Lovely design, works with Android and iOS, good battery life, fast charging
Display not great in sunlight, only basic exercise info, need to be removed from cradle to charge
Huawei’s latest version of the TalkBand is a slick little piece of wrist candy that monitors your exercise, tells the time and lets you answer phone calls via a built-in Bluetooth headset.
Design & screen
The B1’s plasticky build has been replaced with an all-metal module for this iteration of the wearable and it's available in black, silver or classy gold flavours, with a choice of plastic or leather straps. At 12mm deep, it does protrude rather from the wrist and the module element is slightly blocky. It comes with IP57 water and dust resistance which means it should be waterproof in up to a metre of water for up to 30 minutes.
The POMLED touch display is invisible when the TalkBand B2 is in repose -- all you see is the shimmery metallic surface of the device. Our gold version with brown leather wrist strap looked particularly striking. The screen is only 0.73 inches with a paltry screen resolution of 128x88 pixels, but for the information it’s designed to display, this is ample. It’s not very bright though, and direct sunlight rendered it virtually useless.
Press the button on the side to fire up the display and you’ll get time, date and battery level as standard, as well as confirmation that you’re connected by Bluetooth to your Android or Apple smartphone. You can then slide up or downwards to show your steps, calories and sleep patterns.
Software
The Huawei Wear app for your phone is pretty basic, allowing you to set some goals and share your data, but it mainly just gives you a record of your steps and calories burned each day.
Usefully, the built-in gyroscope is able to have a pretty good guess at whether you’re walking, running or cycling without you having to manually input what you’re up to. There’s no GPS tracking, but you can still use the sensor in the phone to create a map of your exercise route. Also, it will alert you when it’s time to do some exercise, with a gentle buzz and a little exercising figure on the display.
So far, so-so. But when a call comes in, you can see who’s calling on the display and answer it by pressing the twin buttons at the bottom of the device and removing the Bluetooth headset. It’s a bit quieter than we would have found comfortable, but it fits neatly into the ear thanks to the rubber earpiece, though it’s not the most secure headset we’ve tried.
Battery
The 95mAh battery doesn’t seem like much, but the low power display means it’ll last up to six days (Huawei claims), although depending on how much you use it for calls, that could drop significantly. We used it for three full days, and took several calls on the headset before it needed a charge, which isn’t bad at all. Also useful is the fact that it can charge fast, in about an hour and a half, and we found it went from 0-30 percent charge in around ten minutes.
Conclusion
The Huawei TalkBand B2 is a good-looking bit of wearable tech that you might actually want to wear -- and it has a Bluetooth headset! It doesn’t look cheap, despite not being overly expensive, and while the Bluetooth headset isn’t of the best quality, it can certainly come in handy. It doesn’t offer as many health and fitness features as some wearables, but if you just want to keep an eye on your exercise, rather than get into a heavy training schedule, it’ll do the job splendidly.
Software: Works with Android 4.0 Jelly Bean, iOS 7.0 or higher
Memory: 4GB + 512MB RAM
Display: 0.73in POMLED,128x88 pixels
Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.0
Sensors: Accelerometer, gyroscope
Dust and water resistance: IP57
Battery: 95mAh
Size: 62x22x12mm
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
