Full transcript of “Amazfit Helio Strap Final Review - A Summary of All of the Pieces (+ Sub-Set Reviews in Description)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 What is up? It's Figure Hunter and today we're going to do the final review for the Amazefitit Helio Strap. I have done a lot of subset reviews for the features and the value and the offering for the Helio Strap as well as the Amaze Fit Balance 2, which has the final review coming out as well. And so if you want to see any of those subset reviews, there are links in the description below to be able to watch, you know, heart rate accuracy in-depth review, um, autotracking workout review, training load tracking review, um, just all sort of miniature reviews because it offers a lot in a competitive world, and I wanted to look at each little piece instead of trying to pack it all into one long final review. So when I look at the Helio strap, we're going to talk about it in subsets. First the design features
0:46 there and then we're going to talk about the value features on the wellness and recovery and training and all those types of things. Um so the first the design features it is it's great. It's actually great in its design. I like the strap. The strap is too short if you have a thick wrist. My wrist is 176 millimeters. Um so it it it's too short or 176 cm I don't know whatever it is. 176 um on the metric system. So it's it doesn't quite fit around my hand very easily. So, but otherwise I like the design. It It's super lightweight. If you compare it to the Whoop, it's it's actually really similar in the size and shape, a little bit lighter, and everything works really well with it. Uh the charging puck is simple, but it just sort of latches on and you use it USBC.
1:32 So, everything works well on the charging. Simple things like the nap tracking actually works well. Better than the Garmin system, better than the Whoop system, ironically. Um the alarm is okay. It's a little bit weaker than the Balance 2 and weaker than other things I've tried, but it does function. The Bluetooth range is really good. And the battery life at 10 and 1/2 days roughly, the battery life has been fantastic with the Helio Strap. I like that it's got simple 22 mm quick release bands that you can swap out for something else. They haven't created I haven't seen a um a bicep band for it, but the fact that it's just simple 22 millimeter quick release is is great all around. So, from a form factor feature, from the design overall, they've really nailed a good simple strap. And they've nailed the price. $100 for this thing,
2:19 that's a great price for what it offers, but we still have to look at what it offers for that $100. From a simple design, 10 and a half days. The heart rate accuracy, the heart rate accuracy review that uh I did is fantastic. Heart rate accuracy when worn on the bicep, it's really pretty solid when worn on the wrist, but not trustworthy. if you want to get correct analytics when it comes to your training load, training tracking, training analysis, workout to workout, but overall design is really is is really well. So now we got to look at what do the features, the benefits, the recommendations, how do they offer value in today's competitive world, especially comparing people talking about this compared to the Whoop strap. People talk about this compared to uh some of the Garmin wellness recommendations and training features. So we now need to look at the the overall guts of what it
3:05 offers by looking at the app. Okay, so this is the main landing page. We're going to talk about wellness features, recovery, sleep, all those simple things to give it simple summary. Like I shared in the wellness review for the balance 2 that does not have biocharge. I feel like the sleep score recommendations, the sleep is based on a number of really worthwhile factors, but the sleep score itself, which I think is the most important aspect, the summary of these minor factors into one recommendation is is not worthwhile. So, it's always like 78 to 85. So, it's always in this range. Everything's great. I've had terrible nights of sleep. I've been sick. I've had problems. I have hard workouts. I had, you know, inconsistency across the board a number of different ways. And
3:50 it's just still 84. It doesn't have the readiness feature to it, which I also think that's on the balance, too. I think that's a worthless feature. It again, it has great factors that flow into the readiness score. Of course, it's not on here, but in general, great factors, very terrible on the recommendation. But what they did nail is this biocharge. The biocharge based on your movement, your activity level, your heart rate variability throughout the day. Oh, the last thing I should say before I move on from that is it um it does have stress tracking. The stress tracking is a little bit better if you wear it on the bicep. So, if I was comparing this to the Balance 2, I said in the Balance 2 video, stress tracking is worthless because it does not track stress when you're moving around. So, in the times when you are typically stressed and active and running around stressed, it doesn't pick up stress. It
4:36 picks up stress when you're sitting still, which is not a great time to track your stress and there's big gaps in time when you're worn on the wrist. Same thing would be here if I was wearing it on the wrist. When you're wearing on the bicep, you do get a little bit more value. But in general, I would say the stress tracking is not of value in the Helio strap. But the biocharge is the biocharge tracks those metrics, your activity, your workouts, how you know your heart rate variability looks throughout the day. And I feel like it is of value. It's tracking similar. I have a whole video about the subset comparison or the biocharge comparison to the Garmin body battery. Um, I feel like it is giving me failing scores. I had a long day followed by a poor night of sleep, so I didn't recharge a lot. Followed by a really long workout and I'm at a five. That's zero. I've run out of my body battery.
