Huawei Band 3e review: A fitness band with dual wrist and foot mode

Fitness bands are nothing new for those who like to check their daily steps or for working out. Fitbit is a huge player in this space but Huawei is also trying to get a jump into the game with their very inexpensive fitness band: the Huawei Band 3e.

This little guy has a battery life of 14 days while being connected to your phone or 21 days on standby, is water resistant up to 50m, and can be worn on your wrist with the band or on your shoe with the shoe buckle. See how the Huawei Band 3e did in our review.

Specifications

• Display: PMOLED, 0.5 inch
• Storage: 1MB Flash
• Memory: 384KB
• Battery
  • 14 days typical use
  • 21 days standby
• Connectivity: 2.4GHz
• Band Size
  • Band body: 40.5 mm x 14.8 mm x 11.2 mm
  • Wristband: 226.15 mm x 17.4 mm
• Weight
  • Band: 6g
  • Wristband: 11g
• System Requirements
  • Android 4.4 and above
  • iOS 9.0 and above
• Color
  • Black
  • Pink
• 50m water resistance

What’s in the box

• Huawei Band 3e
• Wristband
• Charging cradle
• Shoe buckle
• Quick start guide
• Safety info
• Warranty card

Design

Normally when I see fitness trackers, the unit is glued tightly to the wristband unable to be taken out. With the Huawei Band 3e that just isn’t the case. The band body itself is a small little tracker with a tiny screen and a touch button. The underside of the band body is blank but the top end of the unit has two metal pieces that let you plug the body into the charger.

The wristband, however, is very similar to other fitness bands out there and is a fairly simple, rubber-like type sport wristband.

The shoe buckle is made out of plastic and has an opening where you can run your shoe lace through it. There is also a slot the band body can clip safely into without falling out.

Display

This may not be the biggest display out there but it’s plenty enough to be able to read the LED text that shows up. A screen size of 0.5″ seems small, especially with the text looking all bunched together, but it’s still legible and shows the information you’ll need to know.

Software

Huawei does have their own application called Huawei Health that lets you see how you’re doing on your steps or sleep record or even your exercise records. If you’re looking to see your step count for the day or week, there is a page of its own within the app, which you can tap on the number of steps you’ve taken that day. It can also bring up your trends for the day, week, month, and year.

The application will also allow you to start and view all your stats for running, walking, and cycling exercise. Each record will show your stats similar to your steps which are tracked by sorting them by week, month, year, and total.

When you’re starting a workout record, there are plenty of options to choose from based on what your workout is. You can choose from fitness activities like an outdoor run, outdoor walk, outdoor cycle, indoor run, and pool swim. Next is to set the duration of the workout. If it’s going to be a 20-minute run, slide the ticker to 20 and then tap “OK”. Choose the distance you’ll be going and you’re pretty much set from there to start your workout and keep a record of it. The date and start time are automatic, so you don’t have to select anything for that unless you’re planning on future dating the record. For the record, if you don’t set a distance or time, you won’t have a record to go back to and review at a later date.

In the app, you will see “Sleep” and “Heart rate.” Unfortunately, with the Band 3e, there is no way to track your heart rate but you can check your sleep times. That seems to be an application default for other smart bands from Huawei but there is no heart rate monitor on this fitness band. There is a “Weight” card though where you can track your weight day by day.

Other than that, you’re able to go into the settings of the watch and make any changes you want such as the “Wearing Mode” where you’ll be able to choose the fitness band on your wrist or on having it on your shoe. You can also choose which notifications can come through, set alarms, and more.

Performance

As for the physical performance of the band, when tapping the touch button, it would change screens quickly without any lag. When raising your wrist to wake the screen from idle response pretty quickly but did require me to tap on the capacitive button on rare occasions depending on how high my arm was. An example is if I was sitting down typing on the keyboard, the watch didn’t always display the time when I raised it. Again, this was on rare occasions but for the most part, raising your wrist to wake the screen up always showed up each time.

Trying to get to the “settings” of the band isn’t the easiest. You have to swipe down from just shy of the top of the band down to about the middle to bring it up, but even if you did it the correct way, it didn’t always bring up the settings as it should. It took me more than a few tried to get it in settings and look through there or to power off the device.

For accuracy and workout recording, performance is a mixed bag. If, as mentioned above, you set your workout activity before you start your workout, it will be tracked and recorded. If not, any walks or runs you do will only show up as additional steps on the step tracker. As for accuracy, during our testing, it seemed to match up to the Gear S3 and another Huawei Band we tested it against.

Battery Life

Compared to smartwatches, the battery life of the Band 3e hit right on the mark of 14 days while being connected and 21 days of standby. I would rarely look at the Band 3e’s battery life because it always had a charge. The only time that I would set in on the cradle was when it sent a notification to the watch showing that the battery was low.

The charging time for Band 3e will vary depending on the battery percentage before plugging it in. I noticed that when the notification went off at 20% and started timing the charge from there, an hour went by and the smart band would be close to, if not at, 100%.

Price/Value

If Huawei was going for most affordable fitness tracker out there compared to any major fitness tech company, they sure won this round. The Band 3e comes with a price tag of US$29.99. Fitbit’s least expensive fitness tracker, the Alta is priced at $99.95, and both will give you the same information.

Of course, for the price of $29.99, the only thing you’re missing is a heart rate monitor, so it may be a drawback for anyone who is looking for a fitness band that has this ability, but even without that option to check your heart rate, you’re still getting the best bang for your buck.

Wrap Up

All things considered, there isn’t much to the Huawei Band 3e. It’ll still calculate your steps and calories burned pretty accurately, track your sleep and so on.

Sure, you can’t check your heart rate, or see who’s messaging you other than getting a notification for it, or no GPS tracking, but for the extremely low price of $30, you can’t pass that up if you’re on a tight budget and looking for a fitness tracker. Either way, it’s worth checking out even if you give it to your spouse or friend.

*We received a sample of the Huawei Band 3e for the purposes of this review. In some of our articles and especially in our reviews, you will find Amazon or other affiliate links. Running a website does take money, along with time. Any purchases you make through these links often result in a small amount being earned for the site and/or our writers.

Last Updated on February 3, 2021.