2016’s trend of affordable, high-performance phones shows no sign of stopping if the Huawei Honor 6X is any indication. At $249, the 32GB unlocked Honor 6X launches at a price $50 higher than last year’s Honor 5X, but brings with it a host of improvements that are worth the extra coin, like smoother overall performance and a better camera with a unique secondary lens for bokeh.
The design of the Honor 6X hasn’t changed much from the previous model. The brushed finish is gone, the fingerprint sensor is circular instead of square, and there are two camera sensors on the back. But it’s still a metal unibody slab available in gold, gray, or silver.
The phone measures 5.9 by 3.0 by 0.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 5.7 ounces, nearly identical to the 5X, and similar to the Axon 7 (6.0 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches, 6.2 ounces) and Motorola Moto G4 (6.0 by 3.0 by 0.4 inches, 5.5 ounces). Like those phones, it’s a bit too wide to reach across with your thumb, but there’s a Mini Screen mode that lets you shrink what’s shown and move the keyboard to one side to make use with one hand easier.
The volume rocker and power button can both be found on the right, a 3.5mm audio jack is on the top, and the bottom holds a micro USB charging port sandwiched between a microphone and speaker grille. The left side has SIM and microSD card slots.
The fingerprint sensor on the back is as fast and responsive as the one found on the Honor 8. It has a similar set of programmable features that allow you to touch and hold it to take a photo when the camera app is open, or swipe left or right to browse photos. The front is home to a 5.5-inch, 1,920-by-1,080-pixel IPS LCD, the same resolution as the Moto G4 and Honor 8.
It works out to 403 pixels per inch (ppi), so it’s not as sharp as the Axon 7’s Quad HD panel (538ppi), but text and video still appear quite crisp. Color reproduction is good, and also highly customizable, letting you choose between warm and cold color temperatures. Viewing angles are good, and the phone has a setting that further improves brightness under sunlight. There’s also a blue light filter that can be enabled to reduce eye strain at night.
The Honor 6X is an unlocked GSM phone with LTE bands 2/4/5/12/20/38, like the Honor 8. The only key omission is band 17, which improves building penetration for AT&T users. Other connectivity protocols include Bluetooth 4.1, but there’s no NFC or dual-band Wi-Fi like you get on the Axon 7.
The 6X is powered by Huawei’s proprietary Kirin 655 octa-core chipset clocked at 2.1GHz. It’s a capable processor, scoring 56,602 on the AnTuTu benchmark, which measures overall system performance. That puts it above the Snapdragon 617-powered G4 (46,260), but below the Kirin 950-powered Honor 8 (91,712). It’s also no match for the Axon 7’s superior Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 (141,989).
The Honor 6X uses a dual-sensor camera setup with one 12-megapixel shooter on the top and a 2-megapixel sensor on the bottom. The camera does a nice job in well-lit settings, matching the Moto G4 in overall sharpness. Pictures are clear and detailed, and autofocus locks on quickly. Like all midrange phones, shots become grainy in dimmer light, but enabling HDR or Night mode does help reduce some of the muddiness (at the cost of longer focus and post-processing times). However, in more challenging low-light settings, pictures look dull and there’s a fair amount of noise and blur.
The purpose of the secondary sensor is to allow for bokeh in Wide Aperture mode. Wide Aperture shots taken by the 6X worked well indoors and out, successfully focusing on objects in the foreground and attractively blurring out the area behind it, as you can see in the shot below. It’s a fun setting to play with, and you can also use it post-capture by pressing a shutter icon at the bottom of the photo frame and changing the focus point (which brings to mind the Lytro Illum).
In addition to its various modes and filters, the 6X has manual controls (accessible under Pro Camera and Pro Video mode after swiping left), letting you adjust ISO, white balance, aperture, and focus. It also records stable 1080p video at 30fps, but lower light recording suffers from graininess. The 8-megapixel front-facing camera takes clear shots, but it can be soft depending on lighting.
At $249, the Huawei Honor 6X sits between the less expensive Moto G4 and the pricier Axon 7. For $60 less, the G4 gets you virtually stock Android and compatibility with every major carrier. But the Honor 6X has a nicer build, faster performance, and cooler camera capabilities.
