Huawei has announced two new fitness bands to take the fight to Fitbit. The Huawei Band 2 and Band 2 Pro don’t bring anything new to smartband design, although they look like they will get the job done.
Functionally, the Huawei Band 2 is a regular fitness band. It packs the usual heartbeat sensor and three axis accelerometer. It also has sleeptracking capabilities.
As the “pro” version of the fitness tracker, the Huawei Band 2 Pro includes some new technologies from Huawei. It fits a VO2Max counter that measures oxygen intake, informing the wearer of their ability to transport oxygen to muscles during exercise. Huawei claims the tracker is 95 percent accurate, but we’re going to take that number with a grain of salt.
There’s also Huawei’s TruSleep tracker on the Band 2 Pro; which is apparently better than the regular sleep tracking on the Band 2. How this is different isn’t actually explained.
Finally, the Pro is fitted with its own GPS system. This allows it to more closely track runs and distance, but has quite an effect on the battery life. If we’re reading the specifications right it goes from 21 days down to 3.5 hours with the GPS turned on.
One thing that the Huawei Band 2 has over the Fitbits that it is trying to compete with is water resistance. These are rated for five atmospheres of pressure, which is more than enough to guard against splashes or count laps in a swimming pool.
There’s no release date or price for the Huawei Band 2 just yet.
[Source: Huawei]
