Huawei Honor Band 5

Rhythm and snooze

Fitness band takes positive steps

This budget fitness band shares a lot of its components with Huawei’s Band 3 Pro (£50 from Amazon www.snipca. com/33706, see Issue 565, page 29).9). Neither is affected by Huawei’s currenturrent international troubles, but the Honoronor Band 5 differs in that it lacks built-t-in GPS, which means you’ll need to take your smartphone with you when you want to record where or how far you ran or cycled. Since you’d probably doo that anyway, it’s arguably not a big featureture to lose, especially considering we didn’tdn’t find the Band 3 Pro’s GPS particularlylarly accurate.

You do get a heart-rate monitor,r, which shines light through your skin to detectdtt your pulse. Don’t mistake this for the ECG technology in products like the latest Apple Watch, but it can be set to track continuously and alert you if your pulse rate is unusually high for more than 10 minutes, the kind of feature that can be reassuring even for those without any plans for vigorous exercise.

The sleep analysis uses your pulse to estimate your breathing and show when you were in light, deep or REM sleep.

Turning on these features is estimated to reduce battery life from 14 days to six, which is still plenty. The 0.95in colour LED screen, cunningly mounted in a curved black glazed surround that disguises how small the display really is, uses a lot less power than full-blown smart watches. You can also compromise with a smart mode that tracks you constantly when you seem to be doing something energetic, but stops when you stayt stilltill ffor a while. hil

On the minus side, the Band 5 can’t run extra apps, and only integrates with Google Fit or Myfitnesspal, not other services such as Strava or Runkeeper. You’ll need the Huawei Health Sports app on your Apple or Android phone to set up and use it; there’s no PC program or web-browser interface.

Available with a silicone strap in black, blue or pink, it isn’t the most attractive accessory and looks nothing like a traditional watch, but it’s easy to wear and not too cumbersome.

If you’re not into fitness tracking enough to spend serious money, it’s a good basic option at a low price.