An accurate frequency of the Helmholtz–Duffing oscillator is obtained by a sophisticated modification of He’s frequency formulation. The pull-down instability existing in the symmetric breaking phenomenon is a newly discovered dynamic motion for oscillators with even nonlinearities. A criterion for predicting the asymmetrical amplitude motion and the pull-down instability is built by measuring the amplitude change. The good matching performance between the analytic results and numerical ones indicates that the criterion offers a starting point for future research into the pull-down phenomenon, and opens a new path for studying more complex nonlinear oscillators with even nonlinearities.