Photo By: Elin Chow

Smart bands are becoming  increasingly popular in recent years, but I have never found a reason to spend the money on one. " Do I really need this?" I would often ask myself this question because I am not really someone who wear watches. In fact, I do not even own a watch.

For those who do not know, smart band is a wearable device that will track your movements when you wear it on your waist. It is device for monitoring and tracking fitness-related metrics such as steps, distance travelled, calories burned and in some cases, heart rate and sleep patterns.

Recently, I started going to the gym thrice a week and I figure out it will good to get a smart band so that I can monitor my heart rate and calories burned. The gym I go to does not have a clock, so the smart band will allow me to check the time easily while I am working out. After all, it is not ideal to have a phone in my pocket when I exercise.

Today, there are dozen, perhaps hundreds of different brands of smart bands available in the market and most of which does a pretty good job at tracking the basics like steps, distance and sleep. But which one you get depends on you want to use it for and your budget. For me, I am just looking for a basic device that would not break the bank. A cheap smart band (under USD $30) that will enable me to track my heart rate, steps and sleep.

After reading tons of reviews online, I decided to get the Huawei Honor Band 3. The Honor Band 3 is known to be one of the best budget fitness trackers that are available in the market right now. It comes with a flexible, rubbery strap and a small tracker unit that contains all the electronics. The strap is available in orange, navy blue and black, but to be honest, I am not impressed by the bright orange option.

The tracker is firmly attached to the strap and is not detachable. It is not a good thing because it will not be easy to replace the strap if it gets damaged.

Lightweight
The Honor Band  has an elongated screen featuring a fairly large 0.91 inch P-OLED display with a single round button for navigation. It looks pretty sleek and slim and most importantly, rather lightweight since it only weights about 18g.  It is so light that most of the days, I forgot I am even wearing it.

The screen is decently bright and easy to read indoor but visibility under the sun is poor. It is difficult to read the display while you are outdoor, especially under the strong sunlight.

Connectivity 

A smart band works alongside an app that is built for your smartphone. To get the most out of it, you will have to pair the device with your smartphone via bluetooth. The Honor Band 3 is compatible with Android phones running 4.4 and above and iPhone with iOS 8.

However, in this case, you are required to download two management apps instead of one. The Huawei Wear to connect and manage the setting of the band and the Huawei Health to keep track and analyze the data. It is a little troublesome and I certainly do not understand the purpose of using two different apps.

However, the apps sync well with your phone that you would not even notice about it. You will find all your data up to date every time you open the apps and sorted according to day, week and month. The Huawei Health is fairly easy to use, helping you to keep track of your sleep patterns, heart rate, exercise and weight log.

Continuous Heart Rate Tracking
One of the thing I love about the Honor Band 3 is the 24-hour continuous heart rate tracking function. Enabling this feature on the device helps to keep track of my heart rate continuously throughout the day, including when I am asleep. Just in case your heart rate exceeds the normal level, the band will vibrate. But in order for it to track your heartbeat, you have to wear it tightly on your waist, which can be a little uncomfortable.

But anyway, I find the heart rate tracking quite accurate. You can access the record from Huawei Health, which shows a graph of your 24 hours heart rate.

Fitness Tracking
In terms of fitness tracking features, it is pretty limited, but honestly, you really cannot expect too much for the price you paid. The Honor Band can track the basics like walking, running and swimming as it is water resistant up to 50 m. I have not tested the water resistant claim because I am not a fan of swimming, but I did washed my hands without removing the band.

It is a pity that the Honor Band 3 could not track cycling or elliptical machine exercise, but I believe most of the budget fitness trackers that you will find in the market does not have these features as well. However, it could track your indoor run on the treadmill, with a 90% accuracy. The distance recorded by the band is usually much lesser than the actual distance displayed on the treadmill. I believe this because the device calculate distance based on your hand movement. If I held onto the handrails while running on the treadmill, the band may not be able to detect movement, thus the distance recorded will not be accurate.

Other than that, you will also not find high end feature like GPS tracking, thus the data recorded is not very accurate since the device is not able to calculate distance. Also, steps tracking is not very accurate as well. I actually noticed that the Honor Band 3 tends to calculate extra steps than the actual steps you have walked. As a result, the distance walk and calories burnt might be wrong. Even though the data are not 100% accurate, it is still good to use them as an estimate.

Sleep Monitoring
The TruSleep function is what intrigued me as it allows you to track deep, light and REM sleep as well as how many times you woke up in the middle of the sleep and provide analysis and recommendation via the Huawei Health app. Not only that, it also allows you to track your sleep continuity, breathing quality as well as your heart rate.

The sleep tracking is pretty detailed and provide a good overview. I find the data quite accurate (may not be 100% accurate) and interesting. Just in case you wonder, the Honor Band 3 uses heart rate and movement information to detect the quality of your sleep, including your naps. But your naps should be long enough in order for it to track it.

I usually disable bluetooth at night when I go to bed to save battery life. But I have no problem syncing the sleep data to my phone if I did not pair the device with my phone while sleeping. The data will sync automatically to the Huawei Health app once I enable Bluetooth on my phone on the following day.

However, you might want to set the device to "Do Not Disturb" mode when you wear it to sleep at night. Enabling this mode would automatically turn off all notifications while you sleep.

Battery

Huawei claims that the device will lasts 30 days on every charge. But disappointing, the battery did not last as long as Huawei claimed. After 10 days, the battery life is already down to 30%. The device finally went out of battery on the 12th day. That was less than half the battery life Huawei has claimed.

The battery will probably lasts 30 days if the continuous heart monitoring and Trusleep features are not enabled. But why buy a smart band instead of a normal watch if you are not going to use these added features?

Price

The Huawei Honor Band 3 is ridiculously cheap. I bought this from an online store on Lazada for RM 120. But I believe you will be able to find even cheaper ones now.

Conclusion

The Huawei Honor Band 3 is great considering the super low price. It is more suited for casual user like me, who just wants all the basics without breaking the bank. It is definitely not for professional athletes or fitness enthusiasts who need a higher level smart band to track their performance.

However, the lack of GPS and limited fitness tracking features is a downside, but honestly, you really cannot complain too much because it is cheap, and if you compare with other brands of smart bands in the same price category, you will realize the Huawei Honor Band 3 actually has better performance and specs.

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