The Amazfit Band 5 is a fitness tracker that offers many of the standout features of this year’s premium smartwatches, but at a fraction of the price. It features blood oxygen (SpO2) monitoring, stress monitoring, high heart rate alerts, built-in Amazon Alexa, sleep tracking, and several other tools found in high-end offerings like the Apple Watch 6 and Fitbit Sense. Like some of the best fitness trackers, the Amazfit Band is comfortable to wear, easy to customize, and lasts 15 days on a single charge.
However, without GPS or built-in music storage, it’s not the most independent wearable you’ll find. Despite the hard-to-view display, the Amazfit Band 5 offers a number of metrics that you can pull up once you’ve performed an activity in one of the 11 different sport modes. The continuous heart rate sensor not only measures your heart rate throughout your workout, but also breaks down how many minutes you spend in the different heart rate zones, which range from relaxed to intense to anaerobic.
[content-egg-block template=offers_logo hide=price]These metrics are a stripped-down version of Fitbit’s Activity Zone Minutes, which debuted on the Fitbit Charge 4. The Charge 4 can calculate your target heart rate zones based on your age and resting heart rate, and track your progress toward the goal of spending 150 minutes per week in that zone. Monitoring blood oxygen (SpO2) is an important health tool these days. Below-average blood oxygen levels (95 percent or less) can be a sign of health problems. A SpO2 measurement is also less subjective than a pulse or blood pressure measurement.
For someone who has no breathing problems, a blood oxygen level of 95 percent to 100 percent is considered normal. The Amazfit Band 5 claims to last up to 15 days on a charge, which is more than double the battery life of the Fitbit Charge 4. If it does need to be charged, it takes less than two hours with the Amazfit’s own charger. Most top fitness wristbands and watches can be charged in similar timeframes at the moment, so it’s nice to see that this affordable alternative can keep up.
The Amazfit Band 5 offers more viable sleep tracking tools than most other wearables on the market. Although accuracy fluctuated over the course of several nights, especially when I slept in and out while streaming Umbrella Academy on Netflix, I was usually credited with just a few more minutes of sleep than the Apple Watch.