Honor 6X review: Amped up

Synthetic benchmarks

The Honor 6X is equipped with 3GB or 4GB, depending on the market and amount of internal storage available. This amount of RAM is nicely paired with a Huawei's in-house, HiSilicon CPU offering: The Kirin 655 octa-core chip. This chip consists of two quad-core clusters: four performing cores clocked to 2.1GHz + four efficient cores clocked to 1.7GHz.

This chip comes with an i5 co-processor which is able to take over more specific tasks that require minimal power such as counting steps, low-power MP3 playback, and speech recognition. This helps to squeeze as much juice out of the 3,340 mAh battery as possible.

Honor has also outlined maintenance features within the UI which manages file fragmentation and purges unnecessary files to keep the smartphone running just as it did the first day it was removed from its box. This is similar to what Huawei offered with the Huawei Mate 9. And the 6X's Nougat update should improve on this aspect.

Let's take a look at the Kirin 655 next to some other mid-range devices that utilize various mid-range processors like the Snapdragon 430, Snapdragon 617, Helio P10, and a couple of higher-level Snapdragon chips.

Let's start with an overall benchmark test, Antutu 6, which takes into account RAM, graphics, storage, multitasking, and raw CPU power. The Honor 6X was bested by the Alcatel IDOL 4S and the Huawei Nova. We threw the IDOL 4S in there to check out how the Kirin 655 performs against the higher-end Snapdragon 652 and the Huawei Nova performed better than the 6X, even though the Nova has a Kirin 650 CPU.

AnTuTu 6

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  82744
• Huawei nova
  65021
• Huawei Honor 6X
  57012
• Huawei P9 Lite
  52768
• Lenovo Moto M
  51831
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  45190
• Lenovo K6 Note
  44972
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  44438
• Huawei Honor 5X
  35469

In the Basemark OS 2.0 test where the playing field is more level, the Honor 6X topped out all the other mid-range devices (minus the Snapdragon 652-powered IDOL 4S). Like the Antutu 6 test result, here we can see that the Honor 6X out-performs the 5X by about one-third. Keep an eye on the Huawei Nova which runs a Snapdragon 625. This is more or less the Snapdragon equivalent to the Kirin 655.

Basemark OS 2.0

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  1647
• Huawei Honor 6X
  1309
• Huawei P9 Lite
  1242
• Huawei nova
  1218
• Huawei Honor 5X
  874
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  815
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  799
• Lenovo K6 Note
  288

In multi-core performance, the Kirin 655 in the 6X beats even the Snapdragon 652 in the Alcatel IDOL 4S. The Honor 5X scored about the same as the Lenovo K6 Note, even though the K6 Note runs a lower-end Snapdragon 430 CPU.

Single-core results flip the top three multi-core scores around. A single core in the SD 652 easily outperforms lower-end CPUs. The SD 652 does have four larger Cortex-A72 cores while the Kirin 655 uses a total of eight Cortex-A53 cores.

GeekBench 4 (multi-core)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6X
  3351
• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  3169
• Huawei nova
  3105
• Lenovo Moto M
  2921
• Huawei Honor 5X
  2035
• Lenovo K6 Note
  2027
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  1822

GeekBench 4 (single-core)

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  1472
• Huawei nova
  842
• Huawei Honor 6X
  801
• Lenovo Moto M
  771
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  669
• Lenovo K6 Note
  635
• Huawei Honor 5X
  616

GFX bench uses various GPU-intensive scenes to score the graphics performance of devices. The playing field is even more level when using the 'offscreen' versions of the benchmark. It renders the graphic evenly across devices as to more accurately compare test results across devices with varying resolutions.

The Honor 6X scored more than most, in the various GPU tests. It topped the charts across the board, but it did have the IDOL 4S sweating a bit in the offscreen Car scene test. The onscreen test is where things take a different turn, the IDOL 4S performed slower than the 6X did because the IDOL 4S has a QuadHD resolution screen (more than twice the pixels to push). Moving more pixels around results in slower graphics performance.

GFX 3.1 Car scene (offscreen)

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  5.6
• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.6
• Huawei nova
  3.5
• Huawei P9 Lite
  2.8
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  2.6
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  2.6
• Lenovo Moto M
  2.5
• Lenovo K6 Note
  2.5

GFX 3.1 Car scene (onscreen)

Higher is better

• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.8
• Huawei nova
  3.7
• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  3.4
• Huawei P9 Lite
  3
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  2.8
• Lenovo Moto M
  2.7
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  2.6
• Lenovo K6 Note
  2.4

GFX 3.0 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  15
• Huawei nova
  10
• Huawei Honor 6X
  8.4
• Huawei P9 Lite
  7.8
• Lenovo Moto M
  7.1
• Lenovo K6 Note
  7
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  6.4
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  6.4
• Huawei Honor 5X
  5.6

GFX 3.1 Manhattan (1080p offscreen)

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  9.3
• Huawei nova
  6.3
• Huawei Honor 6X
  4.8
• Lenovo Moto M
  4.7
• Huawei P9 Lite
  4.6
• Lenovo K6 Note
  4.4
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  4.2
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  4.1

The Huawei Nova did better with graphics than the 6X did, although the performance of these two devices is pretty much on par with each other. Like the Basemark OS II 2.0 test, the Honor 6X is still about a third better than the 5X in overall performance. Likewise, we can expect the Kirin 655 to perform about the same as the Snapdragon 625.

Basemark X

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  14651
• Huawei nova
  10511
• Huawei Honor 6X
  8458
• Huawei P9 Lite
  7681
• Lenovo K6 Note
  7480
• Lenovo Moto M
  6732
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  6380
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  5039
• Huawei Honor 5X
  5009

Basemark X (medium)

Higher is better

• Alcatel IDOL 4S
  24507
• Huawei nova
  21345
• Huawei Honor 6X
  16712
• Huawei P9 Lite
  15754
• Lenovo K6 Note
  15232
• Motorola Moto G4 Plus
  11566
• Huawei Honor 5X
  10107
• Samsung Galaxy C5
  9598

Even so, don't expect to play many graphic-intensive games along the likes of Asphalt 8, or Riptide 3, as you might find them more enjoyable on higher-end devices. Still, this phone, like many other midrange devices, is quite capable of playing all kinds of casual and high-profile games.

Likewise, everyday performance is cake for this phone. The Honor 6X, like many phones with Huawei's in-house chips, runs quite cool during prolonged use. When playing games from extended amounts of time, you can expect warmth to the touch. We've seen phones get much warmer in the past.

Switching between apps or simultaneously updating a multitude of apps presents no challenge for the Honor 6X's Kirin 655. Heck, it even powers up pretty fast. Huawei has done a wonderful job with the software-to-hardware optimization of its UI.