Honor Band 5: Great display, precision tracking

Product: Honor Band 5

Price: Rs 2,599

Wearables see a lot of action in India today. Almost every gadget maker has introduced one, or more. And at every price point.

Huawei’s sub-brand Honor has already made a significant mark in the wearables space in India with its smart watches and bands, anchoring on their affordability factor, good looks and strong hardware. Does the Honor Band 5, the latest in the band series, stick to the legacy?

The Honor Band 5 is a great looking wearable. The band has a 0.95 inch (2.41 cm) AMOLED colour display. The colour combinations on the dial look really cool and you can adjust screen brightness into dynamic and vivid displays. If you know how to fiddle with the display settings, you can find the best looks and most likely you’d be happy with the results.

It feels smooth on the wrist and the belt clip design helps the band stay attached to the wrist nicely. It doesn’t leave any marks even after a full-day’s use. The device’s home button is easy to spot and navigate. If you have used budget wearables, you know how difficult the task is with some of them.

Fortunately, Honor has kept the user interface user-friendly and clutter-free. It is pretty much easy to pair the band with Huawei’s health app on your phone. And once you’re connected, the device will snappily start tracking your fitness activities. To be frank, Huawei’s health app is one of the most user-friendly fitness apps on Android. It is so easy to set up and run. Its tracking faculties are really good, even when you’re using a not-so-great smartphone. And it synchs with the Band 5 very smoothly. The results are really impressive.

The watch offers what Honor likes to call ‘scientific sleep monitoring’. Honor’s TruSleep technology helps users track the depth and breadth of their sleep and analyse data for future reference.

The Honor Band 5 has an SpO2 Monitor, which tracks the level of oxygen in your blood. This helps you assess how your body is adapting during workouts or during trekking. Even though this sounds cool in copy, you’re advised to check it against a professional system before you make assumptions on the basis of this data since it may not be really accurate always.

...And more trackers

The band has all the usual tracking faculties: Step counter, calorie-burn counter, distance tracker, alarms and alerts. One of the best features is the remote controller facility it offers, helping you smartly control music and volume on your phone. This is helpful during workouts, because you don’t need to stop your activity to change the music track or adjust the volume of a particular track.

The heart rate of Honor 5 is really impressive, if you compare it with medical devices. The TruSeen faculty helps monitor heart rates in real-time and delivers alerts based on the input.

The device also offers features such as multiple watch faces, remote control for camera (this works only with devices that run on Huawei/Honor EMUI 8.1 (or later) operating system). The band sports various modes for sports use, such as outdoor and indoor runs, walking, indoor and outdoor cycling, pool swim and training, etc. Many of these are not available on bands of this price range.

The band is water resistant up to 50 metres (the so-called 5ATM standard), but we don’t think you can use during long-duration wimming.

In sum, there is not much budget about this smart band. Under a convenient price tag, it offers quality features and premium looks and can easily give its counterparts a good run for their money.

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