Rating – 3.5
Realme Band Key Features
Realme Band Key Features- Only Android (5.0 and above)
- Cricket mode, especially for the Indian audience
- USB Direct Charge
- 2.4 cm Large Color Touch Screen
- Fitness activity tracking
- Personalized Dial Face
- Heart rate monitoring
- Sleep-monitoring
- IP68 Water-resistant
Realme Band Vs Mi BandÂ
As per Realme Band Review, The competition is getting heated up. Smart bands, smartwatches, and other wearables are everywhere. Mi Band is one of the established players in this segment. Realme Band is the closest competitor to the Mi Band 3i, which is a budget version of the popular Mi Band 3. So how does Realme Band compare against Mi Band 3i or Mi Band 3 and is it worth going for it when you have so many other smart bands in the market? Let’s check it out.
Screen & Design of Realme Band
The Realme band weighs about 20 grams, and the wrist strap is removable. The band is available in Black, Yellow, and green. In general, we do not comment on color since it is an individual choice. Though the price of the band is pretty less, the band doesn’t look cheap. It looks like a premium fitness tracker, with a 2.4 cm colored-display. You will have a good feeling once it goes on to your wrist.
You will not have any trouble reading the screen under sunlight, and the brightness is adjustable through the Realme Link app (not many budget trackers come with an adjustable brightness and night brightness settings). Honest Realme Band Review has given here.
You can also turn on the screen automatically by raising your wrist. Like in premium smartwatches, you can adjust this option according to the time of the day- you don’t want this feature turned on during your sleep and other focused times.
We liked that nice touch button on display- something like the iPhone’s assistive touch button. The touch button is something new and comes in handy when you hate swiping every time you want to navigate through menus. I say this because swiping on a smartphone is not the same as swiping on a smart band. We have a pretty small screen to swipe, and it becomes irritating to operate your finger on such a small screen. So a virtual button like the one in Realme helps you to navigate through menus by a simple tap. That’s cool!
You also have personalized dial faces. For a budget smart band, this is a useful feature. The Realme Band comes with five beautiful in-built watch faces. Try them and see what looks best for you.
Fitness tracking & Sports
Realme Band has got the required sensors such as a 3-axis accelerometer and a heart rate monitor to track your steps, distance, fitness activity, and heart-rate. However, you can’t track movements on non-flat tracks such as stairs.
Heart rate monitoring
You can measure resting heart rate and other metrics such as average heart rate. You can track your cardiac health performance over a period of time in the Realme Link App. All heart rate monitors vary a bit, and sometimes it also depends on how you are putting the band on your wrist. So there is nothing to complain or pit against another tracker since you can expect a slight degree of variance with all the trackers- The Realme band is in the range of the desired accuracy.
Sleep monitoring
Sleep tracking has become the most common feature in present-day trackers. Realme Band can track you deep, REM, and light sleep modes. It can track heart rate too while you are asleep if you turn on continuous heart rate monitoring (a feature that demands more battery power). Sleep metrics are available in the Realme Link App.
Similar to Noise ColorFit Pro 2, we don’t have built-in GPS or connected GPS using smartphone GPS. However, this doesn’t mean you won’t get distance or fitness activity metrics. The accelerometer helps you to get the metrics you are looking for. Having GPS gives you advanced features and more accuracy. However, you should be looking into smartwatches with built-in GPS or the ones that can piggyback your smartphone’s GPS (you need to carry your smartphone along with the tracker in this case).
The Realme Band features 9 Sports Modes that help you track fitness activities such as walking, running, trail hiking, yoga, cricket, and more. Well, we don’t know how cricket mode is so different from other modes. Probably it is more of an advertising gimmick for Indian cricket fans than anything else.
App monitoring and Smartphone integration
The Realme Link App is readily available in the Google Play store. All you need to do is download the app and link it to your band by following on-screen instructions. As mentioned in the start, you don’t have iOS support for this band.
Once you link the app, you can start receiving notifications from your smartphone to the fitness tracker from applications such as WhatsApp, SMS, Instagram, etc. I love this feature as I can check my smartphone notifications without unlocking the phone. You can see weather updates directly on your tracker screen. The only drawback with Realme Band is that you can’t control the notifications like replying to messages (in Apple Watch, you can use Siri to respond to a notification).
The Realme Band can be used to control music playing on your smartphone. You can control music by pausing or playing the next song directly through the band.
Battery life
The Realme Band promises to give you up to 9 days of battery life under normal usage. The battery life will go down to 7-8 days if you turn on continuous heart-rate monitoring. Battery life in Realme Band could have been higher in my opinion since Realme Fashion Watch gives 10 days of battery life and is a smartwatch, not a band. Mi Band 3i gives 20 days of battery life.
Final Verdict
The Realme Band got a perfect debut. We wrote about Mi Band 3i, which is in the same segment as Realme Band, and we feel Realme Band has got everything covered. Notification support could have been better as in Mi Band 4 (high in price compared to Realme Band). However, I won’t hesitate to buy a budget band that comes with multiple sport modes, customizable watch faces, USB direct charge, and a color touch screen. Give it a try