news We tested the cheapest fitness trackers to see if they stand up to the top Garmin watches
Great fitness technology shouldn’t be limited by price. Just as everyone deserves the opportunity to exercise, eat healthier, and be the best version of themselves, the technology that makes it easier needs to be made available to as many people as possible. I have.
The wearables on our best cheap fitness trackers list are generally very good, accurately tracking the wearer’s heart rate, calories burned, sleep and exercise, and allowing the wearer to text or Allows you to see more notifications. Most of these trackers start at around $50 / £45 / AU$85, but the best smartwatches from Garmin and Apple are often very expensive.
While browsing our cheap fitness tracker guide, a sudden thought occurred to me. With some fitness trackers on sale at your local pound shop (the equivalent of the UK dollar shop and other similar discount outlets) for a fraction of the price, it’s the best entry-level effort by Fitbit and Huawei. I started wondering if I could light a candle. At the top of your fitness device list.
So we tested the performance of the watch and checked the accuracy of its metrics by analyzing it in the same way as other smartwatches and comparing it to top performers.
Viido Fitness Tracker: Design and Features
The Chinese-made Viido fitness tracker was purchased at Poundland for £13 ($16 in the US, AU$22.69 in Australia). It’s a simple band tracker with a pebble-style plastic face and a silicone band. When I first opened the box, there were no instructions included. Looking online, I found that other people had basic instructions. I’m used to magnetic chargers, so it took me 10 minutes before I realized I had to take the plastic pebble out of the silicone case to reveal the charging socket at the bottom of the pebble. good start.
The watch’s battery life is said to be 3 days. The unit is all plastic except for the inside of the watch and weighs very little. LED sensors on the back are designed to monitor things like heart rate and calories, and touch-sensitive buttons marked with small circular decals serve as the watch’s multi-purpose action buttons. Press repeatedly to cycle through options or hold for 2 seconds to select something. It can get pretty boring when you only have a handful of options to cycle through, but surprisingly the watch does an excellent job of streamlining things.
The Viido tracker offers a home “status” feature that reads your steps and calories burned for the day, a heart rate monitor, a SPO2 blood oxygen sensor, and a blood pressure monitor (I was very hesitant about this: the best Even though the LED sensor gave birth to the Huawei Watch D), sport modes (step, sit-up, skip only, oddly enough), weather, basic music controls struggled with blood pressure, pause, play, skip , or you can go back to the beginning of the track.
You need to download the Yoho Sports app for everything to work. I was (and still am) a little worried that this would clone my phone or nickname my bank details. It contains basic settings, including the ability to toggle features such as the internal gyroscope. This allows the watch’s motion sensor to wake up the screen when you raise your arm, allowing you to switch the watch face to one of a dozen or so-generated wallpapers. The app also allows you to enter your height, weight, age, and other stats, perhaps for more accurate records.
All in all, a very nice array of features for $16 / £13 / AU$22.50. But how does it actually work? Performance compared to the Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar. The price is about 30 times more than Viido. Is Viido a rip off? Are their health stats accurate? And if they are, why would people pay this much for a premium fitness tracker?
Viido Fitness Tracker: Performance
First, the tracker is very stiff to slide in and out of the silicone band. Before I found the charging port and made sure I was doing the right thing, I really thought I was going to break it or it wasn’t supposed to pop out like this. . After I took it out, Pebble took 3 hours to charge 3 days worth of juice, the Forerunner took him less than an hour and can be used for about 3 weeks. Even the Fitbit Inspire 3 can last him 7 days on a full charge.
Once fully charged, I placed the Forerunner next to it and started heart rate monitoring. Viido does not have an always-on heart rate monitor. You have to manually enable it before you can view the heart rate reading snapshot. I sat still, but my heart rate fluctuated like crazy from his 50s to his 120s, and the Forerunner sat resolutely around the 68-72 mark. I sigh: so far, as expected. I swapped the tracker to my other wrist and went out for coffee.
When I returned, I was pleasantly surprised. The Viido tracker was accurate within his 150 steps of Forerunner readings. At least this was the one indicator I could trust. I tried the blood oxygen sensor and it was 92, but the Forerunner was (to my delight) 93. Accurate blood oxygen readings from a fitness tracker for the same price as a movie ticket! Music control worked fine from my phone as well, but that’s where the good ends for me.
I was very disappointed with the lack of workout options (only 3 and no running!) and no way to change them within the app. The custom watch faces you can choose from in the app didn’t fill the screen, but they appeared as grainy images within the image, like when you show someone a photo on your flip phone. It was not possible to know the exact resolution of the Viido’s screen. Neither the package nor his website at Poundland had any idea. When Viido’s official website was flagged by antivirus software, I decided not to pry any further.
This watch is said to be able to track your sleep and show it in the Yoho app, but it didn’t. I couldn’t find a toggle switch to give permission to do so. The tracker unpaired and re-paired frequently (he was getting 3 or 4 notifications a day that the fitness tracker was “bound” again), and subsequent walking was less than a step count. It was far from accurate and was off by a few thousand marks. End of day step.
Overall, even for the price I paid, this tracker is a waste of money. It provides health information and highly inaccurate heart rate and step data.
Unfortunately, those looking to discover hidden gems of discounts will be disappointed. You’d be better off getting a tracker.
