Looking for a smart band, and don’t like the monochromatic look that most bands have. Let’s see if the Honor band 4 can sprinkle some color into your fitness tracking.
The Honor Band 4 was purchased on Amazon, at a price of Rs 2599. This is one of the few bands that come with a color amoled screen.
On the box we have some of its features listed out, such as the Amoled display, heart rate monitoring, Sleep monitoring, and swim stroke recognition. The swim stroke recognition is something I wanted to test out as my son, and I have just started swimming.
On the back there are more features listed.
The band claims water resistance upto 50 metres, which explains how it can track swimming.
14 days of use on one single charge, this I have to test.
Opening the box, I see as I’ve opened it upside down, so first we have the instruction manual and warranty card. The fitness band comes with 12 months warranty.
Turning it around we have the band and the charger with quite a small length cable. There’s no power plug included, so they might be expecting us to charge the device via the laptops USB port. There’s no other way we can charge it using a power plug with this length.
Let’s get the band out now.
Here’s how the band looks, let’s get the protective film off the face of the band. It is quite lightweight, so wearing it for extended periods of time will not be uncomfortable.
The band quality looks good and is styled like traditional sport watch bands. The angled line texture gives it a sporty flair.
We have the Honor branding on the strap loop.
Behind is the heart rate monitor and also the pogo pins which align to the cradle to charge the band.
The charging cradle snaps onto the device and the pogo pins align with the same on the watch, allowing to charge it.
There seems to be no power on off button, so to turn the device on we need to place it in the charging cradle.
Charging up the 100 mAh battery is quite fast, and out of the box it came with 50% power. The included cable is much too short, luckily, I have tons of cables snaking out from my USB-hub.
Now that the charger’s setup, lets snap on the band to it. It was a little troublesome in the beginning, but I managed to dock the band and it started up immediately.
As soon as the band started up, it prompted to install the Huawei health app. As you all know Honor is a sub-brand owned by Huawei, so a lot of technology are shared between the brands.
Ok, now that we need the app, I used my sons tablet as the band is for him.
The app is not available on the tablet officially off google app store, so I had to side load it using an apk. Most phones should not have a problem.
The app updated itself to list the newer devices as the band 4 was not available at first.
From there, pairing the device with the app went without a hitch, turn on Bluetooth, select Honor band 4 from list, hit pair, select device from list, accept on the band using the check button.
And you’re done.
Checking for firmware updates we found one and we updated the device, which did take quite some time. Updates generally improve stability of the device and also can add new features.
Once done hit finish, and you’re ready to roll.
So now that the watch is paired, it would update the time to the correct time.
The display is a crisp AMOLED 0.95 inch touchscreen, and also multi-color which is a nice touch for a device at this price point. The 2.5d curved glass on the band is scratch resistant.
The ring below the display is used to wake the device.
On waking the first screen you see is the time, weather and battery status.
The interface scrolls up and down between menu items.
Second, we have the step counter, which can also be changed to other options such as calories burned, distance walked etc.
Next, we have the heart rate monitor, which can be manually activated to take the current heart rate reading.
After that is the sleep monitoring, which generally tracks the quality of sleep you had.
Next is the workout tracking, we can choose between, walking, cycling, swimming and also freestyle training.
To track a workout, tap on the option, set a target and then start your workout.
To end your workout session, just tap and hold the button below the screen to pause and end the workout.
Then there is a more setting, which has a total of 4 band faces, select one and tap on the screen to set it.
Find my phone options, which makes your phone ring if you can’t find it.
A timer and stopwatch are also available.
We can change the brightness level and also set it to reduce brightness in night time, which would help it save battery.
Other options are reset,restart and power off the band.
Lastly, we have the messages options, which would list all your messages received on your phone.
Waking up the band can be done by tapping on the capacitive buttons on the face, or by flicking your wrist or raising your hand as you would generally to look at the time.
Going back to the previous screen, just swipe from the left to the right.
Let’s check out the accuracy of the heart rate monitor, it seems quite similar to the one on the Samsung Gear S3 frontier.
On the app side we have standard data such as the step count, distance covered ,calories burnt etc.
Tab two is the workouts tab, where we can manually start a workout session.
Tab three is the profile and goals page, where you would set your target goals such as weight you would like to be etc.
Also present is your profile data, which can be changed from here.
Other options you can activate from the app are true sleep, which monitors the quality of sleep you are having.
Options such as this one and the continuous heart rate monitoring would reduce the battery life considerably.
If notifications are on, on the app, you will only get them if you are wearing it.
What I did want to test is the water resistance of the device. We took it swimming at the local pool, and it worked very well. As with all touchscreens, it had problems registering touches when wet, but shake off the excess water and it works as normal.
We like the Honor band 4 a lot, as it provides most of the features necessary at a very good price point. It’s stylish, light weight, water resistant and color to boot.
If you are looking for a budget smartwatch, the Honor Band 4 will not disappoint.
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