Honor Watch 6 overview: Smartwatch with staying power

Best Prices Today: Honor Watch 6

The Honor Watch 6 is the firm’s latest flagship smartwatch, giving you the best it has to offer in wrist-based smarts. That includes up to 35-day battery life, NFC payments and more health and sports features packed into a design made from premium materials.

Honor’s smartwatches have often been let down by the software that knits everything together. Case in point, the Honor Watch 5 Ultra. While the Watch 6 has an impressive specs sheet and is available at a price to compete with the likes of the Apple Watch SE and Huawei’s GT and Watch Fit series, does it deliver to be considered one of the best mid-range smartwatches to buy?

I’ve been testing it out on my wrist for the last couple of weeks to find out.

Design & Build

• Two colour options
• Uses aluminium and stainless steel
• IP69 and 5ATM water-resistant ratings

Like Honor’s other wearables, the Watch 6 is available in just one size. That’s a 46.5mm case, making it bigger than the largest available Google Pixel Watch 4. It’s not a smartwatch that screams unisex, measuring in at 10.8mm thick and weighing anywhere from 41g to 50g based on which model you go for.

As you can see, it looks enormous on my small wrist.

There are just two colour options. The twilight brown version I tested or shadow black. If you prefer a more understated, traditional watch-style look, then that’s what the Watch 6 gives you. If you’re hoping for something a bit different, there’s other smartwatches that will give you that.

Depending on which model you go for, you’re getting a predominantly steel design or a combination of aluminium and stainless steel. It ensures that you’ve got something that feels robust and should handle a bump or two. 

Honor places two physical buttons on the side of the case. It’s pretty much the button setup you find on most smartwatches. That’s a rotating crown at the top that can scroll through menu screens with a flatter button down below that offers quick access to workout tracking out of the box.

You can pick it up with either a fluoroelastomer or brown leather strap, which is removable. I’d say that while the leather strap was comfortable to wear and stayed securely in place, it’s not a leather strap that screams high quality, either. It costs more, so have a think before you order.

While it looks like a watch that doesn’t belong in the water, Honor ensures it can be submerged for a period of time. 5ATM and IP69 waterproof ratings mean you can go for a dip in the sea or the pool. Just make sure you eject the water when prompted when tracking swims.

Screen & Audio 

• 1.46-inch AMOLED display
• Up to 3000 nits brightness
• Speaker included for Bluetooth calls

The screen you’ll be staring down at is a good-sized 1.46-inch, matching the large size of the watch case. It’s an AMOLED panel with a crisp 464 x 464 resolution.

The Honor Watch 6 offers rich colours and with a peak brightness of 3000 nits, it can go as bright as some of the brightest smartwatches. There is some black bezel around the screen to contend with, which thankfully doesn’t eat too much into the display. 

You have the ability to make phone calls over Bluetooth with the onboard speaker, also letting you play loaded music out loud. In both scenarios, the Watch 6 offers plenty of volume to help in louder environments. The call quality and clarity are strong, ensuring those on the other end don’t sound like a muffled mess.

Software & Features

• Works with Android and iOS
• Contactless payments via Mastercard
• Can pair two phones at once

The Watch 6 works with both Android phones and iPhones and runs on Honor’s MagicOS operating system.

You need to download the Honor Health app to set things up, which unsurprisingly shares a lot of the same user interface traits as Huawei’s Health app. That’s because Honor used to be part of Huawei.

That extends to the watch software, which is easy to get around and has the feel of Huawei’s LiteOS operating system. You’ve got nice big widgets that fill the watch screen, a place to view phone notifications and support for animations when you’ve hit an activity tracking milestone or use one of the animated watch faces.

My watch has been a bit buggy in testing, with the screen turning itself off randomly or disconnecting from the app, but in general, it’s been a stress-free watch to use.

The watch faces available aren’t the most memorable bunch to pick from. There’s a mix of analogue and digital-style ones, with each indicating how power hungry they’ll be if you choose to use them. I just wish there were a few that really stood out.

Outside of the smartwatch features norm, the Watch 6 features NFC to enable contactless payments via Mastercard specifically. However, this feature wasn’t turned on or available during my testing.

There are some extras like a voice recorder that can generate summaries using AI, plus the ability to pair two phones at the same time to receive notifications from both smartphones.

