FITNESSBANDS
84 MAY2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE387
THEHONORBAND5isanother fitness band
forthose who want to be abit more active,
but don’t need the advanced features of a
running watch. That means no onboard GPS,
but you do get aheart-ratemonitor,astep
counter and notifications showing up on the
0.95in OLED screen.
Fairly thick bezels surround this 282ppi
touchscreen, which is par forthe course with
this type of fitness wearable,and you can
bring it to lifewithaquick tap of the
touch-sensitive panel beneath it. Because all
the backgrounds are black, it’s not obvious
where bezels end and screen begins, so those
bezels don’t look as ugly as theymight.
BUDDYUP
In fact, despitehaving adifferent brand
stamped on it, the Honor Band 5seems to
share alot of the same DNA as the Huawei
Band 3Pro,right down to the plugs holding
the replaceable straps in place,which require
fingernails of steel to remove.It’s not
something you’ll want to do often, and nor
will you be able to put on any old watch strap,
as these are proprietary attachments.
Although the Band 5can only claim abasic
feature set, theyall work well enough, even if
step-counting accuracy can vary compared to
other fitness trackers. Then again, since the
main point of step tracking is to encourage
you to do more todaythan yesterday, it only
really needs to be consistent with itself.
More important, es
forrunners, is accuracy
tracking distance.The
of GPS means you’ll
need to pair it with a
smartphone,and keep
the latter on you,
when taking arun;
that’s less
convenient, but it
does mean you
might get better
results than with an
onboard GPS chip.
We completed a
5K run wearing
both the Band 5,
paired to aHuawei
P20 Pro,and a
Polar M430 with
integrated GPS: the
Band 5ended up
the more accurate,
measuring the distance
as 4.97km compared to
the M430’s 5.09km.
HONOR Band5
★★★★★
£30•From http://www.amazon.co.uk
VERDICT
TheHonorBand5provesthatyoudon’tneedto
spendtheearthtogetareliablefitnesstracker
Remember,however, that
your mileage will quiteliterally
vary depending on your
phone.Onboard GPS also
seems alittle better in more
urban areas rather than parks
and fields; unlike the M430,
the Band 5sometimes
recorded our running route
as having passed straight
through buildings.
ONTHE PULSE
Still, fora£30 wearable,we’d
sayeverything works rather
well. Heart-ratetracking is
both accurateand well
developed: it can be switched offffff,
settoconstantlytakereadingsooor
putinsmartmode,whereit
automaticallylimitstrackingwheeenit
detects you’re not doing much.
If you have continuous heart-ratetracking
enabled, you can even set it to give you an
alert if your heart rateisunusually high for
more than 10 minutes. This includes the
ability to set the threshold forwhat you
consider to be unusually high, too: anything
from 100bpmto150bpm.
All these advanced features are off by
default to save on battery life, but we’d
recommend you flick them all on straight
away. Yes, you’ll need to charge it
n, but that’s still not
egularly.Honor says
et 14 days with just
unctionality,down
fyou turn
thing on. Both of
eestimates are in
with what we’ve
perienced, so even
at full whack it’s
very long-lasting.
The Xiaomi Mi
Smart Band 4,
however,can keep
oing forupto20
ays, so the Band 5is
eat on battery life,
tnot thebest.
By default, you also
yget basic sleep
king. Again, you
ld switch on
ep if you have any
in knowing how
ekipping. If it’s off,
the accelerometer
to measure movements. If it’s on, the
heart-ratesensor comes intoplay, allowing
thewatch to estimatesinus rhythm and
breathing signals, which in turn gives you a
better analysis of your sleep: when you’re
light sleeping, deep sleeping or enjoying a
dream in the REM stages.
Again, we foundthe readings accurate
and reliable,even if the nuggets of sleep-
improving advice offered by theHuawei
Health app weren’t particularly insightful.
Unsurprisingly,given that Honor is a
Huawei subsidiary,the Band 5uses the same
mobile app as the Band 3Pro.It’s mostly fine,
but suffers from two big problems. First,
there’s no web interface at all, meaning any
analysis you do will be on your phone.More
seriously,itonly connects with MyFitnessPal
and Google Fit. There’s no option to export
things to Strava,Runkeeper,Endomondo or
any other running app.
COST BENEFIT
That will probably disappoint anyone with a
history of enthusiastic fitness tracker use,
although the £30 price doesn’t just earn the
Band 5some goodwill –italso makes it a
great first-time device foranyone looking to
take their exercise more seriously.
The Mi Smart Band 4issimilarly cheap,
just as usable and can last afew days longer,
so it slightly pips it, but both devices are
extremely impressive.Frankly,it’s incredible
that you can get this kind of functionality
forsuch little money.
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