor!  The Honor 6X comes with the Kirin 655, which is a step down from the Kirin 950 on the Honor 8.  Despite being a step-down, the Kirin 655 offers a very snappy and fast experience.  Technically it isn’t as fast or as powerful as other processors, but at the price, and with the Huawei/Honor optimizations in EMUI, this thing flies! 
4. The camera!  True to form, Huawei and Honor have done a great job with this camera.  Or should I say cameras?  The Honor 6X features a dual camera design with the primary lens handling the bulk of the work with 12-megapixels and the secondary 2-megapixel lens backing it up.  Together they allow you to get a better focus, sharper images, and all around better quality.  Not to mention, they give you some pretty decent bokeh effects for those photo close-ups. 
5. The price!  There’s not much that can be said here.  With all the awesome features on this phone, $250 seems like you’re ripping somebody off!  It’s a great deal and you’re getting more here than you would for any other budget device I’ve ever seen! 

Now, like I said earlier, the phone does have some quirks.  And other than the last one, they are all really small things and are just me being overly sensitive.   

1. No 5GHz Wi-Fi.  In order to keep the cost lower, Honor opted to use a cheaper option that didn’t include 5GHz wi-fi.  It’s not a big deal, as most routers offer both a 2.4GHz and a 5GHz option.  But we’re seeing 5GHz slowly edging out 2.4GHz.  What this means is that with 2.4GHz you can use your phone further from the router, but you can’t get the higher bandwidth speeds that 5GHz offers.  Again, not a huge deal, but it is an annoyance. 
2. Micro USB instead of USB-C.  This one kind of confused me.  Both Honor and Huawei have been pushing USB-C with all of their newer devices.  It doesn’t make sense to me that they wouldn’t do the same with the Honor 6X.  This isn’t a huge deal, as I’m a hoarder and still have most of my older micro-USB cables in addition to all my newer USB-C cables.  I just have to remember to grab the right cable when I need to charge the 6X. 
3. No oleophobic coating.  In non-geek speak, an oleophobic coating is what keeps you from getting fingerprints on the screen and keeps that nasty face stuff off your phone when you talk on it.  This just means that you might have to wipe your screen off more than you would on a device that has an oleophobic coating.  The Honor 6X comes with a pre-applied screen protector that helps combat some of this, but another annoyance of mine is that the screen protector doesn’t actually cover the full screen.  It’s not an issue with the device itself, but it does mess with my OCD just a bit. 
4. My last pet peeve, and the one that annoys me the most is EMUI.  EMUI is Huawei’s take on Android and blends in the looks and style of iOS.  It packs a lot of awesome features in it but I could do without the iOS look and feel.  If I wanted an iPhone, I would’ve gotten an iPhone.  EMUI 5.0 is based on Android Nougat and fixes a lot of the annoying things in EMUI 4.1 and I’ve actually grown to “like” EMUI 5.0 on my Honor 8.  But the Honor 6X ships with EMUI 4.1 and it drives me crazy.  The good news is that there is a beta of EMUI 5.0 out now and we should see the final version of it here very soon!  Problem solved and we are down to three minor annoyances instead of four! 

All in all, the Honor 6X is a great budget device.  It offers amazing performance, awesome features, and a great quality, all for a super low price of $250!  You really can’t go wrong!  My biggest problem with it was EMUI 4.1, but that will soon be fixed!  I love my Honor 6X and would recommend it to anyone looking for near-flagship performance, great battery life and a lot of bang for your back. 

You can order the Honor 6X here: Honor 6X on Amazon

You can also watch our full video review down below.