5:22 That's great. So, from a wellness and recovery side, it is doing a decent job in the biocharge feature itself and alone, but I do feel like it's worthwhile for $100 on that recovery aspect. You're not getting a lot. They could do a lot with the sleep and maybe even add in readiness to it because same physiological stuff that's being tracked. But at least the biocharge has value. The biocharge has given it some worthwhile nature on the wellness and recovery. So now let's look at the training. So the training like I said shared in a training load evaluation video. It is awesome at over autotracking. This little guy, it is great at autotracking. Other reviewers have said that it tracks everything like you're washing the dishes. It doesn't do that. They maybe they had an update. It's done had some updates. I'm have it
6:09 tracking very very well in my opinion. And so like if you go to this workout today, great lifting portion in the middle warm-up with the class cardiovascular endurance training in the back half. The problem with the training, so it's tracking automatically really well. I have a whole video on that. You can see it down below. And it compares in what the output results would be to the balance two, which you're manually tracking. Great. All of that you can manually track through the app. Great. But the training effect, the aerobic training effect, the anorobic training effect, and then from that the training load, and from that the recovery time is all too high. So, you know, I'm getting like training loads that are just too high. Now, it's all relative if it's tracking the same system, but you know, the full recovery time, 38 hours from a workout today that's very similar to multiple of
6:55 workouts I've done across the whole four weeks that I've been testing it is just too high and therefore it's not quite worthwhile. They also have this thing sort of like a training stress score. Fatigue level, fitness level, which is your chronic load relative to your acute load, your short-term load versus your long-term load. I feel like these are valuable pieces of information. If they could put it in one singular chart and lead with that, lead with that somewhere else, it would take away the distraction of the training load being being too high and they need to tweak the recovery time. So either way, um this fatigue level fitness level might have might be worthwhile. So it in the training analysis, it's sort of worthwhile. When it evaluates a workout, it says your aerobic training effect was this
7:42 high, not quite as reliable there, especially on the anorobic training effect. So that could have more value. So like from a workout to workout analysis to see that your aerobic training effect isn't shooting through the roof every time, it's doing better than it has in the past. It's just a little too high. And then your recovery time, that's where you would have value one workout to the next. And then in the training you're tracking your training load. So it's doing um a a fair job there. It's got some off some benefit there. Just not quite as good as others on the market and just falls a little bit short from what I feel on a regular basis. So So what do I think in final summary of the Helio strap at $100? It is really tough to say. Does it compete with the Whoop? In
8:28 no way. It in no way keep competes with the Whoop. Now, the Whoop is a lot more expensive, but the Whoop is so much more reliable, so much more in-depth, so much more polished, so much more physiological value coming out the pores of the Whoop system. The Helio Strap doesn't compete with does not compete with the Whoop in my opinion. It also does not really compete with a lot of the major offers in simple form. Um that the wellness and the training analytics that are offered from primarily Polar and Garmin somewhat from Choros. Although I do like the biocharge for the Helio strap better than the Choros evaluation for recovery night toight in their sleep score I don't think is
9:14 worthwhile. So, when I would summarize it, I would say it's a it's a simple, decent alternative at a low price to a wellness and training device. How ambiguous is that? But for $100, it it I I kind of think it's for the person that really is just really limited by funds. It can be a great solution. 10 and a half days battery life. You want to have something that's giving you some feedback for your training, some feedback workout to workout because if you wear it on the bicep, the sucker is great. You just wear it. And that biocharge is great in itself. It's just it just feels incomplete relative to
10:00 a number of the training offerings that are out there. But when it comes to straps, it is definitely affordable way to track some basics of your wellness and recovery and some basics of your training for $100 in a reliable strap. So that's how I would summarize it. So that's my final review, final summary for the Amazefitit Helio strap. It's the Fit Gear Hunter. Thanks so much for watching.
