Riversong Wave BP smart band review: Fitness tracker with a rare feature

Name: Riversong Wave BP smart band review: Fitness tracker with a rare feature
Item: Riversong Wave BP smart band review: Fitness tracker with a rare feature
Rating: 3.5
Author: Abhinaya Prabhu

By Abhinaya Prabhu

| Updated: Thursday, November 30, 2017, 13:42 [IST]

The wearable market is still growing in India but the country, which has been conditioned to become one of the largest markets yet, has already attracted big players in wearable segment like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei and others.

Rating:

3.5/5

PROS

Comfortable to wear
Responsive and bright display
Water resistant build
Ability to measure blood pressure

CONS

Charging mechanism
Power hungry app

Besides the big names, there are a couple of more novice companies as well offering their smart bands at competitive prices. These newcomers have not only given bigger companies a tough competition by dividing the market share of wearables but at the same they are also offering a large option to the consumers to choose from in wearable segment.

Riversong Wave is one such new entrant that has launched their Wave BP Fitness Tracker in India at a pocket-friendly price of Rs. 3,299 and is currently available via Amazon India.

This smart band lets you keep a track of several things, such as the distance walked, the calories burnt, the steps walked, sleep pattern, heart rate and blood pressure. Yes, you read it right! This is a smart band with the rare feature of tracking the blood pressure of the users.

So this will come in handy for those who need to constantly check their blood pressure. This smart band can also send notifications of calls, SMS and social media messages received on the paired phone.

We used the Riversong Wave BP smart band for a good long week and here is what we think of it.

Design

The Riversong Wave BP smart band is similar to the other fitness bands in terms of design. The device features a 0.87-inch OLED touchscreen display. The screen can be turned on by tapping the lower part of it and users can navigate through the options. On waking it up, the screen will show the time, date, battery level, heart rate, blood pressure and Bluetooth indication.

The smart band appears to have no buttons on it and there is a tracker at its back to measure and keep a track of your heart rate and blood pressure. This device has IP67 rating that will keep is resistant to water and dust. The strap of the smart band is made of a soft silicone material and feels comfortable even on wearing it for a long while.

The device features removable straps that expose the shell of the smart band with the USB charging port at its top. This has to be connected to the port on laptop or PC in order to charge. We are not fans of the charging mechanism as we had to remove the band at the top in order to charge it. And, we feel that removing and attaching the band on a regular basis will affect its durability in the long run.

Performance

To get the Wave BP fitness band to function, it is important to download and install the H Band 2.0 app from the Play Store or App Store on the smartphone. The band uses Bluetooth 4.0 in order to be connected with the smartphone. On pairing the device with the smartphone, we were able to get all the details from the distance covered to the blood pressure on the smartphone making it easy to access.

The device could track steps with the pedometer functionality. It letus know the distance we have traveled and the amount of calories we have burnt. The heart rate monitor also functions pretty well by notifying us if we were relaxed or stressed out with a graph.

The blood pressure monitor is the rare feature seen in this smart band despite its price point. The blood pressure monitor also does a good job by showing us the time and measurement in a graph.

There is a sleep tracking functionality in the Riversong Wave BP that appears to be pretty accurate. It tracks the number of hours the users sleep. However, it needs some improvement as it does not encourage waking up in the middle of the night to drink water or anything else. It just considers that we have not met our sleep goal.

Talking about the notification part, on enabling the notifications from settings, we received notifications of calls, SMS and social media updates too on the smart band.

Battery

The Riversong Wave BP smart band features a 70mAh battery that is touted to be charged in less than an hour. The battery lasts for 2 to 3 days on a single charge. As mentioned above, the charging mechanism is a little tedious as it requires us to pull apart the strap on one of the sides of the smart band and connect it to a laptop or power bank.

Verdict

On the whole, we had a good overall experience with the tracker and does a good job with all kinds of sensors to measure the data. Being a water resistant smart band, it lets us wear it even when it is raining or take it along with us to the pool side. Other than the charging mechanism that requires a few strong tugs, the device is well built and comfortable. The display is good and responsive and has a good daylight visibility.

Though the app is mandatory, the one thing that we didn't like is that the app stays in the notification panel and cannot be removed. It can be stopped only by a force stop and this will result in losing some data. Also, as the device gets paired to the phone via Bluetooth, the battery life of the latter will drain quickly.

Besides the power hungry app and the charging mechanism, we liked almost everything else about the Riversong Wave BP fitness tracker.

Comments