After the pandemic, many of us are looking for ways to maintain or improve our health and fitness trackers are a brilliant way of doing that, providing real-time data on everything from how many steps we've walked that day to our resting heart rate.
That's why we've been reviewing a range of different fitness trackers including the Huawei Band 6, one of the most affordable trackers on the market.
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The Huawei Band 6 at a glance
The Huawei Band 6 is one of the most affordable fitness trackers on the market, retailing for just £59.99.
With a slick design and a 1.47 inch FullView Screen, it is available in four different strap colours: graphite black, forest green, amber sunrise and sakura pink.
Charged via a magnetic lock on the back of the phone, it offers up to 14 days battery life as well as speedy charging that can give two days of charge in just five minutes.
In terms of its tracking capacity, it can provide constant TruScreen 4.0 heart rate monitoring as well as keeping track of your SpO2 levels (that's your blood oxygen saturation) all day, giving alerts if your vitals go above or under certain safe levels.
There's then 96 workout modes available to track everything from the standard jog or run to more specialist activities including ball games, dance and different fitness classes. You can also set three daily activity goals to help you keep on track with your exercise and health regime.
For those who want to keep tabs on more than just exercise, the Huawei Band 6 provides tracking information on your stress levels, sleep quality and menstrual cycle, too.
Added to that, the Huawei Band 6 can act as an interface with your phone, so you can see messages, calls, notifications and weather updates as well as weather controlling your music or even taking photos using your phone's camera, from the comfort of your wrist.
How did this product make your life easier?
For a start, the Huawei Band 6 was incredibly easy to set up. From getting it out the box, it took me about 5 minutes to have figured out the main functions and synced it with my smartphone so it can tell me the weather, show up notifications and messages from my phone on the watch screen. It was also simple to set up the Huawei Health App that allows you to delve deeper into the data recorded on the tracker.
In terms of the what the tracker screen displays, there is constant heart rate monitoring as well as SpO2 tracking that monitors the oxygen saturation in your blood - if this slips chronically low this can lead to fatigue, memory loss and other health issues. While I never received an automatic alert to say my levels were low, this feature would be incredibly handy if you're prone to issues with your heart rate or SpO2 levels or need to monitor them for a medical condition.
Handily, all the features on the screen are really simple to navigate around as the tracker uses a touch-screen with nice large print that's easy to see.
The real beauty of the Huawei Band 6, though, is the breadth of workout modes it offers, meaning that whatever your preferred modes of exercise and interests, you shouldn't need a separate tracker for any other activity. While I mainly used the tracker for running, walking and cycling, you can use it for any kind of indoor or outdoor activity. Thanks to the waterproof technology, you can even take it swimming with you.
The fitness tracker does also have the option to allow the watch to auto-detect what kind of activity you are doing, saving the time of setting up your tracker in advance and making sure you capture those spur-of-the-moment bouts of energy, although like many fitness trackers, I did find this function a bit hit and miss and slow to pick up on the activity.
Would you choose this product above all others on the market?
Considering the affordable price of the Huawei Band 6, it really does stand up well against it competitors. The breadth of workout options, plus the reliable exercise tracking and the long-lasting battery make it a real heavyweight contender in the fitness tracker market.
Where it perhaps falls down is that, unlike many popular fitness trackers, this one does not include a GPS so if it's important for you to map your exercises, you'll need to take your phone with you too.
While certainly cheerful in look, it's not as elegant looking as some of the pricier trackers on the market that can be mistaken for a normal watch. Made in matte silicone, I personally found it quite uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time but then I have bony, awkward wrists that mean I generally struggle with a lot of watches.
What changes would you make to this product?
The look and feel of the watch could definitely benefit from a slight upgrade for me.
Also, some of the more complex features of the watch did prove a bit confusing or unreliable. For example, the stress level monitoring is a feature designed to tell you how your stress levels change over the course of the day/week. This is measured by asking you to answer a series of seemingly random questions that generates a particular stress measurement. Not only did this same a pretty arbitrary way of measuring something, I tended to find the stress level was high when I was relatively relaxed and then took a nosedive as I was frantically rushing to a deadline.
Would you recommend this product?
Overall, if you're looking for a cheap, functional, easy-to-navigate watch to track your health and fitness, I'd definitely recommend to Huawei Band 6. Considering the price, it has some really nifty features, such as the breathing exercises function that helps you take a moment out of your day to walk you through a mindful breathing exercise that proved really handy when I was having a panicky day.
What's more, the fitness tracking, when compared against the apps I usually use on my phone to track exercise, proved very really reliable and the fact you can track up to 96 types of workouts is really impressive.
If you're a serious exercise fanatic who wants an intuitive tracker that monitors every last detail to help keep track of your progress, there's probably a better fitness tracker out there for you. But if you want something simple and straight forward to use at an affordable cost - perhaps if you've never had a tracker before - I think this makes an ideal choice.