LAS VEGAS—The new Huawei Honor 8X is the best value phone I've seen in a long time. At an adorably silly evening event here at CES, Huawei unveiled the Honor 5X, an all-metal unlocked Android smartphone for under $200, and the Honor Band Z1, a $79 smartwatch.
Honor is a Huawei sub-brand that targets millennials and those "young at heart." But its phones offer great value for money and good-looking design, which makes them for everyone. Honor phones are spectacularly popular in Spain and France, among other places, but they haven't come to the U.S. before.
Unlocked smartphones under $200 are gaining in popularity around the world, but we don't have a lot of good choices here. The best picks are the Moto G, the Moto E, and the Huawei SnapTo. The Honor 5X looks and feels more premium than anything else we've seen under $200.
At this price, it isn't stinting on specs, either. The 5X has the Qualcomm 615 processor that's common on phones that cost $100 more, along with a 5.5-inch, 1080p screen, 16GB of storage, dual SIM card slots, a MicroSD card slot, 13MP and 5MP cameras, a fast fingerprint sensor, and full support for the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. The 3000Ah battery should last at least a day.
The 5X feels almost exactly like the $349 GX8. The body has a brushed-metal sheen on the back. On the front, the screen glass doesn't go all the way to the sides, but it has a narrow bezel that makes it relatively comfortable for a 5.5-inch phone. Unexpectedly, I was really impressed with the cameras. Pictures I took in indoor lighting with the front and back cameras were surprisingly sharp.
The Honor 5X may set a benchmark for what can be done at $200. I think it's a potential Editors' Choice for inexpensive unlocked smartphones, although to really know, we'll have to get it into the labs to give it a full review. It's going on pre-sale on Jan.6 at hihonor.com/us, with retail sale starting on Jan. 31. If you pre-order, you get a free pair of headphones.
Hands On With the Honor Band Z1
You aren't going to get an Android Wear-powered Huawei Watch for $79. So what do you get? A surprisingly good-looking, limited-function fitness watch, sort of a Fitbit crossed with a Swatch.
The Honor Band Z1 has a small, circular metal face on a skinny polyeurethane band. The 1-inch, 128-by-128 display is OLED, so the UI tends to show one bit of information at a time without lighting up the whole face. Huawei says its ridiculously small 70mAh battery will last for four days of normal use, and it charges in 40 minutes.
Features are limited here: step counting, sleep tracking, activity tracking, time and incoming call notifications. You can't conduct conversations on it, unlike with the older Talkband B1, and it doesn't run apps.
I'm wearing it now, and I like the calm, clear OLED display, although the screen times out really fast. The functionality is very basic—no music controls, no GPS, no text messages, and it doesn't even look like it will do heart rate tracking. It's only competing with fitness trackers at the most basic level, but it's certainly cute.
The Honor Band Z1 will be arriving Jan. 31 in the U.S.