Top Fitness bands in India 2018

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Amazon Great Indian Sale: 22nd to 24th May. 

Fitness bands are the new cools to buy. Whether you want it for your personal use or to gift your dear ones, it’s a great a gadget, helping you maintain a healthy and fit lifestyle.

Recently, the market has come up with pocket friendly and practical smart bands and it’s improving very fast.
What things fitness bands do for you??

Fitness band track your activities, keep records of it, suggest and reminds you to be active.

With the help of various sensors(as discussed below) it recognises the type of activities you are doing, whether walking, hiking, running, jogging, or swimming.

Another great thing fitness trackers do is recording and analysing your sleep. It counts hours you sleep, duration of deep sleep or light sleep.

It also warns you whenever it senses that you are idle for a long time.

It tells your calories burnt, but most of the time it is not that accurate as you have to feed manually like calories you took in.

It’s a great tool to keep you motivated for fitness and physical activities.
How does your fitness band works?

There is a small device(dail) on fitness band that connects to your phone through bluetooth.

The band comes with dedicated app installed in your smartphone that sync up with the band.

The sensors in the band measures your activities like your steps, stores and displays in the app.

Some of the new fitness bands also shows notifications for incoming messages, whatsapp, calls etc. And also vibrates to alert you.

Technologies inside a fitness trackers??

All the fitness trackers work with the help of various sensors. Like to track your sleep, to count steps, to record temperature and heart rate.

Here check out some of the sensors used in your( to be yours) fitness bands:

Altimeter

It’s a height measurement sensor.

It tells you numbers of steps of stairs you covered and number of floors you ascend by measuring height.

Accelerometer

This one is used at step counter.

It tells steps you have moved by your hands movement.

Heart rate monitor

It measure heart rate by focusing LED light to your vein. Some measures heart by rate by measuring variations in impedance between skin.

In this way, the fitness band shows variations of your heart rate through out the day, weeks or months.
GPS(in advance version) : It gives more accurate data of your running, walking and more along with place.
More the number of sensors used, costlier your fitness band is.
As you knew the inside story, let’s check out the outside one.

Would love to discuss one of the most asked question about fitness bands.

Does fitness band make you fit? 

No, it does not make you fit. It helps you to stay fit. You have to strive to be fit.

Just wearing a fitness band is not going to make you fit, unless you change your lifestyle. It’s not a magic band. Hope you got my point.

What are some good brands of fitness bands available in the market? 

Xiaomi

Boltt

Fitbit

Nike

Lenevo

And many more, it all depends on your budget. There are costlier and economical both varieties available. Just like you have wrist watches of all range.

Another much asked question..

Is fitness band same as smart watch? 

No, these two are different things. A fitness band is much sleeker than smart watch. It’s just like a band, say a friendship band.

Smart watch versus fitness band. 

 

Battery life

Smart bands wins. It has much higher battery life when compared to smart watches.
Smart watches, one to two days at max. You need to charge everyday.
Fitness bands,  those with more number of sensors like gps last for a week, others up to 30 days,  like Mi band hrx.
Size

Smart bands are much narrower, sleek and light when compared to smart watches. You would never feel that you are wearing it.

 

Sleep tracking

Fitness bands are much better for sleep tracking. As you have to charge smart watches daily, Charge kb kroge, if you sleep wearing it on.
Water resistant

Both Smart watches and bands are water resistant.

But, the bands or straps of fitness bands are more durable and perform better as they are mostly made of silicone rubbers.

 

Comfort

Smart bands are way much comfortable. So much that at times, you forget that you are wearing something.

 

Notification

Smart watches wins, it gives much more notifications and you can also reply to notification.  But,  you can go for complicated reply, hi, hello,  ok is okay.

Smart bands only shows notifications, you can’t reply from there.

 

Price

Smart bands are much affordable while price of smart watches is much higher.

You can have smart bands from Lenevo, Xiaomi under 2000.

I don’t think smart watches are practical, maybe with time they would develop.
Now, let’s check out the best performing fitness bands in India.

Let’s check out the best selling and best performing fitness bands in 2018. 

 

#1. Xiaomi Mi Fitness Band. 

It was the first fitness band introduced by Xiaomi. Like most of the mi products the band outshines both in look and performance when compared with other bands in the same price range.

It’s simply the best under 1000 fitness band to go for. Before I discuss the goodness let me share the downside, it doesn’t not have the screen and heart rate sensor. Again, given the price it’s not justifiable to expect these features in an under 1000 fitness band.

Now the good points.

The best thing that impressed me with this band is its impressive and unmatched battery life. Xiaomi say it offers 30 days battery life,  but in reality to get around 40 days, more than what it promised.

Things that it does for you..

Sleep tracking, quality and length of your sleep, daily sleep pattern.

Steps counter

Fitness level, by keeping track of your activities.

Call alert, it vibrates and lights up when some calls you, making sure you never miss important phone calls on a noisy day.

Unlock phone

No need to enter password or pattern when mi band is on your wrist, you just neex to swipe and access your phone.

