Huawei Band 2 Pro Review

This Huawei Band 2 Pro Review aims to inform about the features and functionalities and provide useful insight about the Band 2 Pro.

Compared to the premium $200-400 price tags of the latest Apple Watch or Fitbit Sense devices, the Huawei Band 2 Pro retails for around $120-150. This makes it a compelling option for those wanting solid activity tracking and health monitoring technology without the high-end price. Huawei packs impressive specs like continuous heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen tracking, sleep analysis, and onboard GPS into the sub-$150 Band 2 Pro.

In this Huawei Band 2 Pro review outline, we will dive into this new fitness tracker’s key specs, features, performance metrics, and value proposition. The aim is to provide an unbiased assessment of how well the Band 2 Pro works for activity tracking, health monitoring, and smartwatch functionality compared to competitors. Factors like design, battery life, smartphone integration, and the comprehensive Huawei Health software platform will be examined.

Ultimately, this review outline will determine if the budget-friendly Huawei Band 2 Pro has what it takes to compete with Fitbit, Garmin, and Apple in the wearables space. It will provide helpful guidance for consumers deciding if the Band 2 Pro’s impressive features list translates into a great experience and excellent value in real-world usage across fitness and health tracking scenarios.

Key Specs

• GPS
• 3-axis Accelerometer
• Separate PPG Cardiotachometer
• Infrared Wear Sensor
• 5ATM rating
• Multi-sport tracking
• VO2 max monitoring

What is the Huawei Band 2 Pro?

The Band 2 Pro is the premier tool in Huawei’s present line of fitness wearables.

It intends to attract purchasers far from even more recognized physical fitness trackers from Garmin and Fitbit by supplying top-end attributes generally only seen in substantially more costly wearables. Emphasizes include outstanding battery life, 5ATM waterproofing, GPS, multi-sport abilities, and VO2 max tracking.

If you’re on a budget, you won’t discover a better-value health and fitness tracker. Somewhat obtuse software, a relatively complex control system, and, occasionally, hit-and-miss tracking make it feel much less polished than its even more well-known competitors.

Huawei Band 2 Pro – Layout

The Huawei Band 2 Pro is a rather standard-looking wearable. The black system I evaluated might conveniently be mistaken for a Fitbit Alta Human Resources from a range. Including a small, somewhat curved, rectangular PMOLED screen and an unassuming black rubber strap, the only evident layout flourishes are two silver strips lining the screen’s lengthy sides.

The result is a discrete-looking wearable that can easily be used inside and beyond the gym without too much shame.

The wearable likewise ticks all the right boxes regarding equipment and durability. Huawei has developed the Band 2 Pro to fulfill 5ATM water-resistance requirements, which means it can easily survive up to 50m. It’s also fairly tough to put on in the shower or swimming pool.

Huawei Band 2 Pro – Fitness Tracking

The above features, combined with its wealth of integrated sensing units – including GPS, a 3-axis accelerometer, a Separated PPG Cardiotachometer, and an Infrared Put Sensing unit – imply that it appears capable of tracking various tasks.

Activity and Health Tracking Features

One of the main selling points of the Huawei Band 2 Pro is its extensive activity tracking and health monitoring capabilities. For a sub-$150 wearable, it packs an impressive array of sensors and features to help users monitor their fitness and overall well-being.

Step Tracking and Goal Setting

The Band 2 Pro uses its built-in accelerometer to track steps throughout the day accurately. You can view your daily step count, distance covered, and calories burned directly on the band’s display. You can set a customizable daily step goal in the Huawei Health app and monitor your progress. If you’ve been inactive for an hour, the band will vibrate to remind you to get moving again.

Sleep Tracking

Wearing the Band 2 Pro to bed allows it to monitor your sleep duration and consistency using motion data and resting heart rate readings. In the morning, you can view a breakdown of your light, deep, and REM sleep stages from the previous night. The Huawei Health app will assign you a sleep score and provide insights on improving sleep quality.

24/7 Heart Rate Monitoring

The Band 2 Pro uses an optical heart rate sensor on its underside to take continuous, real-time heart rate readings 24/7. In the app, you can view your current heart rate on demand or see heart rate trends and alerts for unusually high or low rates. This constant heart rate data also leads to more accurate calorie burn tracking during workouts and daily activity.

SpO2 Monitoring

Upon request, the Band 2 Pro can take a spot blood oxygen saturation (SpO2) measurement using its sensor array. This can help identify breathing issues during sleep, like sleep apnea. It also monitors acclimatization when at high altitudes to detect altitude sickness symptoms.

