Review: Honor 6A

When asked if I wanted to review the Honor 6A I said yes, hell yes. Honor produce a number of great and crucially budget-friendly devices and the Honor 6A is the latest in that line up. Let’s take a look and see how it compares to others in the same market.

The device was sent to us from Honor themselves. They did not have any input into the review and they will not see the review until it is live.

Specs

As usual let’s get the specs out the way. We are looking at:

• 5.0 inch IPS LCD with a resolution of 720 x 1280
• 13mp Rear camera with phase detection autofocus as well LED flash
• 5mp Front facing camera
• Snapdragon 430
• 2GB RAM
• Up to 64GB Micro SD card slot
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• Bluetooth 4.2
• Micro USB port
• 3.5mm Headphone jack
• 3020 mAh battery

Unboxing

When it comes to the unboxing it is very simple. Removing the lid reveals the phone itself. Removing the phone then shows you the USB cable as well as the USB plug. However mine came with the European plug and not the UK plug. Also missing is any sort of paperwork. Considering this is a review unit they may have become damaged and as such were not included. This may also explain why it came with the European plug rather than the the UK one.

Device Tour

Starting round the front you’ll find the 5 inch 720p display sandwiched between the earpiece and the Honor logo. The camera is to the right of the earpiece. Heading to the top of the device we’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack located to the right. Heading to the bottom you’ll find the micro USB port surrounded by the speaker and microphone.

The right hand side is where you’ll find the volume rocker and power button. As usual there isn’t anything on the left side on the device other than the SIM/Micro SD card tray. Something to point out here is that you can either have 2 SIM cards in the device at the same time or have 1 SIM card and 1 Micro SD card to expand the built in storage. Heading to the back of the device you’ll find the camera in the top middle with the LED flash to the left.

General Use

I’ll talk about the performance numbers later for those who care about them but in real world use case this is actually pretty good. If you have read my previous Vodafone device reviews you’ll know that I usually end up enabling developer mode and turning the animations off to maximise performance, however this time I didn’t find myself doing this.

I only had the device lock up couple of times. In all fairness though I did have a quite a lot of apps open in the background, and add in the fact that it only has 2GB RAM and not the 6GB that my OnePlus 3 has and that will more than likely explain the issue. It’s to be expected really. Apart from that the animations and general experience has been smooth.

Display

The 5 inch 720p display is nothing uncommon by any stretch of the imagination at this level. 720p has been the go to solution for many budget phones ever since QHD started to be deployed in the flagship devices. Though the case with most of the 720p displays at this price point is that the colour appears to be somewhere between slightly washed out and substantially washed out. With the Honor 6A it sits more towards the slightly washed out end of the spectrum.

Audio

The Honor 6A is rocking a single bottom mounted speaker. Now these speakers are never that good but the one on the Honor 6A sounds pretty good, when you don’t cover the speaker with you hand of course. This is something that is often the case when cutting cost (and even on some flagships) however we’d like to see the back of this!

Some devices have tinny speakers and I have come across my fair share of those. Normally the louder the volume the worse it becomes but with the Honor 6A it isn’t an issue. No tinny sounds what so ever. It gets pretty loud too. Now it doesn’t rival the HTC Boomsound of the past, but it gets the job done.

Camera

When it comes to the camera it is a pretty darn good camera for a budget device. Whilst I don’t take many photos myself the ones that I have taken have come out pretty well. The shots in the early evening came out great also. Though on the overcast day, the tree stump the colour has washed out a little. Whereas the image with the white and red motorcycle is a great example of what the camera can do.

Rear 1

Rear 3

Rear 4

Rear 5

Rear 6

Rear 7

Front 1

When it comes to taking video on the Honor 6A it’s is a straight no go. The colours are washed out, and as smooth as I always try to be there is a bit of shaking there. I mean it can pull a reasonable amount of detail but it certainly doesn’t capture high amounts of detail in a usable format. For audio I wouldn’t go there. It sounds horrible.

Battery and Benchmarks

Battery life is an area where the 6A shines. I had the device for around a week and I was light on the usage front; a bit of Facebook, Instagram and a bit of YouTube. Lasting a day and a half with a little charge over night so I didn’t get to test the battery too well. It seemed to hold up.

As you can expect when it comes to the benchmarks the Honor 6A isn’t going to blow your socks away. In GeekBench 4 it scored 632 on the single core and 2530 on the multi core as well as 2145 on the render script test. Putting it inline with the other devices at the relevant cost.

Conclusion

So to put everything into a couple of paragraphs at £139.99 the Honor 6A is a great buy. It sits towards the higher end of the budget smartphone category and it does it unabashedly. The fact that it only locked up on me twice when I had too many apps open signifies the quality the hardware can deliver. These lockups were down to my use case coming from a flagship device too, and not necessarily representative of general use. The camera is fine for photos but I would not recommend it for recording videos. The 5 inch 720p is perfectly fine for everyday usage also but those wanting a very high def screen with accurate colour representation might be disappointed. Battery is not going to be an issue here either getting through a day easily enough.

In my PR email they used the sentence “Honor 6A sets the benchmark for beginner smartphones” and I am going to agree with them on this. Sure it won’t out do my current daily OnePlus 3 but should I ever need to replace it on the cheap, the Honor 6A will definitely be a strong contender.

If you have purchased an Honor 6A than let us know what you think of it. Also if you have any questions then comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Honor 6A

£150

7.7

Build Qaulity

8.0/10

Performance

7.5/10

Camera

6.5/10

Battery

9.0/10

Value

7.5/10

Pros

• Good price
• Great battery
• Good at taking pictures

Cons

• When recording video the colours get washed out
• Could be a little cheaper

Buy from Amazon UK