Good points:
- Price
- Battery life
- Really bright screen
- Comfort
- Packed with features
Bad Points:
- No easy connection to Google Fit
- Difficult to differentiate between notifications
Specs:
- Size: 43 mm x 17.2 mm 11.5 mm
- Weight: 22.7g
- Display: 0.95″ colour AMOLED Display 120 x 240 px RGB
- Battery: 100 mAh
- Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 GPS, GLONASS, NFC
- Water Resistance: 5ATM
- Blood Oxygen Detection
Introduction:
Recently I got sent through the Honor Band 5 for review, and it was at this point that I realised, I think I might have a weakness with smart watches. Currently I have the original Pebble and the Pebble2 heart rate edition, a Mi Band 4, a Fossil generation 4, Samsung Galaxy Fit 2, and my Galaxy S3 Frontier.
Design:
The Honor Band 5 comes in three colours: Classic Navy Blue, Meteorite Black and Dahlia Pink. On the front of the device is a 0.95-inch AMOLED colour touchscreen that looks really sharp and bright even in broad daylight. On the back is a heart rate sensor and a blood oxygen meter, along with the charging pins. Said charging is done through a proprietary charging clasp attached to a Micro USB cable. The watch band is made from silica gel and has a simple watch clasp, although the loop that holds any excess strapping has a nice locking feature to stop the watch accidentally falling off. The Band 5 was super comfy to wear, it was so lightweight that I didn’t even notice it on my wrist.
In Use:
The first thing you need to do upon unboxing the Band 5 (that’s after noticing just how crisp clear and bright the AMOLED screen is) is install the Huawei Health app create an account and pair it up with the band. It would have been nice to see integration with Google Fit here, but it appears that Huawei Health is a standalone app. That said, the app is good. It gives readouts for your steps, heart rate, weight and sleep and also any workouts you have done. Also, all the watch settings can be adjusted from here as well, such as changing watch faces, deciding which app gives a notification and any firmware updates.
The Honor Band 5 is really comfortable to wear. It’s lightweight and the soft strap didn’t irritate me or give me any rashes. Notifications come through to the band with a positive little buzz, although I found that the band doesn’t differentiate between notifications, they all appear as “messages”.
The Band 5 is able to detect loads of different workouts and record your results and progress on the Health app. These include both indoor and outdoor walks and runs, indoor cycle, cross trainer, rower, indoor swimming and free workout, so a pretty comprehensive choice. Also present is a heart rate monitor and I had my band set to constantly measure my heart rate, which can then be viewed as a graph within the Health app.
Battery Life:
Honor claims a battery life of 14 days for the Band 5. I was getting between 8-10 days, but note that I had the constant heart rate running and the screen at full brightness, so the 14 day claim by Honor is probably very achievable.
Conclusion:
The Honor Band 5 is a packed smart wearable with excellent battery and a gorgeous screen to look at. It is available for a truly amazing price of £29.99 from Amazon, so if you’re after a Christmas stocking filler, or are new to smartwatches, or hell, you just want to treat yourself, the Honor Band 5 is certainly well worth a look.