A famous poet said: Where your mouth ends, that’s where mine begins. And this is what happens, with much less romanticism, in the current market for smart bracelets and smartwatches. The Huawei Band 6 bracelet is an example of the unclear borders: it has a very large and bright screen, almost at the level of the Huawei Watch Fit watch, and almost all the functions you expect in a smart bracelet for sports. Up to 90 different types of exercise, sleep analysis, and a pulse meter to keep you aware of your heart’s activity.
In addition to the large AMOLED touch screen to view health and training data and its decorative spheres, this bracelet offers two weeks of autonomy without being noticeable in its featherweight. So you don’t have to charge it daily like many smartwatches on the market. Of course, some sensors or GPS are missing. But this is also noticeable in its price of 60 euros, which you can find reduced to 40 euros in different stores or on Huawei’s website. We will tell you its keys and characteristics below.
| Huawei Band 6 | |
|---|---|
| Screen | 1.47 inches with AMOLED color technology and 194 x 368-pixel resolution |
| Dimensions | 43 x 25.4 x 10.99 millimeters |
| Weight | 18 grams |
| Design | Colors: Graphite Black, Amber Sunrise, Forest Green, and Sakura Pink Water resistance 5 ATM |
| sensors | Accelerometer, gyroscope, blood oxygen level meter, and heart rate |
| finishes | Polycarbonate and glass with silicone strap |
| Battery | 180mAh |
| Autonomy | 14 days of use (approximately two weeks according to the manufacturer) with a magnetic charge |
| connections | Bluetooth 5.0 Low Energy (LE) |
| SIM | Not available |
| Applications | Synchronization with Huawei Health and third-party applications |
| Principal functions | Huawei TruSleep for personalized sleep measurement, Huawei TrueSeen for real-time heart rate measurement, the possibility to control up to 96 different exercises, intelligent control of music playback, remote camera release, incoming notification display (applications, calls, and SMS ), personalized notifications of the weather situation… |
| system and compatibility | Compatible with Android 6.0 or higher and iOS 9 or higher. Some smart features are only compatible with Android |
| Release date | Available |
| Price | from 59 euros |
BRACELET WITH BIG SCREEN OR SMALL WATCH
The main key to the Huawei Band 6 is its design. And it is that the bracelet format offers a more than generous 1.47-inch screen with a resolution of 194 x 368 pixels. More than enough to see all kinds of colored spheres, images, and representations that not only help to understand all the data that the bracelet collects but also to enjoy the design of the watch faces or spheres. The design part is well worked in terms of colors and shapes, and an AMOLED panel helps to enjoy them with brightness and saturation to see them in any situation, even in broad daylight.
The format is rectangular, very different from the circular or square smartwatches that set the trends. Here Huawei has opted to maintain the sports or quantifying bracelet format, and the contents adapt well to this design. We find all kinds of spheres where, in addition to digital or analog time, they take advantage of all the spaces to show details such as the number of steps taken, the charge remaining on the bracelet, or even the weather in the area, among other data. Further, so it is comfortable to look at and wear.
By the way, although the screen is a touch screen and recognizes taps and finger slides, there is also a physical button on the right side of the Huawei Band 6. It is the function and on/off button. With it, we can return to the start from any menu by pressing it. Although we can ignore it if we get used to using the screen for everything.
The latter is due, especially to the proportions and weight of the body of the Huawei Band 6. Without the strap, if we only look at the body, we find a device weighing 18 grams and measuring 43 × 25.4 × 10.99mm. It’s a smart rectangle that you can wear on your wrist almost without realizing it, and it’s big enough to see any detail displayed on this screen. But there is more.
Huawei wanted to give this bracelet a touch of elegance to make it more than just a sports product. That is why we can choose between a dark gray or gold sphere among the options available in colors and finishes. They are durable polymers and not metal, hence their lightness. And they match especially well with the colors of straps that Huawei proposes for this Band 6. Thus, we can choose a sober and elegant black silicone strap, a sportier option with the orange strap that matches the tones of reflective garments or fall in the masculine of the dark green strap and the feminine of the Sakura pink finish. Many options so that, beyond what is shown on the screen, this quantifying bracelet is beautiful to wear in almost any style.
