Fitness trackers have come an extremely long way over the years and have made their way onto more and more wrists as people are more conscious about their health. Bands these days are no longer glorified pedometers; they are much more than that. Most standard fitness trackers track your steps, sleeping pattern, calories you burn and distance travelled.
Each year, a new batch of classy and feature-packed band debuts with the promise of helping you lead more healthy lifestyle. With Wave BP Band, Riversong is among the latest company to join the race into the Indian market. It can track steps, measure distance walked/jogged/run and measure calories burnt apart from the usual time and notifications that it can display. With equally good fitness gadgets already dominating the ladder, does the Wave BP stand a chance? We put it to the test.
The Riversong Wave BP has a slim profile and is identical to most fitness bands out there. It looks good and can match well with most casual or formal attire. While the tracker is all black, it is also available in blue, and the company bundles an additional colour band with the package. The band is pretty comfortable to wear; however, those with extremely slim wrists may find it a bit too loose to wear. Nevertheless, the band does its job well on any profile.
The band features a 0.87-inch OLED display, but it is not a touchscreen — there's just one button below the display to help toggle between different modes for the required information. The OLED display is a dot-matrix panel with simple animations. It works pretty well in most situations, but you will find a bit of trouble reading the content under bright sunlight — the brightness level is pretty low. The tiny display works both vertically as well as horizontally, though it can be a bit annoying to read the horizontal text, in our opinion. It shows the usual fitness data, such as footsteps, distance, calories, heart rate and time.
The company claims that the band is water and sweat resistant. During our review period, the display responded well to inputs, even when sweating profusely.
The Wave BP has a USB Type-A connector for charging, which protrudes outwards from the unit as well as works as the belt holder. Charging can be a bit difficult at first as the location of the USB connector is beneath the band and removing it is a task on its own. The silicone strap is made of thermoplastic polyurethane and has a firm grip. It latches on securely and didn’t come undone even when using it while asleep.
The core of the Wave BP is where all the sensors and circuitry are. It has a heart-rate and Blood Pleasure sensor on the rear (or under) and a display upfront — no physical buttons whatsoever, apart from a simple touch sensitive switch near the strap. The one functionality makes Riversong's Wave BP stand out in the crowd is the ability to measure the blood pressure, which no other fitness trackers currently offer within this price range. However, when it comes to the accuracy of BP monitoring, we found it around 95 per cent accurate with regards to a few tests done along with a doctor's manual BP testing.
Apart from monitoring steps and calories, this fitness tracker continuously monitors your heart rate and whenever it goes above from normal level, it will notify you. The device also alerts on phone calls or notifications from various applications. For detailed logging and to keep track of your activity, users need to download the H band app from the Android or iOS app store. The H band app does a good job of showing your activity data.
The fitness band also comes with an interesting feature — you can use it as a remote shutter for your camera for clicking selfies or alike.
As far as the battery life is concerned it is decent. The band draws its power from 70mAh battery that lasts for around three days on normal usage. The company claims it to last five days but we couldn’t make it more than three days — thanks to our job where we get numerous calls, messages and notifications. We did find that there is no way to cut down the number of times it checks the heart rate, and this can reduce the battery life significantly. We also did notice that the band does not have a sensor to detect if it is being worn — it continues to monitor the heart rate even when it is off the wrist. This feature could help save more battery. As mentioned earlier, charging is a bit complex as you have to remove the band to juice it up. It takes around 30 minutes to top up the internal battery.
When it comes to the accuracy level of any fitness tracker it matters a lot. The sensors on the band are fairly accurate in terms of counting steps and calories burnt. Though there were occasions when it couldn’t track steps, they were pretty rare. However, no product is impeccable and the Riversong's Wave BP band is no exception.
This technology is new and none of the bands in the market are completely accurate. One thing that we found buggy was its sleep counter — tracking is good and measures your sleep well but if you wake up in the middle of the night and go back to sleep again, then the pedometer algorithms tracker believes that you are now completely awake and keeps alerting you to be active, which is annoying.
Should you buy it? The Riversong Wave BP has all features you would expect from a fitness band. It is a good option for those on a hunt for a cheap pedometer with some extra features that include heart rate and Blood Pressure monitoring. If you want to monitor your activity level and need a coach to stay fit, this is a good device to start with at a reasonable price. It is available for a price of Rs 3,299, which we find as a good value for money.
