The Quantified Scientist - Amazfit Helio Ring: Cheap & No Subscription! (Scientific Review)
The Amazfit Helio Ring is priced at $170 and does not require a subscription, making it the cheapest smart ring tested. However, its performance is lacking in several areas. The ring's app design is similar to the Whoop strap's app, offering tabs for overview, readiness, sleep, and exertion. Despite the appealing design, the ring struggles with accurate heart rate tracking during workouts. Tests showed poor correlation with reference devices, particularly during indoor cycling and outdoor biking, where it often recorded incorrect heart rates. Running performance was slightly better but still not reliable. For sleep tracking, the Helio Ring performed poorly in sleep stage accuracy compared to an EEG device, often misclassifying sleep stages. While it can track total sleep time and resting heart rate, it is not recommended for detailed sleep analysis. The ring is best suited for users seeking basic sleep tracking and accountability for sleep duration, rather than detailed health insights.
Key Points:
- The Helio Ring is affordable at $170 with no subscription fees.
- It struggles with accurate heart rate tracking during workouts, especially cycling.
- Sleep stage tracking is unreliable, often misclassifying stages.
- Best used for basic sleep tracking and accountability, not detailed analysis.
- Limited sizing options available, only in sizes 8, 10, and 12.
Details:
1. 🛒 Introduction to Amazfit Helo Ring: Budget-Friendly but Limited
1.1. Overview and Pricing
1.2. App Design and Features
1.3. Functionality and Limitations
2. 💓 Heart Rate Tracking: Challenges and Comparisons
- The Amazfit Helio ring's heart rate tracking is notably inaccurate, with readings between 80 and 100 BPM, while actual heart rates were between 140 and 165 BPM during indoor cycling sessions, indicating a significant discrepancy.
- The correlation between the Amazfit Helio ring and a reference ECG strap produced a low r-value of 0.45, signifying poor agreement and reliability in heart rate tracking.
- During interval spinning sessions, the Amazfit Helio occasionally detects higher heart rates but fails to accurately track heart rate peaks, highlighting its inconsistency.
- In comparison, the Amazfit T-Rex 3 showed significant improvement in tracking accuracy, with a correlation of 0.9 or higher, making it more reliable for heart rate monitoring during cycling activities.
- Top-performing devices for heart rate tracking include various Apple Watches, the Pixel Watch 3, and select Huawei devices, which outperform rings in accuracy.
- Overall, rings are generally less effective for heart rate tracking compared to other wearable devices.
3. 🏃 Running Performance: Mixed Results but Slight Improvement
- Running performance showed a correlation improvement to 0.66, indicating better tracking compared to indoor cycling, though it's still not optimal.
- The Helio ring's performance was inconsistent, showing better accuracy towards the end of the runs, possibly due to warming up or less interference.
- Cold temperatures may affect initial heart rate readings, as seen in multiple run tests where accuracy improved as the run progressed.
- The Helio ring is among the poorer performing devices for running heart rate monitoring, with other devices like the Apple Watch or Garmin offering better performance.
- Cadence lock, where the device confuses cadence with heart rate, could be a potential issue affecting accuracy.
4. 🚴 Outdoor Cycling: Inconsistent and Unreliable
- The Helio ring consistently detects too low heart rates during outdoor biking, with readings often below the actual heart rate range of 70-150 BPM.
- The correlation of heart rate data between Helio ring and reference device is low at 0.42, indicating unreliable data.
- Instances of steady but inaccurate heart rate increases were observed, with missing data points during rides.
- Comparative analysis shows the Helio ring, along with similar devices like the a ring 3 and or ring 4, perform poorly, with Apple watches and other models like the Pixo Watch 3 and Huawei devices performing better (correlation of 0.7 or higher).
5. 📊 Overall Workout Tracking: Comprehensive Evaluation
- The evaluation includes indoor cycling, outdoor biking, and both indoor and outdoor running.
- Running indoors was excluded due to excessive missing data, making analysis unreliable.
- The Helio ring's performance was marked in red on plots, showing correlation levels for each device.
- In terms of performance, Helio ring's correlation is low, with only 2% of devices performing worse in outdoor biking.
- For biking outside, only 11% of devices performed worse than the Helio ring.
- Overall, the Helio ring is among the worst devices for workout heart rate tracking.
- The Helio ring may be suitable for tracking resting heart rate at night but not for workout tracking.
6. 🛌 Sleep Tracking: Significant Shortcomings and Limited Usefulness
- The Amazfit Helio ring shows poor tracking accuracy, notably in workout tracking and a limited exercise selection.
- Sleep stage tracking was compared with the zMAX EEG headband over 30 nights, revealing significant discrepancies.
- 37% of deep sleep was correctly identified by the Helio ring, but 45% was inaccurately predicted as light sleep.
- Light sleep had a 59% agreement, while REM sleep was only 33% correctly identified, indicating major inaccuracies.
- Awake time detection was very poor, with only 23% agreement with zMAX measurements.
- The Helio ring frequently misclassifies various sleep stages as light sleep, highlighting its tracking inaccuracies.
- In comparative tests, the Helio ring performed poorly, ranking near devices like the Mi Band series, known for unreliable sleep tracking.
- Superior devices include the Apple Watch, Aura Ring, and Eight Sleep, with Aura providing the best sleep stage tracking.
- Overall, the Helio ring is in the lower tier of sleep trackers and is not recommended for accurate sleep stage tracking.