Huawei Mate X6 Review: The prettiest of them all

Chinese giant Huawei continues to flex its muscles and showcase state-of-the-art products across many tech categories. Most of these products have limited market appeal due to Huawei's ban on doing business with US companies, but regardless, we can appreciate these products for their technical achievements.

The latest example is the Huawei Mate X6 foldable phone, which is a very impressive device in many ways. It has record thinness for a foldable, is extremely exquisite, has some market-leading UX features like its implementation of multitasking, a pretty impressive battery, and is generally a hugely desirable product without any serious drawbacks. If we don't count the Google mobile services thing, which is admittedly a big if, but I'll talk more about this in the Software section of the review.

Huawei has never sold its premiums phones cheaply, and this doesn't change with the Mate X6. This new foldable is scheduled to be officially released in globally and in Europe on January 6 at a price of EUR 2000. This isn't chump change, but a comparable configuration of Samsung's Z Fold 6 sells for EUR 2200, so Huawei isn't really out of its mind to be asking as much as it does.

The Huawei Mate X6 is an extremely exquisite device, no two ways about it. It's about as thin as the other thinnest foldable phone out there, the Honor Magic v3, at just 4.6mm when unfolded, or 9.85mm when folded. Coming from the OnePlus Open, which has flat sides and a boxier shape, I think the curved and elegant aesthetics of the Mate X6 work better for a foldable phone, because they create the feeling of a smaller product. It almost feels just like a regular phone when you hold it closed – a testament of how far folding phones have come.

Honestly, for all my years reviewing phones, I haven’t seen many models that are more elegant and exquisite than the Mate X6. It is an extremely beautiful piece of technology, not just against the foldable market, but against phones as a whole.

With few exceptions, foldables generally aren’t known for having best-in-class cameras. Even Samsung’s Fold 6 doesn’t set any records in this respect.

The Mate X6 has quite the complete camera package. It has three shooters on the back: a 50 MP f/1.4 to f/4.0 main camera, a 48 MP f/3.0 4x telephoto, and a 40 MP f/2.2 ultrawide.

This versatile setup handles most situations comfortably – it has a PhoneArena Camera Score of 137. This means it’s about as capable as the Pixel 9 Pro Fold (PA Camera Score of 139), and a just tad behind the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 (PA Camera Score of 141).

I tend to find its default setting a bit aggressive when it comes to processing – images often come out very bright, colorful, and sharp. And while this sort of style makes for a striking first impression, I think the industry has slowly started to transition towards a slightly more natural, softer look. There is a bit of that ‘overprocessed’ effect going on with the Mate X6, especially when viewing images from the main camera.

Video recording with the Mate X6 is generally very good. It’s not quite as oversharpened as the photos, so things are well balanced here. For some reason, it can’t quite capture the same levels of detail across the zoom range in video mode, but aside from that one kink, I don’t see much of a problem with its 4K video recording. Stabilization is at about the same level as that of other flagship cameras.

The selfie camera has gone to the same school as the other cameras on the Huawei Mate X6. Everything that comes out of it is too bright and joyful, but I have to note this is a problem only if you want a more natural tone for your images. If you enjoy the bright and sharp aesthetic, you’ll be pleased with the X6’s production.

In terms of design, the Huawei Mate X6 is the best foldable phone at this time. Its sleekness, elegance and robustness make it the technological marvel to beat on the foldable market. It doesn't have the most powerful camera or chipset, but it also performs very competently in those areas. Meanwhile, it manages to make a huge splash by showing everyone how multitasking should be done on a phone – a huge thing for a foldable.