Table of Contents
Honor Band 7 Review Rating
Summary
The Honor Band 7 seems to be identical to its predecessor. It was an excellent fitness tracker when I reviewed it last year, and it still is now.
Pros
- A lot of features for your money
- Generally accurate tracking, both for fitness and health.
Cons
- More or less identical to the Honor Band 6
- Honor Health doesn’t work with Health Sync
This is a relatively brief review of the new Honor Band 7. It is almost identical to the Honor Band 6 and the Huawei Band 6. I have already reviewed the Honor Band 6; hence there is no need to go into deep detail with this review.
Honor Band 7 vs Honor Band 6 vs Huawei Band 6 Specification
Honor Band 7 vs Honor Band 6 vs Huawei Band 6 Differences
There seems to be some conflicting information about the differences between the Honor Band 7 and Honor Band 6.
The Honor Band 7 was announced in China back in December, and multiple websites reported that it has Bluetooth 5.2, allowing for more extensive music playback control, as well as the ability to use the tracker for contactless payments.
Some sites reported a new high-gloss metal construction.
However, the HiHonor website makes no mention of these things. Bluetooth is still reported as Bluetooth 5.0, and I checked both the UK and Chinese versions of the website.
In my review of the Honor Band 6, I stated 10 workout modes, but the box of this watch states 96.
The workout modes are actually 11 professional and 85 customised types of workout. So there is almost no difference here, either.
Honor Health
The one big change for me was the switch to Honor Health. This will likely be through necessity as Honor is now a separate brand from Huawei. I’d even guess that this is the main reason for the Honor Band 7 to be released.
The Honor Health app appears to be identical to Huawei Health, but I wasn’t able to use my Huawei login. Therefore, if you upgrade from an older watch, you won’t have access to any historical data within the app.
Furthermore, Health Sync is not compatible with Honor Health. This is used to synchronise your data between Huawei Health and other platforms, such as Strava. I am not sure how many people this would affect, I would think it is users with GPS-equipped watches that would be more bothered about getting data to Strava.
Fitness Tracking
As I can’t export the data to Strava, it is hard to do a proper analysis of accuracy.
The Honor Band 7 lacks built-in GPS and will use the GPS from your phone, and it will be as accurate as the GPS on your phone. I tracked a 14-mile run (22.54km) with my Garmin Fenix 6 Pro and wore the Polar Verity Sense HRM. The Honor tracked 22.53km, which is accurate enough for me.
Garmin said I had an average HR of 152bpm with a max of 166bpm. Impressively, Honor almost matched this with 152bps and 162bpm, and there seem to be no significant spikes or dips in the graph to suggest it is having problems with reading my heart rate.
One thing that’s impressive about these fitness bands is the fact that you get a lot of data. It has your pace, but it also has things like steps per minute (which matched my Garmin) and stride length (which also matched the Garmin).
There was no altitude data reported, and that’s likely because neither my phone nor the watch has a barometer.
Health Tracking
The overall health features are excellent and identical to the Honor Band 6.
You have:
- Sleep tracking
- Calories
- Steps
- All day heart rate
- All day stress
- All day SpO2
And just like all other Honor/Huawei wearables, the amount of data you get is excellent. There is plenty of feedback on your sleep and the different phases you go through.
General Features
For day-to-day features, I predominantly use notifications, and that’s it. It works perfectly for this, but you will need to enable permissions within Android. You can have it push notifications for whatever app you want, I mainly use this for WhatsApp and Eufy doorbell notifications.
You also have
- Weather
- Alarm Clock
- Health Alerts (which I always switch off)
- Find my phone
- Music management (skip/pause tracks)
Price and Alternative Options
The Honor Band 7 has an RRP of £49.99 and is currently only available via Hihonor.
The Huawei Band 7 is priced almost the same on Amazon, and the Honor Band 6 is around £45.
The Xiaomi Smart Band 7 is priced at £54.99.
The Fitbit Inspire 3 is £64.99.
Overall
I have mixed feelings about this. The Honor Band 6 was and still is a superb budget fitness tracker, as is the Huawei Band 6.
The Honor Band 7 is almost identical, and therefore, it is still excellent. I just don’t really see the point of it. I guess these companies have reached the peak of what is achievable with a small affordable fitness tracker.
For me, the Honor Band 7 is worse than the Honor Band 6, because it is not compatible with Health Sync, so I can’t get data to Strava. I doubt that will affect a large number of buyers, and I also suspect that the Health Sync developers will eventually add support for Honor Health.
Overall, the Honor Band 7, 6 and Huawei Band 6 are all excellent affordable fitness trackers. They are all priced about the same, and I would buy whatever is cheapest at the time.
Originally posted on Mighty Gadget
Last update on 2023-03-06 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
