Great fitness technology doesn’t have to be limited by price. Just as everyone deserves the opportunity to exercise, eat healthier and become the best version of themselves, technology that makes it easier should be available to more people.
The wearables on our list of the best cheap fitness trackers are generally pretty good, tracking the wearer’s heart rate, calories burned, sleep, exercise, and allowing users to see text messages and other notifications on their wrist. Most of these trackers start around $50 / £45 / AU$85, although the best smartwatches from Garmin and Apple are often very expensive.
While browsing our guide to cheap fitness trackers, I suddenly thought: what if I was cheaper? With some fitness trackers on sale in my local pound shop (similar to the US dollar store and other similar discount stores in the UK) for quite a bit, I’m starting to wonder if they can hold a candle to the best entry-level efforts from Fitbit and Huawei. top of our list of fitness equipment.
So I went ahead and picked one up, analyzing it the same way I do with other smartwatches – by comparing it to the best performers to test the watch’s performance and check its metric accuracy.
Viido fitness tracker: Design and features
The Viido fitness tracker, a product made in China, was purchased at Poundland for £13 ($16 in the US, or AU$22.69 in Australia). It’s a simple band tracker with a pebble-style plastic face and silicone band. When I first tore the box open, it came with no instructions, and a plug-in charger that looked like it wouldn’t fit. Looking online it turns out that other people who got it have some basic instructions, and since I’m used to magnetic chargers, it took me 10 minutes before I realized that you have to loosen the plastic pebble from the silicone case to open it. charger socket under gravel. good start.
The watch offers three days of battery life. The unit is all plastic, except for the inside of the watch, and weighs almost nothing. The LED sensor on the back is designed to monitor heart rate, calories, and more, while the touch-sensitive button marked by a small circular decal is the watch’s all-purpose action button. You can press repeatedly to cycle through the options, and hold for two seconds to select something. It can be dull if there are more than a few options to play with, but the watch, surprisingly, does a good job of keeping things running smoothly.
The Viido tracker offers a home “state” function that reads the steps taken and calories burned that day, heart rate monitor, blood oxygen sensor SPO2, blood pressure monitor (which I doubt: even the best. The LED sensor struggles with blood pressure, which causes the Huawei Watch D), sports mode (steps, sit-ups and skipping only, strangely), weather, and basic music control, which allows you to pause, play, skip or return. to the start of the track.
In order for everything to work, you need to download the Yoho Sports app, a thin piece of software that I was (and still am) a bit worried that it could clone my phone or nick my bank details. That contains the basic settings, including the ability to switch features such as the internal gyroscope, which allows the watch’s motion sensor to kick the screen when you raise your arm, and allows you to change the watch face to one of a dozen or so before. – made wallpaper. The app also lets you set your height, weight, age, and other stats, presumably for more accurate records.
All in all, some great features for $16 / £13 /AU$22.50. But how does it all work in practice? To test it, I compared its performance to my favorite fitness watch from last year: the Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar, which costs about thirty times the price of the Viido. Is Viido a rip-off? Are their health statistics accurate? And if it’s so accurate, why do people pay all this money for premium fitness trackers?
Viido fitness tracker: Performance
First of all, the tracker is really stiff to get in and out of the silicone band. I really thought I would break it, or it was not supposed to pop out in this way, before I found the power port and saw that I was doing the right thing. It’s not intuitive in the slightest. After I got out, the gravel took three hours to fill with juice for three days. The Forerunner takes less than an hour and gives about three weeks, and even the Fitbit Inspire 3 offers seven days of life on a full charge.
After charging, I put it next to the Forerunner and started the heart rate monitor. The Viido doesn’t have an always-on heart rate monitor; you must enable it manually before showing heart rate reading snapshots. I was still sitting, but my heart rate swung crazily from 50s to 120s, while my Forerunner sat resolutely around the 68-72 mark. I answer: until now, as you wish. I changed the tracker to my other wrist and went out to get coffee.
After I returned, I was pleasantly surprised: the Viido tracker was accurate within 150 steps of the Forerunner reading. At least this is one metric I can count on. I tested the blood oxygen sensor, and got a 92, while the Forerunner got (for fun) a 93. Accurate blood oxygen readings from a fitness tracker that costs the same as a movie ticket! significant. The music controls also work well from the phone, but that’s where I’m done.
I am very disappointed with the lack of exercise options (only three, and not running!), with no way to change in-app. The custom watch face that you can select through the app doesn’t fill the screen, but instead appears as a rough picture-within-a-picture, like you might show a photo on a flip phone. I can not say exactly what the resolution of the screen in Viido: the packaging does not tell me, nor the Poundland website. When Viido’s official website was flagged by antivirus software, I decided not to upload it again.
Although the watch can record sleep and display it in the Yoho app, it doesn’t. I used it for two nights and got no sleep data, and there is no option switch that I can see to allow it. The tracker would often disconnect pairs and pairs again (I would get three or four notifications a day saying my fitness tracker was “tied” again) and future walks were nowhere near as accurate in steps, missing the mark by a few thousand. step at the end of the day.
All in all, even at the price I paid for it, this tracker is a waste of money. Best of all, you can set the time, control the music while walking and get notifications on your wrist. At worst, it will provide very wrong health information, giving inaccurate heart rate data and step counts. The old adage that you get what you pay for isn’t always true in technology, but it certainly is here.
Unfortunately, those hoping to find a hidden gem discount will be disappointed. You’re better off waiting, saving another $40, and getting the Huawei Band 7 or another similar fitness tracker, as long as it’s better than this one.
