A wise ring that wants work

The Amazfit Helio sensible ring is a stable different to cumbersome or obtrusive exercise watches. Our largest drawback? The ring requires an add-on subscription for detailed sleep monitoring, and it solely tracks 4 sorts of exercises. For $300 (or $150 with the acquisition of an Amazfit smartwatch), the system is on par with different gadgets within the area, however Amazfit doesn’t have the observe file others have within the health ring market.

That mentioned, if you happen to’re on the lookout for an excellent easy and probably lower-cost train watch and ring combo, this suits the invoice.

Value, availability, and specs

You should buy the Helio Ring from Amazfit. It at present is available in sizes 10 and 12 and sells for $300 or $150 with a $300 to $500 Amazfit smartwatch.

What’s good concerning the Amazfit Helio Ring?

A stable array of sensors

Amazfit has lengthy been synonymous with lower-cost, high-performance exercise watches. Their smartwatches borrow closely from Apple and Casio’s design fashion however embody loads of the options you’d anticipate, akin to exercise monitoring. Rings like their new Helio are completely different. For instance, the Amazfit Stability borrows a number of design cues from Garmin’s Lily 2 Smartwatch and different equally understated train watches.

The Helio ring contains a set of compact sensors alongside the within of the ring that may measure coronary heart charge, blood oxygen stage, and movement. It additionally has a fundamental temperature sensor and an electrodermal exercise (EDA) sensor that, in principle, can sense stress.

The Helio ring has no readout; it simply has a brilliant inexperienced LED you possibly can often see blinking from below your finger. Amazfit designed the ring to be very discreet, and at 4 grams, you barely discover it’s there. It’s properly styled with a sample of small dots all around the floor and a single line on the “backside” of the ring that exhibits you tips on how to place it on the included or a suitable charger. This line additionally signifies the place the sensors needs to be in your finger.

The Helio is completely different from the Oura ring in that the sensing LEDs are very seen. Whereas the Oura rings supply muted class, the Helio rings flip your finger into ETs when measuring your coronary heart charge.

The actual magic occurs within the Zepp app. First, here’s a little bit of rationalization: Zepp is Amazfit’s dad or mum firm, which produces Amazfit {hardware} and a number of other providers, together with Zepp Aura. This implies you’re utilizing an app referred to as Zepp to manage a tool from Amazfit, which could possibly be complicated.

Additional, the Zepp app connects with a number of gadgets. If in case you have an Amazfit watch and a Helio ring, each gadgets will report exercise. The Helio ring, nevertheless, primarily studies on sleep exercise and offers you a each day Readiness Rating. This rating tells you ways you slept on a scale from 0 to 100. It additionally gives the variety of steps taken, your resting coronary heart charge, and a chart of your day, together with deep and light-weight sleep intervals.

The ring provides you what each different health system provides you with out requiring a subscription. The info it produces seems to be correct; I examined the step knowledge towards my Apple Watch and obtained related outcomes. Subsequently, the ring works as a standalone health product. Nevertheless, Amazfit recommends pairing the system with one in every of their watches to get extra exercise sorts that presumably want cadence or GPS sensors, like biking and swimming. This ploy is pretty frequent within the tech area, nevertheless it’s the primary time I’ve seen a hoop producer additionally advocate a watch product so adamantly.

General, this system works as marketed. It’s a pleasant, compact strategy to observe your sleep and coronary heart charge, and you may put on it on a run to let you know how far you’ve gone based mostly in your step depend. However let’s go into a few of the cons earlier than you click on the “Purchase” button.

What’s unhealthy concerning the Amazfit Helio Ring?

Upselling and app integration make issues irritating

The Helio prices $300 with out a watch, which is on par with related choices from Oura and Ultrahuman. This price contains app entry, however Zepp can also be upselling one thing referred to as Zepp Aura, a sleep coach that makes use of AI to offer you recommendation on mindfulness and each day sleep insights, and can even play some soothing music. You may as well activate an AI chatbot that tells you about your sleep patterns in plain English.

The Aura function prices $50 a 12 months, and Zepp gives a 14-day free trial. This upsell isn’t crucial to make use of the ring. The truth is, it appears slightly foolish, and the recommendation — mainly “wind down earlier than you go to mattress” — is fairly trivial. That Zepp is providing it in any respect is a testomony to the issue firms face within the health wearable area when customers purchase one system that lasts them for years.

Nevertheless, seeing an upsell within the devoted app does bitter the deal slightly. Zepp additionally sells a health coach function—an AI chatbot that tells you tips on how to get better—for one other $50 a 12 months. These options aren’t wanted to make use of the ring, however they undoubtedly management distinguished actual property within the app.

The app can also be irritating in that it does not supply many beneficial notifications. To test your sleep rating or steps, that you must actively launch the app. Fitbit and different gadgets do that very nicely, and for Amazfit to drop the ball here’s a bit irritating. A lot of these items might be fastened with a easy replace, nevertheless it does level to this system’s experimental nature.

Subsequent, Amazfit is just making this ring in sizes 10 and 12. This implies people with smaller or larger palms are out of luck, and the ring is a decent match if you happen to’re slightly larger than both of these sizes. Fortunately, it slips proper onto my finger with out points, however Amazfit’s rivals have extra sizes for extra palms. Helio looks as if an experiment for the corporate, and this restricted sequence is step one in an even bigger rollout.

Battery life can also be a problem. I didn’t get any notifications that the battery was failing, so I wore the ring for a full day with out gathering exercise or sleep knowledge. The app ought to supply extra notifications, and battery life could possibly be significantly better. Competing merchandise often hit about 5 to seven days on a cost, way over Amazfit’s four-day battery.

Lastly, there’s consolation. I’ve worn an Oura ring for years and by no means seen it when exercising. I seen the Helio straight away, particularly when lifting weights and bouldering. The Helio is 8mm extensive and 2mm thick. Though that may not seem to be a lot, the way in which Amazfit designed the ring implies that it’s only a bit thicker and wider than a daily wedding ceremony ring, and that slight dimension distinction could be very noticeable.

I’ve taken this ring off whereas doing numerous actions, together with the aforementioned mountaineering and biking. I don’t often put on rings, however one thing about this ring design makes it really feel just a bit too large in comparison with the Oura.

None of those points are showstoppers, however they’re sufficient to offer you pause earlier than you choose this over a competing ring. That mentioned, if you happen to’re a devoted Amazfit person, that is in all probability the very best factor so as to add to your constellation of gadgets.

Do you have to purchase the Helio sensible ring?

Value and tech make it a contender

It’s nonetheless early days for the Helio, and proper now, as of this writing, I’d steer potential consumers to Amazfit’s rivals. The ring works nicely and provides precisely the knowledge you’d anticipate, however due to the worth, dimension limitations, app upsell, and basic wearability, I’d say it isn’t fairly prepared for the broader market.

That mentioned, the ring does every little thing all the opposite gadgets do, and if you happen to’re out there for an train watch and ring combo, this could’t be overwhelmed. The watch I examined with this, the $400 Amazfit T-Rex Extremely, was an excellent mixture. Amazfit is a smaller model and doesn’t have the backing or Silicon Valley pedigree of a few of its rivals.

That mentioned, this ring is a step up from a generic sensible system you’d discover on Amazon and isn’t a lot worse than the higher-end merchandise we talked about earlier than. With slightly work, the Helio could possibly be an excellent health system, and if you happen to’re already a part of the ecosystem, it’s the way in which to go.