The $25 Wyze Band is a super-lower priced fitness tracker that helps you to manipulate Wyze and Alexa-related clever domestic devices out of your wrist.
PROS:
- Affordable
- Controls different Wyze devices
- Amazon Alexa voice assist
- Long battery life
- Integrated sleep tracking
- Bright display screen
CONS:
- Slow display responsiveness
- Basic health tracking capabilities
- Only is available in black
Wyze is understood for making notably rated yet cheap smart domestic gadgets, so we were excited whilst the agency jumped into the wearables market with a fitness tracker. The Wyze Band tracks your heart fee, sleep, and steps, and puts clever home controls to your wrist for simply $24.99. It lets you remotely manipulate Wyze light bulbs, protection cameras, and clever plugs, and it has Amazon Alexa built in so that you can manage third-party smart home merchandise as well. It doesn’t fit the health monitoring prowess of the Fitbit Inspire HR or the Samsung Galaxy Fit, however it earns our Editors’ Choice for its wide range of functions for the price.
Design and Specs
The Wyze Band has an unassuming, all-black unisex design with no bodily buttons. It functions a square 0.95-inch AMOLED colour touch screen with a decision of 240 through one hundred twenty pixels. It comes with black straps: a single-pin thermoplastic polyurethane band and a conventional silicone watch-style band, each of which in shape wrists 6.1 to 8.6 inches in circumference. Wyze doesn’t presently provide the Band or its straps in any other colors.
At its thickest point, the Band measures approximately 1/2 an inch. It weighs 2.6 ounces, which I discovered comfortable to put on all day, but no longer to bed. To be fair, though, I don’t even want to sleep with hairbands round my wrist. If you’re OK wearing bracelets to bed, you ought to be quality with the Band.
As for hardware, it has a Cypress PSoC 6 dual-middle processor, 288KB of inner RAM, 8MB of external RAM, 16MB of flash memory, and two digital mics.
In phrases of battery life, Wyze says the Band can final 10 days on a unmarried fee with regular use. After wearing it for a full 24 hours, for the duration of which I tracked a run and notably examined its functions, the Band still had 93 percentage battery life, so it’s safe to say you won’t have to charge it often. Even with the display set to maximum brightness, the battery didn’t drain quickly.
The Band isn’t absolutely waterproof, but it has a 5ATM water-resistance rating, meaning it can be submerged in up to 164 toes of water for up to 10 minutes. Wyze says you could wear it when showering, however it shouldn’t be uncovered to soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, or perfumes, which can “negatively affect water seals and acoustic membranes” over time. It’s kind of hard to avoid exposing the Band to soap whilst you wear it in the shower and wash your hands approximately each two seconds because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it fared best in testing via a couple of showers and infinite hand washes.
You can also wear it whilst swimming, however no longer at the same time as diving or participating in “intensive water sports” along with scuba diving or skiing. If it comes into contact with chlorine or salt water, Wyze advises cleaning it with fresh water and drying it with a lint-free cloth to keep away from damage. The business enterprise also says you must take it off earlier than coming into a sauna or steam room.
Setup and Navigation
To get began, you first need to charge the Band, down load the Wyze app (available for Android and iOS), and sign up for an account. A handy short start guide that comes in the box offers setup and activation commands.
Pairing the Band with the Wyze app is a breeze. You click on Add a Product inside the app, choose the Wyze Band, and comply with the instructions on the display screen. Once you get it paired via Bluetooth, you enter your beginning year, height, and weight inside the app, and pick out which wrist you’re sporting the Band on.
From there, the app walks you through a brief manual on the way to navigate the watch. You can swipe up and down to access features inclusive of activities, alarms, Alexa alerts, find your telephone, heart fee, notifications, run monitoring, settings, shortcuts, and weather. When you land at the function you want, you could swipe left and proper for additional details. The watch interface is straightforward and uncluttered. It’s intuitive to use and smooth at the eyes, with a black background, white text, and colorful graphics for each function.
An onscreen Home button at the bottom of the show helps you to go lower back to the previous function or the clock face. You also can maintain down the Home button to awaken Alexa. (Note: To use the Alexa characteristic, you need to first permit it in the Wyze app, which I’ll get to below.)
The display turns off quickly, which helps keep battery life, but turns again on while you elevate your wrist or tap the screen. There are three brightness settings. When set to maximum brightness, the display is vivid and colorful.
On the downside, the display screen isn’t the most responsive. I on occasion had to tap it numerous times or supply my wrist a small shake to wake it up, and swiping felt a chunk laggy. But for $25, it’s difficult to complain.
Controlling Wyze Devices
One of the Band’s standout capabilities is its capacity to can help you control different Wyze gadgets. You can create as much as 5 shortcuts that let you do things like turn a Wyze Bulb on or off, pause Wyze Cam notifications, and manipulate a Wyze Plug, all from your wrist.