Fitness & Tracking 

• 122 sports modes
• Body energy and fitness age insights
• Dynamic blood pressure monitoring not available in Europe

Honor throws a lot in here as far as health and fitness features are concerned. On the health front, there isn’t anything that carries any sort of regulatory-level approval. If you’re in Europe, you miss out on the new dynamic blood pressure monitoring.

What you can do is track your heart rate, SpO2 levels and perform a 60-second measurement to measure multiple health data points at the same time. Honor can offer recommendations based on that data, like suggesting going for a walk based if metrics suggest you’ve not been very active.

You’re getting access to 122 sports modes and that now includes richer support for football and badminton, with an AI-powered running coach now at your disposal.

Though I’d say this AI coach was a bit more basic than others I’ve come across on other smartwatches. Outdoor tracking is boosted by the inclusion of dual-band GPS, giving you the latest in advanced GPS positioning technology – in theory, anyway, more on this below.

As an activity tracker, I found daily step count totals quite far off from two reliable trackers I wore alongside it. It could be as many as 1,000-2,000 steps more. It performed much better as a sleep tracker, where it recorded similar core stats like time slept and sleep stages compared to two other sleep trackers.

If you care about heart rate tracking, the daily heart rate ranges recorded felt a little off. Especially with the wildly high maximum readings recorded during the day. I saw more reliable data for on-the-spot measurements and during steady-paced exercise sessions.

I used the Watch 6 for a range of workouts, including runs, indoor rides, rows and pool swims and in general, I found the tracking to be fine. I didn’t get the excellent dual-band GPS performance I have experienced on other dual-band watches. Especially ones from Apple and Garmin.

There are additional workout-related features to tap into here, like the ability to perform lactate threshold tests to assess fitness levels. You can see how your fitness age changes (or doesn’t) based on logged workouts and check your latest VO2 Max estimate. Given the mixed accuracy shown by the onboard sensors, I saw these insights more as prompts as opposed to being definitive guidance on how and when you should train.

Battery Life & Charging

• Up to 35 days battery life
• Up to 17 days battery life in smartwatch mode 
• Can take up to 2 hours to fully charge

The Honor Watch 6 features an impressive 980 mAh capacity battery that Honor says can max out at up to 35 days. That is the maximum battery life if you’re willing to forgo using a lot of its features like continuous health monitoring, keeping the screen nice and bright or streaming music on a regular basis.

A more accurate number is that it can get to around 17 days when using its smartwatch features more regularly, but that’s still one of the best of any smartwatch, especially when so many still only offer one or two days.

I found the Watch 6 could comfortably last a week and had the capability to go for another. I did have to eventually put the power saving mode into play and that did push things further without having to ditch features like viewing notifications or still tracking workouts.

When you do need to charge it, there’s a proprietary charging cradle to do that. I found it could take a good couple of hours to charge it. I’ve definitely seen snappier charging smartwatches in and around the same price as the Watch 6.

Price & Availability

The Honor Watch 6 officially went on sale on 18 June 2026 and you can pick it up for £229 if the rubber strap is ok, otherwise the leather option is £249.

However, Honor is offering the Watch 6 for £149.99 or £169.99, respectively, until 17 July and you also get a free pair of Honor Choice Earbuds Clip.

That does mean the Watch 6 is roughly about £100 more than the Honor Watch 5. It also means it’s competing with watches like the Apple Watch SE 3 (£219), the Huawei Watch GT 6 (£229) and the Xiaomi Watch 5 (£269).

Check out our list of the best smartwatches to see our current top 10 recommendations.

Should you buy the Honor Watch 6?

The Honor Watch 6 does a perfectly reasonable job as a smartwatch, whether you’re an iPhone or Android user. It feels well-made, the software runs pretty well and there are plenty of features to use.

It’s just not a smartwatch that I put on and feel Honor had made something special. I think you do get that feeling with smartwatches like the Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro or the Apple Watch SE 3.

When you compare the Watch 6 to watches like those, it shows you what’s capable. Yes, there are some characteristics that make the Watch 6 a better watch to live with, especially battery life.

However, when you look at the entire experience, those rival watches and others in the same price bracket just offer a more complete package.

Specs

• 46.5mm case
• 10.8mm thick 
• 1.46-inch AMOLED screen
• IP69 water and dust resistance
• 980mAh battery
• 4GB RAM
• Bluetooth 5.4
• NFC
• Compatible with Android (9.0 or above), iOS (15.1 or above)