Huawei takes a unique approach to fitness tracking wrist bands

When you see it on the shelf you probably won’t think too much is different about the Huawei Talkband B1 and a whole bunch of other fitness trackers on the market – Jawbone, Fitbit, Fitbug, Garmin – the list goes on. So – what makes this thing unique?  Talk-time.

In so many ways this is just another fitness tracker, and in doing that it’s pretty much standard fare – in fact it brings together a lot of the most useful features of many.

Out of the box, it’s tracking your steps.  When paired via Bluetooth with your smartphone and with the TalkBand B1 app you can monitor your daily steps and sleep at a glance.  The app is very good, a great fresh design and a single page overview for all the vital information on a given day.

Impressive for me was the automatic sleep detection – as a regular Jawbone user I’m used to pressing a button to initiate “sleep” mode, the Talkband did this automatically.  Now while it wasn’t quite as accurate – I certainly never miss tracking a sleep because I don’t need to press a button.

(Huawei TalkBand B1 – Alongside the Garmin Vivofit)

On the downside though, jump up out of bed and put the Talkband on the bathroom sink while you have a shower and that’s likely going to count as sleep – so my sleep times always seemed longer with the Talkband.

As with all these devices, these “issues” are not really relevant when you have just one band.  If you compare day to day to another band you’ll find your sleep is over or under reported regularly, as are your steps – but the point is to have a consistent measure.

The Talkband B1 also has a screen on it, showing the time, your steps, calories burned and sleep hours – each accessed with the press of a button.

Fitness band alone, it’s a 4 star rating.  Well worth considering.

There’s a second button though.  That’s the one which sets this apart from the rest.  Press it, and the little black “screen” pops out of the wrist band – and it becomes your in-ear Bluetooth headset.  Make and take calls right there.

Just like any other small Bluetooth earpiece it has those plastic curves to try and fit into your ear and sit comfortably.

Your phone is paired all the time, so your wrist vibrates when you get a call or walk too far away from your phone – the number calling is displayed on your wrist and you’ve never had it so easy.

As someone who doesn’t favour the in-ear style Bluetooth, mainly because I really don’t want to see people walking around with them on – unless you’re on a call – this is perfect.   It’s with you all the time, take it out only when you need it – bingo!

I love the idea, for me it was hard to really get a comfortable fit in the ear – but that happens with almost all of these things for me – I prefer an over-the-ear hook also.

Oh, and the best part – no charging attachment required – the band has USB built in – a flick of the end and it plugs right into your USB for charging.

The design is great, it works like a breeze out of the box and for $179 it’s pretty darn good value. Available at Dick Smith, works with Android and iOS.

[schema type=”review” rev_name=”Huawei TalkBand B1″ rev_body=”Yet another fitness tracker, but with a twist – its also a Bluetooth earpiece” author=”Trevor Long” pubdate=”2014-08-25″ user_review=”4″ min_review=”0″ max_review=”5″ ]