Stress Tracking via HRV

By monitoring subtle changes in your heart rate variability (HRV), the Band 2 Pro can determine your current stress levels and provide breathing exercises to help you relax. Lowering stress contributes to better health.

The Band 2 Pro packs an impressive array of sensors and features into its streamlined body to provide detailed activity tracking and health insights, especially for the price. It goes beyond basic step counting to give users a complete picture of their fitness and wellbeing.

Fitness Tracking Performance

In addition to its daily activity and health tracking features, the Huawei Band 2 Pro also delivers solid performance for logging workouts and sports. Let’s examine how well its fitness-tracking capabilities stack up.

The Band 2 Pro accurately tracks key stats like steps taken, distance covered, calories burned, and heart rate for common exercises like walking, running, hiking, and elliptical training. Its motion sensors auto-detect walks and runs, allowing you to manually record them without starting a workout.

When you begin a dedicated workout mode on the band like outdoor cycling or yoga, you can customize each exercise type with personal settings in the Huawei Health app. During your workout, real-time stats like heart rate, duration, pace/speed and calories are displayed on the AMOLED touchscreen.

The Band 2 Pro has several features tailored for run tracking. Its integrated GPS connects to your phone’s GPS signal, providing more accurate outdoor pacing and distance than using your phone alone. After your run, you can review your route mapped out in the Huawei Health app. The built-in optical heart rate sensor also helps provide more precise calorie burn estimates based on your heart rate zones during intense running.

The Band 2 Pro has a water lock mode for swimmers that disables the touchscreen. While the band is water resistant up to 50 meters, it does not track swim metrics like lap counts or stroke type. However, its calorie estimation for swimming is fairly accurate.

Overall, the Huawei Band 2 Pro delivers solid fitness tracking performance across various exercise types from cardio to strength training. Its integrated GPS and heart rate data provide useful workout analysis for runners and cyclists. Serious athletes may want more advanced metrics, but it covers the basics very well.

App and Software

The Huawei Band 2 Pro is powered by Huawei’s own software platform – the Huawei Health app. This app is available for both Android and iOS devices. It analyzes your activity, sleep, workout, and health data synced from the Band 2 Pro.

Huawei Health App Overview

When you first set up your Band 2 Pro, you’ll need to pair it with the Huawei Health app on your smartphone via Bluetooth. Once paired, the band can continuously sync data like step counts, sleep stages, heart rate readings, and workout logs to the app throughout the day.

The Huawei Health app gives in-depth tracking of your daily step counts, distance covered, calories burned, and hourly activity. Charts and graphs provide trends and insights over time. Your sleep data shows each sleep stage overnight and assigns an overall sleep score. Recorded workouts display all the granular data like pace, heart rate zones, laps, and route (if GPS enabled).

The app allows you to customize watch faces, set sleep and daily activity goals, and configure notifications from your smartphone to receive on your wrist. Overall, the Huawei Health ecosystem integrates tightly with the Band 2 Pro to deeply analyze your health and fitness data.

Notifications and Weather

When paired with your smartphone, the Band 2 Pro can display notifications from incoming calls, texts, emails, calendar events and apps. This allows you to screen notifications on your phone directly from your wrist. You can customize which apps send notifications.

The weather forecast is another handy feature, showing you current conditions and a 3-day outlook on the band. This data is pulled from your paired phone’s weather app.

In summary, the Huawei Health platform and smartphone connectivity significantly expands the Band 2 Pro’s capabilities beyond just on-device tracking to provide a robust health monitoring and fitness analysis experience.

Battery Life

Battery life is a major consideration when shopping for a fitness tracker. Frequent charging can make a device inconvenient to use. The Huawei Band 2 Pro delivers excellent battery life for the category.

With typical daily usage including activity tracking, sleep monitoring and occasional workout logging, Huawei claims the Band 2 Pro can last up to 12 days on a single charge.

In real-world testing, the band consistently hit the 10-12 day battery life figure for 24/7 activity tracking and daily sleep monitoring with occasional GPS-tracked outdoor workouts. This is an impressive result compared to most competitors.

Enabling the continuous heart rate monitoring feature does impact battery life as expected. According to Huawei, with constant heart rate monitoring activated, battery life is reduced to around 5-7 days. However, this is still excellent compared to many fitness trackers that last less than a day with continuous HR enabled.

