The wearable market may have slowed a bit in recent times, the primary news being the demise of Jawbone, but companies like Huawei which target the low-end of the segment are still very much active. The Chinese company has announced two new wearables in the Band 2 and Band 2 Pro, with an emphasis on long battery life and heart-rate monitoring.
Waterproof OLED Displays
The Huawei Bands are seeing a major redesign, moving away from the circular watch display of its predecessor to a more conventional fitness tracker look. Both feature PMOLED displays, a choice of red, black and blue, as well as waterproofing up to 50 meters (or resistance of up to 5 ATM).
Both feature the goodies you come to expect in a fitness tracker of this kind, such as heart-rate monitoring, and other distance related statistics. Both can track your heartbeat all day long.
Band 2 Pro Features
The Band 2 Pro however comes with a much more diverse set of tracking and training tools. The chief among them is VO2 Max, which shows you how much oxygen you precisely need during an activity to transfer as energy. Such a detail would invariably be a motivating factor during workouts, especially with an accuracy of nearly 95%.
Further, the Band 2 Pro comes with GPS, Running Coach, and breathing and sleeping tools. One in particular, TruSleep, measures all the stages of your sleep. Needless to say, both come with notification, alarms and reminder options that let you know if you have activity on your phone. You need the Huawei Health app to do that.
Battery Life and Price
Batteries can last up to 21 hours with heart-rate monitoring on, but it drops to 3.5 hours with GPS connectivity on.
As for the pricing, the Band 2 is available for around $45, while the Band 2 Pro about $60.
