Half fitness band, half bluetooth headset and not much else. Huawei’s comfy effort is quite lacking.
Fitness wearables are still so new to the market that classifying them is a bit of a pain, especially for us reviewers. We have the likes of the Apple and Huawei Watch, which are smartwatches; there as an extension of your smartphone so you’ll spend less time reaching into your pocket to see a notification from a WhatsApp group you’ve been meaning to delete. You then have the Fitbit Surge and Microsoft Band, with dedicated features and sensors to cater to your fitness needs and wants. This isn’t necessarily a complaint; if a wearable can do everything at a master level we’d classify it in their own league.
Huawei’s TalkBand B2 is more a fitness band but it really tries to be that notification centre that it is not. What makes the TalkBand B2 unique is the detachable bluetooth headset that doubles as your screen. But apart from that it is pretty lacklustre and key things seem to have been omitted with a bigger emphasis on the bluetooth headset.
DESIGN
Comfort is the make or break for all wearables, unless they can make up for it stupendously with unique features or advanced refinement of existing key ones. The TalkBand B2 is a comfortable device to wear with the rubber strap more desirable for those who want to use it more as a fitness wearable. There’s the more stylish leather band that looks great but isn’t really recommended for a really sweaty session at the gym. The leather option also comes with a screen that has a light hue to it. While it gives off a facade of a gold face (making it look quite classy actually) it attracts fingerprints and ruins said facade. The rubber strap version does not have this problem with the hue not present.
The TalkBand B2 isn’t going to win any beauty pageants as it’s more counting on you seeing what’s on the inside. We’re of course referring to the bluetooth headset. It’s easy enough to remove the headset from its resting point but putting it on can be a massive pain at first. Of course no one has the same shaped ear, if you find someone who does, well one of you is encroaching on the other’s dimension. With a few minutes of fiddling around with our ears, it gets a lot easier to instinctively put it on when receiving a call. A bluetooth headset is meant to free your hands up and that’s exactly what it does. It was incredibly useful to use when driving or having to get mucky with some dishes. Although you don’t have to worry about getting it wet as it has an IP57 water- and dust-resistance rating.
SCREEN
The screen is extremely deceiving, it seems to have a lot of real estate but the real screen is around 50% of what you expect. A screen within a screen is what you’re getting here. Quite disappointing but the band has that rectangular shape to accommodate the bluetooth headset, so it makes sense. The display itself is minimal, showing only black and white with pixel graphic. Not awe-inspiringly gorgeous but clear enough to read information displayed. A bit too bright at night especially when we accidentally pressed the home button and woke up to its glaring display. An ambient sensor would have been welcomed, especially for a device that boasts a sleep sensor (you can’t adjust the brightness). But it is readable in sunlight with excellent viewing angles, very handy when going out for a run and your arm can only muster so much energy.
PERFORMANCE
Call quality isn’t as clear as you’d be used to on an actual handset but it’s clear enough to relay what you’re trying to say and vice versa. We did notice that sometimes it can drop but by no means was it detrimental, not every phone call you make is perfect, bluetooth headset or not. It needs to be mentioned though that you shouldn’t really use the headset when going for a run – it doesn’t sit firmly enough in your ear and is prone to falling off!
As a fitness tracker it performs well to a decent degree of accuracy. It tracks running, walking and cycling all in the one physical activity option. It automatically detects what activity you are doing with the six-axis motion sensor. Starting your workout is easy enough with just a simple three second hold of the screen to get started. We had problems with the sleeping features unfortunately; it activates automatically when it detects you’ve been prone for a while but sometimes it fails to even recognise you were asleep.
With a basic screen the battery life is long lasting, more so than the OLED screen Microsoft Band 2. Huawei says you can get up to six days of battery life out of it and we more or less got that, as we opted to use our actual phones to pick up a call, using the bluetooth headset uses more of the battery of course.
SOFTWARE
What it fails to do is offer a variety in terms of notifications. At its current price we’d expect to be notified from all forms of communication. WhatsApp, emails, text messages are not available for notification, disappointing from a device that costs £99.99. The Honor Band Z1 has the ability to notify us on all fronts and has the same fitness features.
There isn’t much detail in terms of fitness analysis on the wearable itself, the Huawei Wear app displays all of that information. It is broken down into categories; fitness and sleep. The design of it is really easy to understand and navigate, workouts are broken up in different coloured bar charts and so is the sleep tracker. The sleep tracker shows when you’re falling asleep, in light and deep sleep. Which then gets aggregated into a sleep quality score (when it works).
In terms of interface, the app and the band itself are fast and intuitive. You won’t get confused flicking through either and they can keep up with your nimble fingers. A nice little feature for Huawei device users is you can use the TalkBand B2 as a camera shutter button.
CONCLUSION
We’re still unsure what to classify the TalkBand B2. Is it a smartwatch? Fitness band? We’re finding it hard because it doesn’t necessarily excel in either area. It’s decent enough to track your workout but as a notification centre it’s below average and as a sleep tracker it doesn’t turn up sometimes. For it’s price we recommend looking elsewhere. You can get the Pebble Time for nearer to the TalkBand B2’s price if you look hard enough and for fitness freaks there’s the FitBit Charge HR.
VERDICT
Not much of an extension of your phone and not a complete fitness tracker. While it does perform well for actual workouts, the sleep tracker seems to be temperamental. There isn’t notifications for WhatsApp, texts and emails but if you spend more of your time driving, the bluetooth headset does come in handy with decent quality calls.
SPEC
OS Compatibility Android 4.0+, iOS 7+
Screen 0.73-inches
Sensors Sleep, Pedometer, Running,
Connectivity Bluetooth
Dimensions 11.88 x 22.0 x 242.85 mm
Battery 95 mAh