Huawei Band 6 is the latest entrant to join the league of affordable fitness bands in the market today. I got a chance to try it out and let’s see if it indeed delivers what it claims.
To set the expectations straight at the very outset: Huawei Band 6 is an all-out “Fitness tracker” which delivers few basic smartwatch functions. It intends to target the lot who are looking for a fitness band and not an alternative for their smartphones.
The Band 6 looks stylish and premium. The UV treated silicone straps are soft and skin-friendly. Weighing just 18g the Band 6 offers a comfy feeling. Personally, I felt comfortable most of the time except after work outs, I felt itchy due to sweat.
The smart band connects to the phone via the Huawei Health app, which can be downloaded from Android Play Store or Apple Store. The interface of the app is simple and user-friendly. The dashboard is designed in form of cards which presents a holistic view of your fitness details on the go. The Health app lets you analyze your data in detail. I liked the effort that has been put in to ensure the ease of data interpretation. The colour combination chosen for the graphical representations are apt and detailed.It can be easily understood by anyone.
The large 1.47” FullView screen, with thin metallic bezels is chiseled to perfection. The large 4 way-touchscreen accentuates the aesthetic appeal of the smart band. The increase in screen size enables more data to be displayed. Huawei also provides with a large repository of Watch faces to choose from and we can also customize them further via the Huawei Health app. I really loved the provision of personalized face, wherein you can access any photo from your phone’s gallery and use it as your watch face. The only stumble being the fact that I had to find this feature from Youtube video since it does not find a mention anywhere.
The Huawei Band 6 offers a varied workout options such as Outdoor/Indoor run, Indoor Cycle, Outdoor Walk, Swimming to name a few. The other highlight functions include the SpO2 monitoring, all-day heart rate, sleep and stress tracking. The band offers a brief overview, more in-depth analytics regarding the work outs and other tracking features can be obtained from the Huawei Health app.
The Huawei band 6 which runs on Lite OS and boasts of its capabilities to track 96 different workout modes, offers a detailed breakup of the workouts that we log. For instance, while analyzing my Outdoor Walk, it provides the information such as the distance, time taken, calories burnt, my fastest pace, avg cadence, avg stride, heart rate, heart rate zones, training stress, etc. The information breakdown is detailed. The step count and the heartrate metrics matched details recorded with other fitness band. I found the touch screen unresponsive or frozen on multiple occasions while fiddling with it, especially when your fingers are sweaty.
The Band 6 also offers dynamic detection of workouts if we don’t want to start one all by ourselves, but here again, I felt the auto workout initiation took a while to activate and prompt on its own!! The Huawei Band 6 has the goal celebration feature too, which keeps us motivated to complete out set workout goals.
Another important feature, the All-day SpO2 Monitoring, works spot on every time and the values too checked out with those measured by a Pulse oximeter. The 24/7 Heart Rate monitoring too works effectively and provides appropriate alerts depending on the heartrate variations.
The Sleep tracker performs satisfactorily. I did find a discrepancy in the readings whenever I wore the band 6 a notch loose. The TruSleep 2.0 Sleep tracker analysis our sleep pattern and provides us with a sleep score and breathing quality score and also offers useful suggestions to help improve our sleep score. As I had mentioned earlier, the illustrations used to depict the data are very apt and user-friendly.
The Band 6 also keeps track of our stress levels. It just offers us an overview of the stress quotient and provides no real interpretations or suggestions to keep the stress levels in check. It does, however, provide us with some comforting breathing exercises (inhale/ exhale at a chosen rate for a minute).
The features that Huawei Band 6 offers are bountiful, but where it falls a tad short is when it syncs with the Health app. The connection with the smartphone appears jittery at times and on few occasions, I had to refresh the app screen multiple times to view the updated data.
The battery life of the Band 6 is a huge positive. Once fully charged, the band 6 lasted for 10 days and that too with continuous wearing!! The Band 6 uses a two-pin cradle that attaches magnetically at the back of the Band 6 and gets charged fully in around 40 mins.
You can also receive notifications from Watsapp, messages and calls but these notifications cannot be expanded to view the entire message.
Starting with comfy, stainproof straps, a large scratch resistant screen Huawei Band 6, comes with a slew of features that are required for today’s ‘always on’ life but fumbles due to few software glitches.
HUAWEI Band 6 is available in Graphite Black, Amber Sunrise, Sakura Pink and Forest Green and is priced at AED 229.
