Huawei Band 7 review – an inexpensive tracker that can do it all (almost)

The Huawei Band 7 is the entry point into Huawei’s ecosystem of fitness trackers and smartwatches. The band is only available in one configuration, although in four colors: red, pink, green and black. The color choice applies not only to the armband, but also to the watch’s case.

The essential contact point here is the Huawei Health app, as the watch cannot be set up without it. All the data collected by the watch’s sensors are also displayed and analyzed here. Due to US sanctions, however, the app can’t actually be found in the Google Play Store, requiring a detour to Huawei’s AppGallery.

After the app is downloaded and you have approved installation from unknown sources, the Huawei Health app can finally be installed. Updates will happen automatically once the app has been installed. Some permissions must then be given to the software in order for the fitness tracker to be able to display messages and incoming phone calls.

The Huawei Health app provides appropriate instructions depending on the manufacturer of your smartphone. What is displayed on the band can mostly be set from the watch itself. You can switch between different watch faces and styles for the always-on display, for example, if these have been downloaded by the app beforehand.

Aside from that, the content and order of the cards can be changed by swiping sideways from the home screen. The brightness settings are also handled directly on the watch. Huawei has not installed a built-in light sensor; instead, the user can switch between five levels of brightness and activate a mode for the watch’s display to become darker at night.

The health parameters are displayed both on the watch itself as on the Health app. Next to the current values, the tracker also displays previous workouts. Even Huawei’s well-known “Running Ability Index” feature has made it onto the Band 7.

Through the use of a scale, the value of the wearer’s performance during a jog is displayed and compared to those of other users. In addition, the tracker shows the last seven days’ training regimen, the recovery status or estimated recovery time until the next intensive training session and the VO2Max. The tracker even calculates the times for certain distances, such as for a marathon.

The band thus has extensive fitness features, most of which are intended for runners. The range of features is large, even if it doesn’t quite reach the level of a Huawei Watch GT Runner, which collects even more information. Data synchronization with Google Fit is unfortunately not possible.

However, Huawei is currently working on a way to synchronize the data with Strava, which should be implemented sometime later this year. The tracker provides a graphical overview of steps taken, movement time and active time. In a sub-menu, the smartband also provides the day’s burned calories and distance traveled.

The app goes into even greater detail, breaking down the steps into different categories such as running, walking and climbing. The “Healthy Living” set of parameters, intended to ensure a healthy routine, goes further than pure activity tracking. In addition to steps taken and time active, stress levels as well as sleep and wake times are taken into account.

The categories are displayed in different colors alongside their respective values, and the app can also remind the user of outstanding goals if desired. The band can also provide a notification if the user has not moved in a while, for example if they are sitting at a desk. The Health app also offers the ability to create exercise and running plans, wherein personal preferences and performance are set, such as PR times and preferred exercise days.

The app can then remind you of upcoming training sessions. The app also prepares weekly and monthly reports, where all data is marked and partly visualized. The data is also compared against previous exercise periods.

The Huawei Band 7 supports the tracking of 96 different types of exercise, with six of these collecting more data or evaluating it more intensively, e. g. jogging or walking.

Noticeably, outdoor cycling is missing from the collection. The tracker shows your pulse as a value as well as through a color scale during exercise. Additionally, you can track the distance, duration, burned calories, highest tempo, average speed, cadence, and stride length during walks.

After set distances, such as after each kilometer or mile during a walk, the watch provides a summary of the last kilometer/mile and the training intensity is estimated. The tracker can also recognize continuous movement if desired, and the display will ask if a workout recording should begin. This feature worked reliably during testing, although ten minutes of continuous movement was necessary for the question to pop up.

The software accordingly asks whether a workout should be stopped if no movement has been detected for several minutes. The Huawei Band 7 doesn’t have a GPS receiver and therefore can’t establish a satellite connection. The tracker uses the Health app to connect to your phone’s data.

The display is one of this Huawei tracker’s great strengths. As is typical for OLED displays, the blacks are perfectly black and the contrast is great, even if the resolution is somewhat lesser than Huawei’s smartwatches. The viewing angles of the tracker are also excellent: the sideways viewing angle is noticeably greater than in the vertical direction, due to the lightly bent glass in that direction.

The one downside is the missing brightness sensor. This isn’t such a big problem during the day, as the display is always legible even in the sun. In dark rooms, however, the display can be blinding, since the brightness isn’t automatically reduced.

The display managed to crank out a max brightness of 472 cd/m² in our tests, and we measured relatively constant pulse-width modulations at 120 Hz. If all sensors and the always-on display are on and it’s is worn 24 hours a day, the Band 7 lasts three days and nights – without exercise tracking. If the always-on display is turned off, the mileage of the tracker goes up significantly to seven days and nights with the same use case scenario.

The two weeks’ worth of battery life promised by Huawei is only possible if the measurement frequency of the sensors is reduced. The device is charged via a charging cable with two metal contacts that magnetically attach to the underside of the watch. Charging from 10 to 100% takes 55 minutes.

Huawei’s Band 7 is a pleasant surprise, and it takes great advantage of the capabilities of the existing Huawei Health app. Particularly impressive is the good OLED display, which is always a joy to use. The tracker even has an always-on solution on board, even if the battery life suffers significantly with its use.

The missing light sensor is a disappointing but bearable. Although the measured values of the health parameters are not exactly best-in-class, but the Band 7 has nothing to be ashamed of here, particularly in comparison to other significantly more expensive smartwatches. Given the missing satellite connection and the inability to store any audio files, the watch has to be used in conjunction with a smartphone for most workouts.

Those who can do without the independent satellite connection, phone calls and a metal housing should take a closer look at this Huawei tracker. Because the Band 7 provides a convincing performance on a daily basis with its reliable notifications, even short replies are possible. Another possibility would be the Xiaomi Smart Band 7, which falls in a similar price range.

For a little extra money, the Redmi Watch 2 Lite offers a bigger display and a built-in satellite connection. .