If you want a simple fitness tracker that can also send you alerts, Amazfit is a brand name you should know about. The brand is made by Huami, which used to make cheap and fun wearables for Xiaomi, like the excellent Mi Band 5. Now, the company is back with a new tracker that has a feature that Apple made a big deal about with the Apple Watch 6. The Amazfit Band 5 is looked at.
The Amazfit Band 5 is a fitness tracker that is easy on the wallet and looks like many others that have come before it. The main tracker has a 1.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen display with full colour. All the sensors are housed in a polycarbonate case. The Band 5 has a black, soft-touch, adjustable TPU band that goes around your wrist.
Features:
- Inexpensive
- Health monitoring features
- Amazon Alexa
The band can be changed if you want something more colourful, and a quick search on Amazon showed that there are a lot of different colours to choose from. The included band’s many holes made it easy to find a comfortable fit, and the Band 5’s light weight meant I hardly noticed I was wearing it. Even though the Amazfit Band 5’s screen is hard to see, it has a set of metrics you can look at after you’ve done an activity in one of its 11 sport modes.
The continuous heart rate sensor not only keeps track of your BPM throughout your workout, but it also tells you how many minutes you spend in different heart rate zones, from easy to hard to anaerobic. These numbers seemed like a streamlined version of Fitbit’s Activity Zone Minutes, which were first introduced on the Fitbit Charge 4.
Based on your age and your resting heart rate, the Charge 4 can figure out your target heart rate zones and track your progress towards your goal of spending 150 minutes per week in that zone. Since the Amazfit Band 5 doesn’t have GPS built in, I had to bring my phone with me to map my outdoor activities. I liked that the Zepp app let me see my bike route along with the rest of my stats.
How to get Amazfit Band 5?
It even showed me where I slowed down to get a better view of the ocean and where I sped up on straightaways. Those who like to do a lot of outdoor activities might be better off with one of the best sports watches with GPS (and in some cases, on-board music storage), but the Amazfit Band 5 is fine for counting steps, keeping track of calories burned, and measuring heart rate.