Realme has already proved it can make compelling smartphones, so the brand is pretty confident now that it can bring the same magic to other product categories as well.
Realme wants to be known as a tech lifestyle brand, which is why the company is planning to launch several new wearables and IoT products in 2020 such as a smartwatch, smart TV, and smart speaker. To start things off this year, Realme has launched its first-ever fitness tracker, called the Realme Band.
Realme Band Specifications
The Realme Band offers a very sleek, curved design language that looks attractive despite its minimalism. The body of the fitness tracker is curved, which rests naturally on the wrist.
With the Realme Band, the company clearly wants to compete with Xiaomi’s Mi Bands, the top-selling fitness bands in India right now. Priced at Rs 1,499, the Realme Band offers a lot on paper like coloured display, heart rate sensor, sports tracker, and more.
The plastic protecting the display seamlessly curves with the straps, so there’s no hump or protrusion at all. This makes the Realme Band look sleeker and slimmer compared to rival fitness trackers.
While the plastic body is in a space grey colour, the straps come in a choice of black, olive green and yellow options. The variant we received for review was in black, which is a more discrete choice to go for if you’re not looking to grab any attention.
The olive green colour looks sober and unique, while yellow is loud and will definitely attract some eyes.
The Realme Band’s display is not touch-enabled, so that takes a while to get used to. There’s a single capacitive button below the display that can be tapped to browse through the limited UI.
You can touch the button to move from the watch face to the steps counter to heart rate monitoring to workouts to the alarm, and finally some regulatory information and then back to the watch face.
You will have three workout modes on the fitness band – Run, Cricket, and Yoga. You can only keep three workouts at a time on the band, and you will need to download the Realme Link app to remove one or more of them and add another workout.
In addition to the three workouts already mentioned, the Realme Band supports six more sports modes that include Walk, Bike, Hiking, Fitness, Climbing, and Spinning.
Currently, the Realme Band can only be paired with any Android phone, it doesn’t have to be a Realme phone specifically. There is no iOS support because the Realme Link app is available only on the Play store right now. The company hasn’t revealed any details about the app’s availability on the App store.
Realme Band is most accurate when it comes to tracking steps and heart rate. The band does well to not register ghost steps, which is an issue we found on the Honor Band 5i.
The touch response of the capacitive button is good, but the display takes longer than the Honor Band 5i to wake when raising your wrist to your face.
There’s not much that can go wrong when it comes to the performance of the Realme Band since it offers a bare-bones UI. As we mentioned earlier, the one-touch capacitive button takes a bit to get used to as one is used to touching the screen for scrolling. The long-press option to start or stop a mode works well enough.
Realme Band comes with an IP68 rating for water resistance up to 50 meters, which means you can wear the tracker while taking a shower. Strangely enough, the Realme Band does not support swim tracking despite its IP68 rating.
It is possible that the company will add a Swim mode later on. For now, if you’re looking for a fitness tracker with swimming tracking, you will have to spend a little extra and buy the Honor Band 5 or Mi Band 4.
Realme Band promises to deliver up to 9 days of battery life provided you disable the continuous heart rate monitoring. With the feature enabled all the time, the battery life will likely reduce to roughly 6-7 days.
We’ve used the Realme Band for just about a week now with continuous heart rate tracking enabled and the battery did not drain completely, which is a pretty good sign that the watch will take you through a week easily.
While the Realme Band is a capable fitness tracker and one of the most affordable ones in its segment, we expected to see something more from a company that is all about pushing limits.
By paying a little extra, you can opt for the Mi Band 4 or Honor Band 5 that offers brighter AMOLED displays, touchscreen functionalities, and more comprehensive activity insights.