Honor Band 3 wants to be king of the budget fitness trackers

Heart rate monitoring and 30-day battery life? This might be the one for you
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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.

Honor Band 3 wants to be king of the budget fitness trackers




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Michael Sawh

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Michael Sawh has been covering the wearable tech industry since the very first Fitbit landed back in 2011. Previously the resident wearable tech expert at Trusted Reviews, he also marshaled the features section of T3.com.

He also regularly contributed to T3 magazine when they needed someone to talk about fitness trackers, running watches, headphones, tablets, and phones.

Michael writes for GQ, Wired, Coach Mag, Metro, MSN, BBC Focus, Stuff, TechRadar and has made several appearances on the BBC Travel Show to talk all things tech. 

Michael is a lover of all things sports and fitness-tech related, clocking up over 15 marathons and has put in serious hours in the pool all in the name of testing every fitness wearable going. Expect to see him with a minimum of two wearables at any given time.


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