Fitness trackers: more expensive means better? | Articles | Gadgets, gifts and accessories

The pop­u­lar­i­ty of fit­ness track­ers is under­stand­able: the fash­ion for a healthy lifestyle, the craze for fit­ness and main­tain­ing a healthy mode of activ­i­ty and sleep, plus many func­tions of inter­ac­tion with a smart­phone. The use­ful­ness of these gad­gets is point­less to deny. And their choice in the tech­nol­o­gy mar­ket, respec­tive­ly, is grow­ing rapid­ly.

Those who play sports pro­fes­sion­al­ly and seek to track var­i­ous types of work­outs choose either expen­sive smart­watch­es with a lot of fea­tures, or pre­mi­um fit­ness track­ers that are essen­tial­ly sim­i­lar to smart­watch­es. And what about those who pre­fer to observe the regime, activ­i­ty and much more?

Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers of equip­ment and gad­gets are thor­ough­ly approach­ing the con­quest of the fit­ness track­er mar­ket. And they have a lot of advan­tages: they are afford­able, diverse in design, and many of them are able to give odds to pro-lev­el track­ers.

One of these track­ers was Mi 2 Band from Xiao­mi. This track­er can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed — it con­sis­tent­ly receives high rat­ings from review­ers, its sales are only grow­ing, and it has only been on the mar­ket for a year. The fol­low­er of the equal­ly suc­cess­ful Mi Band and Mi 1s Pulse com­bines the func­tions of both track­ers, adding new ones.

To begin with, it is worth not­ing that this is a real 24/7 fit­ness track­er. It can eas­i­ly with­stand 7 days with­out recharg­ing, while the mar­ket lead­ers Fit­Bit Charge 2, for exam­ple, can with­stand only 5 days. The Meizu Band goes even fur­ther in this regard — this track­er lasts up to 15 days with­out recharg­ing if the heart­beat sen­sor is dis­abled on it. If it works, Meizu also serves 7 days.

By the way, the heart rate sen­sor is a use­ful and pop­u­lar fea­ture both on track­ers and smart watch­es. And as prac­tice has shown, Huawei Fit gives the most accu­rate read­ings in this regard. Per­haps, in some respects, it is infe­ri­or to com­peti­tors, but when it comes to heart­beat, the results of the fit­ness track­er from Huawei have been repeat­ed­ly called the most cor­rect.

What about the rest of the features?

It just so hap­pens that among the more expen­sive and bud­get fit­ness track­ers, each has its own strengths and weak­ness­es. As we said above, Huawei Fit gives the most accu­rate heart rate read­ings, plus it has many dif­fer­ent work­out modes. In oth­er words, this is a track­er focused main­ly on fit­ness. Xiao­mi appeals to a larg­er audi­ence — it is ide­al for observ­ing style and lifestyle. Sleep sen­sor and alarm clock, dai­ly activ­i­ty reminders, pedome­ter — all these func­tions are impor­tant, in fact, for every­one. Sim­i­lar in func­tion to Meizu Band. Each track­er also serves as a silent alarm clock. So, in trav­el, hos­tels and even at home with a track­er, you can wake up with­out wak­ing up the rest. In addi­tion, you can also get infor­ma­tion about the phas­es of sleep. In this regard, all track­ers are equal­ly func­tion­al.

A lot of the com­plaints that all fit­ness track­ers face have to do with GPS. It both short­ens bat­tery life and is not always per­fect­ly accu­rate. Basi­cal­ly, GPS is impor­tant on a run, but in this case, it’s bet­ter to sim­ply take your smart­phone with you. It will pro­vide both more accu­rate read­ings and a sound­track.

Interaction with a smartphone.

The fact remains — with­out a smart­phone, almost any fit­ness track­er is a watch with advanced options. And if the track­er is also with­out a dis­play, then it com­plete­ly turns into a sim­ple dec­o­ra­tion. There­fore, almost all fit­ness track­ers are very depen­dent on appli­ca­tions. All data record­ed by the sen­sors is imme­di­ate­ly sent to the appli­ca­tion and cre­ates a pic­ture of train­ing, sleep, stress, heart rate and so on. Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers are focus­ing on iOS and Android, so for those who pre­fer Win­dows, it is bet­ter to take a clos­er look at mod­els from Fit­Bit and Garmin.

But own­ers of smart­phones on Android and iOS will receive a full range of func­tions from Xiao­mi, Meizu or Huawei, includ­ing noti­fi­ca­tions from some appli­ca­tions.

Design

When it comes to design, Fit­bit, Sam­sung, Microsoft and many oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ers strive for max­i­mum func­tion­al­i­ty. There­fore, in terms of appear­ance, among the top man­u­fac­tur­ers, per­haps, Jaw­bone stands out. In this regard, Chi­nese com­pa­nies, odd­ly enough, are tak­ing a step for­ward. First­ly, the design is still func­tion­al, but thanks to the inter­change­able straps and the avail­able num­ber of very bud­get options, the style of the track­er can be changed almost every day. For MiBand from Xiao­mi, for exam­ple, there are a lot of belts of com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent col­ors and mate­ri­als.

Their cost is also low. For com­par­i­son, Fit­Bit’s offi­cial replace­ment straps cost about the same as the Mi Band 2 track­er itself.

Meizu Bong 2P itself looks inter­est­ing and non-stan­dard, while Huawei Fit copies the design of con­ven­tion­al watch­es. For fans of the clas­sics, this is of par­tic­u­lar val­ue and stands out from the com­pe­ti­tion. The shape itself is not unique, because both the MoovNow track­er and Mis­fit Shine use it, but only Huawei offers the screen and the abil­i­ty to use it exclu­sive­ly as a watch.

Meizu Band has a sta­t­ic but very con­cise design. This track­er is impos­si­ble to change the strap, but its appear­ance is neu­tral and will suit almost any style.

How to make a choice?

First of all, when choos­ing a fit­ness track­er, you need to decide what is required of it. For stan­dard exer­cise mon­i­tor­ing, ear­li­er Mi Band mod­els, Mi Band 1S Pulse, Meizu Bong 2P are suit­able. These are very afford­able fit­ness track­ers that have proven them­selves pos­i­tive­ly. If you are an advanced ath­lete or a pro­fes­sion­al, you should pay atten­tion to more expen­sive mod­els: Fit­Bit Surge / Charge 2, Garmin Fore­run­ner, Sam­sung Gear Fit 2 (Android) — these fit­ness track­ers are designed for spe­cif­ic loads. Most of them are com­pat­i­ble with all oper­at­ing sys­tems, and with Fit­Bit Surge you can take read­ings on your com­put­er. For the price, how­ev­er, these track­ers dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly from bud­get ones. How­ev­er, they con­tain a lot of use­ful fea­tures.

Mi Band 2 and Meizu Band are two track­ers that are per­fect for every­day activ­i­ties. We rec­om­mend them to every­one who wants to mon­i­tor their own health, keep fit and do it all 24/7 at an afford­able price.