I tested this with a Wyze Bulb, which I have established in a dwelling room lamp. I created shortcuts inside the Wyze app—one to show the lamp on, and any other to show it off. When I pressed save, the app synced these shortcuts to the Band, and that they worked perfectly. With a pair swipes and taps at the Band, I was able to show my dwelling room lamp on and off.
Alexa-Enabled
Since it has Alexa constructed in, the Band helps you to manage non-Wyze gadgets together with your voice. To join the band to Alexa, you need to sign into your Amazon account through the Wyze app, which you can do with only some clicks if you already have the Amazon app for your smartphone. When putting in Alexa, the Wyze app informs you that the Band’s microphones most effective activate while you press a button to summon the digital assistant, a pleasant privacy assurance.
Once linked, you just press and keep the Band’s Home button for two seconds to begin talking to Alexa. In testing, the Alexa integration worked as promised. I even have Alexa related to an iLife A9 robotic vacuum, so I can use the virtual assistant to start cleansing jobs with my voice. Once I were given Alexa connected to the Band, I pressed the Home button and said, “Alexa, activate Zaco,” the A9’s nickname. I then genuinely had to faucet the Band’s screen to affirm I become talking approximately the A9, and the vacuum commenced up.
Fitness Features
The Band routinely tracks your average heart charge, energy burned, miles traveled, and step matter, in addition to how lengthy you sleep. You also can measure your heart price at any time.
It has an included run-tracking feature, however lacks support for other sorts of workout routines. When you click on the Run app at the Band, it counts down with the intention to start, then begins monitoring your energy, distance, heart rate, pace, and time.
The default clock face suggests the doorstep count for the day, and you can swipe to the Activity phase to see your totals for the other aforementioned metrics.
The Activity segment of the Wyze app offers more information, along with daily, weekly, and month-to-month totals for your calories, heart price, run history, sleep, and steps. In the app’s Sleep phase, you can see a graph of how much time you spent awake, in deep sleep, and in mild sleep. The Run History section indicates a listing of runs with your common pace, energy burned, distance, and tempo for each mile.
Unfortunately, the Band doesn’t display your progress towards health goals, or remind you to move if you’ve been inactive for too lengthy, standard functions you get with most health trackers that could be excellent to look added in the future.
For comparison, the Fitbit Inspire HR lets you set goals for metrics like energy, time, or distance so that the tracker signals you whilst you hit that goal. That way, you can have it notify you after you’ve reached a certain distance while running, so you don’t have to preserve checking your wrist. The Inspire HR also offers auto popularity for workout routines like running, biking, and swimming in case you forget to begin tracking manually, and offers you an estimate of your VO2 Max, or your cardio health score. You don't get those functions with the Wyze Band.
The Samsung Galaxy Fit, meanwhile, additionally offers a number of health monitoring features the Wyze Band lacks. It supports extra than 90 activities, lets you create dreams for unique workouts in the Samsung Health app, and features automatic reputation for activities just like the treadmill, running, elliptical, rowing, and dynamic exercises. You're paying more for these gadgets, however you're also getting more.
Alarms, Notifications, and Clock Customization
The Band doesn't aid downloadable apps, however it offers some beneficial built-in functionality. You can installation to 6 alarms in the Wyze app, and the Band will vibrate on the specific time. That permits it to wake you up without traumatic a companion or roommate. The Find Phone function is also handy. If you misplace your cellphone, simply press the Find Phone button at the Band, and an alarm will ring for your telephone.
The Band does an awesome job of displaying notifications out of your telephone. For incoming Coinbase notifications and Slack messages, for instance, the Band vibrates and indicates a preview on its screen. It also vibrates for phone calls and shows caller ID information. That’s a handy characteristic if you depart your smartphone in a bag or in every other room whilst running to keep away from distractions.
From the Wyze app, you may without difficulty customize the clock face, consisting of the background, show layout, and font color. There are several preset backgrounds to pick out from, or you may upload a picture out of your telephone. I simply enjoyed the clock face customization options. I used a photograph of my boyfriend and I as my background, and it looks high-quality at the display screen.
Conclusions
If you’re inside the marketplace for an entry-level fitness tracker and/or you own different Wyze or Alexa-related clever home devices you need to control out of your wrist, the Wyze Band is a first-rate choice. In many ways it's similar with the $100 Fitbit Inspire HR and Samsung Galaxy Fit, however handiest expenses 1 / 4 of the fee. Of course, the Inspire HR and Galaxy Fit have greater advanced fitness functions, but they lack the clever domestic controls the Wyze Band gives. All are strong selections depending on which functions you’re after.
If you’re new to health trackers and just want to test the waters, the Wyze Band offers you that ability, plus smart home controls, for approximately the same charge as some lattes. Its ample function set and low price earn it our Editors’ Choice.
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