Locate itself

Forgot where you placed your band, its app help you locate the band by lightning and vibrating it up.

 

#2. Mi band HRX edition. 

The successor of the above basic Mi band. Before I share my experience with this band, let me share the reason behind it’s name HRX. I often see people asking this question on forums like Quora. Well, HR stands for Hritik Roushan and X for Xiaom. Why so? Cause the fitness freek HR does advertising for it. See..

(Image source: http://mobile.mi.com/in/mi-band-hrx/ )

Now my experience, simply amazing again!

It has many improvements. The band comes with and OLED display that shows time, steps, distance travelled and other important stuffs. Just below the screen is a round serrated button lot allow you toggle between various screen. Just tap the button.

It shows up the time with just a small jerk of your wrist.

I found it more accurate in terms of counting steps. On examining the reason behind that, I came to know that this band work on pedometer( accelerometer) while the previous version made use of photosensitive sensor.

Auto reminder

Another wise feature of this band that helps me stay fit is by reminding me whenever I lay or sit idle for a long time. I feel this very helpful as on my shop, I sit on counter for a long. And a simple buzz from this fitness tracker make your day, as you realise some is there with you all the time in your journey to stay fit.

It is splash proof almost water proof with IP67 rating. So you dont need to worry while washing off your hand, or enjoying the rain and sea beaches.

Better at notification

You get to know whether you have call, whatsapp messages, text or email.  You can set for the app you want to get notification like I have set notification for important apps like gmail, Quora leaving the less important ones. So, you can set as per your wish.

Regarding batter life, you need to charge it once in around 20 days,  that it.

The built of the band is also very user friendly. It so light that after two,  three days, I almost didn’t feel that I am having a wearable device on my wrist.

The deattachable design makes charging convenient also you get the independence to change the strap colour if you want to.

The fasting is also firm enough to keep it intact as you workout harder.
The price of band is also very pocket friendly, I bet you can’t have a better fitness band under 1500 than Xiaomi HRX.

 

#3. Mi band 2 fitness trackers

(Image source: http://mobile.mi.com/in/miband2/)

(Presently not selling on Amazon) 

Mi band 2 is an improved version of Mi band HRX with an added heart rate monitor.

A heart rate monitoring gives much better tracking of your activities like swimming, cycling and workout.

All the other features are similar to xiaomi hrx edition.

I found its battery life litter lesser when compared to hrx, it justifiable too,  as it supports heart rate monitor. Even though its battery backup is much impressive and goes for around 20 to 25 days, much a head than that of other heart rate fitness tracker.

The price is again very pocket friendly. It’s truly one of the best fitness band with heart rate tracker under 2000.

These are the three fintness trackers from Xiaomi. Before you move on to read the reviews of other fitness bands, let me tell you Xiaomi band stands a head of various higher priced fitness bands from other brands.

But, the main problem of Xiaomi bands( a some other good bands) is their availability. These are mostly out of stock, probably due to high demand.

#4. Boltt fitness tracker

I used this fitness tracker just before trying Mi band 2 as I was unable to buy Mi band 2 due to its unavailability on Mi store.

The lookwise and interface it’s a copy of Xiaomi mi band, same deattachable dial. Everything is same, but not the performances( also the price).

Though, this Boltt band wins on price ground, it lags behind xiaomi band awfully in terms of battery backup and performance.

You get a battery backup of around a week. And I also noticed some problem with pairing at times.

On plus side the band has a heart rate tracker, at much lower price than xiaomi band 2.

Rest all the features are same like sleep tracker, step counter, activity tracker, alarm, notification, nutrition guide and coach.

I would go for this cheaper substitute of mi band 2 if you have price restrictions and also it’s much easily available that mi band 2( mostly out of stock).

#5. GOQii Fitness trackers

Though price little higher, GOQii is another popular band in the market.
The greatest plus point with this band that makes is so popular is its personalised coach and doctor. Unlike other bands it’s not AI based, but you get real human coach.

You also have free subscription of three months after which you have to pay for the subscription.

It’s realistic on your calories count. And the food picture uploading featuring is very fast. I just clicked what I ate and drink through out the day and the coach did the calculation. Based on my food habits, they helped my in improving it by including salad, fruits and nuts in my daily intake.

This was something amazing.

You should go for this band if you are really concerned with your fitness or like you want to shed your weight or get six pack abs in stipulated time frame.

I found the data provided by it is more accurate, whether it’s step counter, distance,  sleep tracking or heart rate.

The look and build of band is also good, looks quite fuller and cool. The material is soft.

The dail is deattachable, just remove it and plug into usb point. You don’t need separate charges for it, just plug it into normal USB socket of your laptop, power bank or charger.

It’s water resistant( and not water proof).

On the down side, I noticed that the screen size is smaller,  it should be somewhat wide. And battery backup is around a week( at max.).

I would say, this is more a realistic fitness band for seriously determined souls, rather than just adding a fun/coolness factor to your life.