GPS battery life is around 5 hours of continuous GPS usage when connected to your phone’s GPS to track outdoor activities. After an hour-long outdoor run with GPS, the battery drained just 6-7%.

Charging the Band 2 Pro from empty to full takes under 2 hours using the included proprietary charging cradle. The charger magnetically snaps to contacts on the back of the tracker.

In summary, the Huawei Band 2 Pro delivers class-leading battery life. Unless you have continuous heart rate or GPS active at all times, you can easily get 10+ days between charges, making keeping it powered a non-issue.

Pricing and Value

The Huawei Band 2 Pro delivers a tremendous value proposition for budget-focused consumers seeking an activity tracker with premium features. It retails for around $120-150, significantly undercutting the price of comparable trackers from leading brands.

For example, the Fitbit Charge 3 which offers similar workout detection, sleep tracking and heart rate monitoring to the Huawei Band 2 Pro costs $130-150. The higher-end Fitbit Charge 4 with onboard GPS like the Band 2 Pro goes for around $150-180.

Apple’s entry-level Apple Watch SE with activity tracking and heart rate starts at $279, nearly double the price of the Band 2 Pro. And the fully-featured Apple Watch 7 costs $399 and up.

Even affordable smartwatches without the Band 2 Pro’s exhaustive activity and health tracking still cost more, like the $199 Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2.

Across the board, the Huawei Band 2 Pro undercuts devices with similar capabilities by $50-100+ while still providing robust specs and features.

You simply won’t find another sub-$150 fitness tracker with continuous heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen tracking, onboard GPS, swim tracking and 10+ day battery life like the Band 2 Pro at this price point.

For budget-focused consumers who still want a fully-capable fitness and health tracker without paying premium prices, the Huawei Band 2 Pro delivers excellent value.

Conclusion

Overall, the Huawei Band 2 Pro makes an extremely compelling case as a budget-friendly fitness tracker under $150. It packs an impressive array of activity, health, and workout-tracking features into a slim, lightweight and comfortable wrist-worn device.

The Band 2 Pro goes far beyond basic step and sleep tracking to offer robust capabilities like continuous heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen sensing, onboard GPS for outdoor workouts, swimming profile and in-depth sleep stage analysis. The integrated GPS in particular, really boosts its abilities for runners and cyclists compared to most sub-$150 bands.

Excellent 12+ day battery life, even with constant heart rate tracking, removes the hassle of frequent charging. And the vibrant AMOLED display provides easy access to real-time stats and smartphone notifications right on your wrist.

While the Huawei Health software and app ecosystem lacks some of the polish and depth of Fitbit, Garmin or Apple’s platforms, it provides plenty of insights into your activity, sleep, workouts and overall health patterns. And the Band 2 Pro’s open compatibility with both iOS and Android gives it wide accessibility.

For budget-focused consumers who want a versatile fitness band with advanced tracking features that can rival top names like Fitbit and Garmin at a fraction of the price, the feature-packed Huawei Band 2 Pro is easy to recommend based on its capabilities and value. It punches well above its weight class compared to the competition.

Should you buy the Huawei Band 2 Pro?

If you’re seeking a super-affordable fitness tracker, then the Band 2 Pro is a reliable option. Featuring a robust design, helpful for cash range tracking, as exceptional battery life, the Band 2 Pro will quickly satisfy the demands of a lot of new joggers, swimmers, and bikers.

A lot more significant athletes would undoubtedly do far better to fork over a bit more, given that the Band 2 Pro’s sophisticated attributes are too unreliable to use.

Verdict

The Huawei Band 2 Pro is a game-changer for fitness enthusiasts. Its precise heart rate monitoring and GPS tracking make your workout data more accurate. With its sleek design, it’s not only functional but stylish too. The sleep tracking feature is a bonus, providing insights that could improve your rest quality.

• Pros:
  • Accurate heart rate monitoring.
  • Built-in GPS for precise tracking.
  • Stylish and comfortable design.
  • Insightful sleep tracking.
• Cons:
  • The display could be brighter for outdoor use.
  • Syncing data might take a few extra steps.
• Specifications:
  • Heart rate monitor, GPS, Sleep tracker.
  • Battery life: Up to 21 days.
  • Water and dust resistant.

The Huawei Band 2 Pro stands out with its built-in GPS and heart rate monitoring, features not commonly found in its price range. Whether running a trail or monitoring your sleep, the Huawei Band 2 Pro is an efficient companion for those keen on tracking their fitness journey.