Plot Twist: I come from an exceptionally active family, not that you’d know that if you ever saw me trying to walk up lots of stairs or park run, but I do. My parents are both overachieving extreme marathon runners and when they aren’t actually running an extreme distance, they are training for one… Me? Yeah I don’t do any of that – every now and then I watch my parents train and just that is enough to tire me out.
Even though most of my interests have always been sedentary activities I never used to have a problem because I was a full time dance teacher, so when I got home at the end of a day it was okay if all I wanted to do was either read, play games, record YouTube videos or watch Netflix, but now that I spend my days behind my computer, it’s starting to be less okay and it’s becoming more apparent, every time I hobble upstairs like a 90-year-old, that I need to start being more active and getting fit – so I found the best place to start this new journey of mine, finding the perfect fitness tracker.
While I might be new to exercising, I’m no stranger to fitness devices, both my parents have Garmin watches, I’ve had 2 different Fitbits when I was still dancing which I loved and at the beginning of this year I moved over to the Apple Watch NIKE edition which pretty much only leaves my wrist when it needs to charge. Sam is also a lover of Fitbit and there are a bunch of reviews about their various bands here on the blog. For me, fitness trackers are sort of like Pokemon and I have this deep urge to catch them all, so when I got the change to try out the Huawei Band 2 Pro, I jumped… not literally because I’m not that far into my journey yet, but on the inside.
Cue the Huawei Band 2 Pro
Before we go into all the features that it offers and how well those features actually perform I want to tell you guys where I see this watch fitting in:
I see the Huawei Band 2 Pro as a perfect starter fitness watch.
It offers just enough of everything for you to get into the groove of wearing a fitness tracker. You’ll get a taste of the features offered by most fitness bands and discover which ones you love most. The Band 2 Pro also comes in at under R1000 – which is a price tag that is hard to beat in the fitness wearables world.
Let’s start off with how it feels and looks:
What I like:
It has a very sleek, simple design with just a touch of silver around the black and white watch face.
There aren’t any visible buttons, instead you use a touch bar on the watch face itself.
Although you can’t change out the straps they are so incredibly soft to the touch. The straps are available in black, blue and red.
It is absolutely weightless – you can very easily forget that you are even wearing a watch at all and to be honest, it just looks really good on your wrist.
What I don’t like:
Because there aren’t any buttons on the watch and it relies entirely on the touchpad to operate I had a LOT of trouble switching between screens to either stop my workout or even just to check my heart rate while my hands were sweaty. In comparison with other fitness watches, this one really doesn’t handle even the slightest bit of moisture on your hands when you’re trying to operate it.
Some other cool features you might dig:
The Huawei Band 2 Pro comes with built-in GPS tracking, something that most of the watches in its price-range just don’t have. That means that if you’re someone who cares about accuracy for pace and distance and you don’t want to run with your smartwatch in your pocket, then you don’t have to – simply put on your watch and you’re good to go, after you are back around your phone again the watch will transfer all that GPS data to your phone so you can check how far you ran, how fast, where your problem areas are and the route that you ran.
It’s water resistant so if you want to go do a few laps in the pool and still have it count towards your tracked activity you can and you shouldn’t run into any issues (just make sure you have a towel handy to dry your hands before trying to operate the watch again).
The band has a built-in Heart Rate monitor. This is something I LOVE – I’m almost addicted to watching my heart rate when I work out (anything to take my mind off of actually working out I guess) and a lot of entry-level fitness devices just don’t have this. I wouldn’t take the reading as 100% accurate, but from testing it and comparing it to other fitness watches its pretty much always out by between 10-15 BPM. Again, this is a starter watch and the variation just isn’t that far out that you need to worry. You’ll still be able to ensure you’re increasing your heart rate and adapt your work out accordingly.
The Band 2 Pro also boasts a bunch more “novelty” type features:
You get smart notifications directly on the watch so that you can see if you are receiving a call, a message or if your alarm is going off, all without having to get your phone out of your pocket – handy if you suffer from a lot of “phantom vibrates” like I tend to.
If you wear it to bed you can use it to track your sleep and use that data to see when your optimal wake-up and go to sleep times are. You can also set it so that your wake-up alarm causes the watch to vibrate on your wrist – great if you need a little help waking up in the mornings.
You can also track four different types of exercises on the watch itself and after your workout, you can see detail stats about it, those types are Walking, Running, Cycling and Swimming.
All in all, I am pretty happy with the Huawei Band 2 Pro and I think that for its price and what it has to offer – it’s the perfect fitness tracker to start off with. They say that you will get up to 21 days of daily use before you need to charge it, but realistically you should get about 9 to 10. The watch and its app are compatible with both iOS and Android phones and honestly it was a breeze to set up without even looking at the manual, the app isn’t as innovative or groundbreaking as I would like, but it’s also far from the worst.
Would I suggest it as an upgrade for someone who already has a fitness watch or someone who is a serious athlete? No, but for someone like me, someone who is slowly getting their toes wet in the world of fitness and just wants something to help motivate and keep them on track? Definitely.
So with this, I welcome you to join me on my fitness journey, but not right now, now I’m tired and I think my journey is leading me to Donuts, Starbucks and a well-deserved nap.
Do you use a fitness tracker and if so, what features can’t you live without?
Disclosure: The Huawei Band 2 Pro was gifted to Constantine104 when she attended the fitness wearable’s launch event in South Africa.
