Honor Band 5 Review

[MI5]

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £29.99
• 0.95" touch screen
• AMOLED display
• 282 ppi
• Heart rate monitor
• SpO2 tracking
• Water resistant up to 5ATM
• Up to 14 day battery life

The HONOR Band 5 is a wearable fitness tracking band which is clearly targeting sales of the now famous "Fitbit", but at less than half the price of the cheapest Fitbit and with more features. In fact you need to buy a £90 Fitbit to get the same spec as the Honor band

Out of the box.

Setting up is straightforward.

The band 5 comes with a charging cradle and quick start guide and that's it.

Connect the band to the cradle and place on charge, the band will turn on automatically.

Whilst it is charging, download the Huawei Health app from either Google Play for Android or App Store for iPhone.

Pair the band from within the app and grant the permissions it asks for and that's it, job done in 5 mins.

Features.

Steps - counts the number of steps taken.

Heart rate - self explanatory.

SpO2 - Measures your blood oxygen level.

Sleep tracking - records the various states of sleep, gives you an overall rating and offers advice on how you can improve it.

Workout - choose from various pre set types of activity for walking, running, swimming, cycling etc. Will track distance and heart rate during workout but needs to be pared with your smartphone for GPS features as none are built in to the band 5.

Messages - there is an in built app for all your notifications from your smartphone and a music playback app to control your music remotely.

Watch faces - choose from a number of pre-installed faces or download your own from Play (downloads only available for Android).

Performance.

Sleep monitoring and step tracking work well, as you would expect.

Cycling and running activity is also well thought out and provides you with useful alerts during your exercise. You can choose to receive alerts for heart rate and various other milestones.

There are also some free training plans included such as plans for ryns from 5k right upto a marathon.

Battery life seems good. I set mine up over 48 hours ago and the battery is at 72% so for my usage it looks like I'll get around 8 days between charges.

Verdict.

Considering the price (£29.99), the features, the screen (AMOLED), battery life (Honor say 14 days depending on usage) it would be impossible not to recommend this nifty little band.

Honor have redefined the concept of fitness tracking and shown that it is possible to get everything you need for a very reasonable price - take notice Fitbit 

It won't replace my smartwatch completely, but it will certainly do a better job of monitoring my sleep and tracking my activity.

If this is your thing, buy one before they realise that it's way too cheap !!!

Get it on O2 here: HONOR-Band-5-now-available-on-O2 

[liggerz87]

Brilliant review do you know if you could use it with samsung health instead of Huawei health

[MI5]

@liggerz87 

The only other apps it can share data with are Google Fit or MyFitnessPal.

[liggerz87]

Ah cool I'll defo still get it tho as I recently had a honor play was brilliant

[jonsie]

Great review @MI5 

....but does it tell the time...

[MI5]

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@jonsie wrote:

Great review @MI5 

....but does it tell the time...

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Yes @jonsie 

and day, date and weather 

[Cleoriff]

Excellent review @MI5 

(A couple of Christmas presents sorted right there)

Yes it is ridiculously cheap. 

Silly question maybe.... but how will the restrictions placed on Huawei by the US affect this?

[MI5]

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@Cleoriff wrote:

Silly question maybe.... but how will the restrictions placed on Huawei by the US affect this?

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I can't see it making any difference in all honesty.

The only app you need to download is Huawei Health which I'm sure would be made available elsewhere or alternatively you could use Google Fit or MyFitnessPal.

They also seem to be adding more options with each update, for example it's just updated and now watch faces are downloaded directly to the app, so no need to go to Play store for them.

[Cleoriff]

Good to know. Thanks @MI5 

[MI5]

No problem

[pgn]

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@MI5 wrote:

@liggerz87 

The only other apps it can share data with are Google Fit or MyFitnessPal.

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Hi @MI5 - great review!

Presumably it works with any recent Android phone, so I could get one and use it and its app with my P6T or the earlier P3T without issue? 

[MI5]

@pgn 

Android 4.4 or above is fine 

[BobM]

Good review @MI5    

Impressive bit of kit.

Never felt the need for something like this, but considering the price it is certainly very tempting.

You can't buy much these days for that sort of money, but in this case there seems to be a lot there for the cost.

I think I will...... 

[MI5]

@BobM 

If you can improve your health and well-being for under £30, why not ?

[BobM]

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@MI5 wrote:

@BobM 

If you can improve your health and well-being for under £30, why not ?

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This is very true @MI5  - in fact my health and well being are certainly in need of improvement, but we won't go there.

PS, Just ordered one.....  

[Martin-O2]

Fantastic review @MI5! I've always wanted to try out a fitness tracker but was put off by the price as not sure if I'd get on with one. Seems a no-brainer at £29.99 though! 

[MI5]

I should be on commission