Technology

Oneplus Fitness Band Review: Elegant And Creative

OnePlus Fitness Band has deliberately cultivated its brand image from a niche handset manufacturer selling value-for-money flagships to a luxury brand with a far-reaching mainstream appeal over time.

So, it was just about time that the company was searching for opportunities to exploit its brand image to reach into the mobile market.

Having set foot in the audio and TV divisions, the company is now entering the portable room. The OnePlus Band is OnePlus’ first attempt at wearables and sets the tone for potential smartwatch attempts.

It’s essentially a renamed Oppo Band with the OnePlus logo on it. But because the Oppo Band never debuted outside of China, it shouldn’t make any difference to prospective customers.

OnePlus Fitness Band is the first foray into the famous wearables division of the group. Launched exclusively in India, the latest OnePlus Band is an inexpensive fitness tracker that lets you monitor your exercise, heart rate, blood oxygen levels, sleep cycles, and alerts.

The main tracker can be popped in and out of the strap by only pressing it softly. Considering that you’re going to have to do something any time you need to invoice the band, I’m grateful that OnePlus hasn’t decided to make it tougher than it has to be.

The tracker and the band are completely water-resistant with an IP68 rating that helps you to use the band even underwater when swimming.

Oneplus Fitness Band Interesting Features

OnePlus Fitness Band has a 1.1-inch, 126×294-pixel AMOLED touchscreen. In terms of image consistency, the show has bright, oversaturated colors and, due to its self-emitting pixels, perfectly deep blacks. Also in direct sunshine, the show remains legible.

The output of the touchscreen is also satisfactory. Although the touch surface is limited, the UI can still be navigated with relative ease. Some delay in transmitting inputs is typically due to the hardware capabilities of the band rather than the touchscreen itself.

OnePlus Fitness Band is not necessarily on show. However, OnePlus does provide one of the best wake-up detections I’ve experienced on a wearable.

Unlike most of the other fitness trackers in this price group that need deliberate and drastic arm movements to light up their displays (and even then some of them still don’t bother to wake up), the OnePlus Band monitor lights up with the slightest turn of your wrist.

As I sit here reading this, I just had to turn my wrist around an inch to point the phone to me, and that was enough to light up.

For me, this almost makes up for the fact that the OnePlus Band doesn’t always have a show on it. The wake-up gesture was extremely sensitive and worked better than any pricey smartwatches.

Oneplus Fitness Band lets you uninstall the Lift motion or schedule it to work for a few hours. This makes sense because the gesture doesn’t work well when you’re lying down, and if you’re wearing a sleeping band, the screen will always light up.

However, the tricky thing about this choice is that while disabling Raise to wake up doesn’t turn the screen on, it also avoids turning the screen off if you turn your wrist off.

Oneplus Fitness Band – This means that if you leave the motion off, not only do you have to manually toggle the screen on every time, but you also have to manually turn it off by shielding it with your hand or waiting for the timer to turn off.

I wish the band would at least turn the screen off when you turn your wrist off, no matter how high you’re going to wake up.