Back in August, two of my fitness wearables inexplicably gave up the ghost, leaving my wrist naked and me without the heart rate and sleep tracking I had grown so accustomed to over the past three years. So when Huawei asked if I were interested in testing out their new Huawei Band 4 prior to their launch, I quickly agreed. I was hoping to find a worthy replacement and for the most part the Huawei Band 4 did what it was supposed to.
Available in three colorways (Graphite Black, Amber Sunrise, and Sakura Pink) with a 0.96-inch customizable color display, the Huawei Band 4’s current retail price is P1,890. But due to the Singles Day (11.11) sales on Lazada, the price could further drop to P1,699 — or if you buy between 12 midnight to 2 am on November 11, you could get it at P1,134!But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Here’s my vlog review of the Huawei Band 4.
My favorite feature of the Huawei Band 4 is its USB-based plug-and-charge. No need to scrounge up proprietary charging cables and bases, because you can just plug the watch face directly into a USB port. Despite this, it still retains a 5ATM water resistance.
More features:
9 workout modes – outdoor running, outdoor walking, outdoor cycling, elliptical machine, indoor running, indoor walking, indoor cycling, rowing machine, free training
- records distance, speed, steps, heart rate, calories, stride frequency, route, and more
- displays five heart rate zones and amount of time spent in each zone
Advanced heart rate and sleep monitoring
- TruSeen 3.5 for high-performance, high-accuray, and power-efficient heart rate monitoring with alerts for high heart rate
- TruSleep 2.0 sleep detection monitors sleep structure and quality to track sleeping habits and make recommendations to improve sleep
Smart notifications
- get notifications on the watch from smartphone
The major caveat here is that the Huawei Health app which the Huawei Band 4 pairs to on your smartphone is not that user-friendly.
I think that the app and band are designed to work seamlessly with Huawei smartphones, but not so much for Android and iPhone. The Huawei Health app will install on iOS devices, but you cannot select customizable watch faces with the iOS app. On Android devices, before Huawei Health opens, it asks you to install Huawei Mobile Services. I had trouble installing HMS from the Google Play store because it was listed as not available in the Philippines, so I had to sideload it (download an installer from a third-party site).
The Huawei Health app has the metrics you will be looking for re: sleep, heart rate, steps (but merges step count from smartphone and watch so this may be overstated), but it’s difficult to sync that information out to other apps like Google Health. It also doesn’t link to Strava, which is disappointing for those of us who like putting their training sessions up on that app. (If it ain’t on Strava it didn’t happen…) And forget about downloading your sessions as FIT files for analysis on third-party tools like Training Peaks.
All these issues could potentially be solved with a software update and a refresh of the Huawei Health app. I certainly think the Huawei Band 4’s hardware records quality data; it just needs better processing on the Huawei Health app or a way to get that data out to other fitness services and apps.
But if you’re not tied to other fitness apps and are looking for your first fitness tracker that has sleep, heart rate, and workout tracking features coupled with a wallet-friendly price, the Huawei Band 4 is hard to beat.
