Heart rate monitoring and 30-day battery life? This might be the one for you
Huawei sub-brand Honor has officially unveiled the Band 3, its latest fitness tracker that’s all about keeping in shape on the cheap.
The £60 wearable doesn’t seem to be bringing anything groundbreaking to the budget tracker table with a design that’s very much in the mould of the super cheap Honor A2 and the Honor Band A1, which launched last year.
Read this: Best budget fitness tracker to buy
The 16mm polyurethane band is available in orange, navy blue and black and hosts a 0.19-inch 128 x 32 resolution PMOLED display. It’s been slapped with a 5 ATM water resistance rating so you can take it for a dip up to 50 metres, but it’s not going to count your laps or recognise your front crawl.
In terms of tracking, it’ll count steps, monitor sleep and there’s a PPG cardio tachometer to monitor heart rate. It’s compatible with Android phones running 4.4 or above and iPhones packing iOS 8 or later. There’s a 100mAh battery that should deliver up to 30 days of tracking as well.
At £59.99, it’s still pricier than picking up a Xiaomi Mi Band 2, the Withings (now Nokia) Go and the Fitbit Zip. But you do get more sensors and data for your money with the Band 3.
Ultimately though, the hardware is just one piece of the puzzle and the question is whether the software will be up to the task as well. While Honor’s smartphones might fare a bit better against the Android heavyweights of this world, we’re not convinced if those looking to buy a cheap fitness tracker will be persuaded to go for the Band 3 over a Fitbit, Misfit or a Nokia tracker. We hope we can be proved wrong though and the Honor wearable does deliver the goods on a budget.