A BRACELET THAT DETECTS EVEN YOUR BLOOD OXYGEN
But what is interesting is everything that this Huawei Band 6 can do. And it is that its sporty part is precisely only part of its possibilities. It is an up-to-date quantifying bracelet ready to measure from your biorhythms to the calories consumed, without neglecting important aspects during a pandemic, such as the percentage of oxygen in the blood. It’s not designed to give you an EKG like more advanced smartwatches, but it only costs a fifth of those.
Thanks to the optical heart rate sensor, this Huawei Band 6 constantly reads your pulse with TruSeen 4.0 technology. In this way, it records each moment of intensity and relaxation, knowing that the data on the screen is the most current and not an average of the last few minutes. Something that also helps calculate calories burned during a workout to be more accurate and close to reality. In addition, thanks to Artificial Intelligence systems, this bracelet will notify you if your heart rate falls or rises above normal values.
In addition, this bracelet now also reads the wearer’s blood oxygen. And, like the heart rate, it does so continuously. This helps the most expert to know their constants during a workout since the bracelet shows a history with the summary of the day, hour by hour, of their percentages. In addition, if oxygen saturation drops too much, the bracelet vibrates and alerts the user to slow down the training pace, breathe, and avoid fatigue and possible damage by not getting enough oxygen to their internal organs. But there is more.
Like any self-respecting quantifying bracelet, the Huawei Band 6 comes loaded with sports modes to measure training of all kinds. That is, to record in the most reliable way possible issues such as calorie burning, cadence, steps, speed, evolution, or duration. And so it can be applied to 96 different sports activities as varied as walking, running, cycling, elliptical, bar exercises, rowing, free exercise, swimming, Pilates, etc, so that no exercise is left unmeasured.
All this, in addition, to an activity proposal to motivate the average user to meet daily goals. It consists of three rings that must be filled (not mandatory) and a certain number of steps per day, a given number of hours of activity, and a set calorie burn. Something that can be customized from the Huawei Health application to adapt it to the needs of each user. And there are still more.
This Huawei Band 6 bracelet also measures sleep and rest quality. It can detect the different sleep cycles to know how many minutes we sleep lightly, how long our REM cycle lasts, or if we are in deep sleep. Huawei calls it TruSleep 2.0 and ensures 96.3% accuracy in its measurements of our rest thanks to algorithms and Artificial Intelligence. All this with suggestions to improve in cases in which a sleep problem is detected.
Finally, Huawei has also thought about women’s health and has loaded the Huawei Band 6 with an application to keep the menstrual cycle up to date from the wrist. Once you configure it in the app from your mobile, you will be able to receive discreet notifications on your wrist that notify you when your period is expected to arrive. Or to know which are the fertile days.
PERSONALIZATION AND OTHER EXTRA APPLICATIONS
Don’t let all this technology mislead you. Huawei wants to dress your wrist with something practical but also very visual. You can change Band 6’s main face from various styles, whether you want a digital or analog watch. Or filled with so much design that it’s hard to read the time. Or it presents all the daily activity data and others at a glance. There are options for everything. You just have to choose which one you want to download and install on the Huawei Band 6 from the Huawei Health application, where you will find all the options launched by the company. And be careful. Some aspects of these spheres are customizable to leave everything to the consumer’s taste. You can even choose a photo to use as the background.
But this is not all. In addition to the sports and personalization part, this bracelet has other applications and utilities. For example, you can find information about the weather in your area, including the state of the sky, the temperature, and the air quality, as long as the bracelet is linked to the phone. You can also use it for other tasks as practical as a remote shutter for the mobile camera, controlling music playback, receiving alerts and reading incoming messages, or knowing who is calling you even if you don’t have your mobile. You can even ring your phone remotely if you’ve lost it somewhere nearby.
AUTONOMY FOR TWO WEEKS
But best of all, this Huawei quantifying bracelet comes from its autonomy. Like other company wristband products, they have given it two weeks of life between charges. All of this, of course, depends on the user’s activity. Even so, with continuous heart rate readings, sleep quality measurements, and a few hours of exercise during the day, the Huawei Band 6 lasts up to 13 days on a single charge.
By the way, the charging system is magnetic. Comfortable to use and without taking too long to recharge. So it’s easy to forget how many days you haven’t charged your band.
CONCLUSIONS
Huawei has built a good quantification bracelet. It is precise and stylish, and its large screen and autonomy make the difference in an increasingly crowded market. The key here is to find an offer that makes its price of 60 euros even more competitive than the rest of the options from other manufacturers.
I am a writer with eight years of experience writing in business and technology. I always carry a passion for learning and discovering new knowledge.