this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Wife and I needed the same thing and we didn't want anything fancy. We just needed to monitor heart rate and blood oxygen levels. Monitoring both these levels also allows you to monitor your sleep patterns which we liked.
I did my research and found the Xiaomi Mi Band 7 and the Huawei Band 7 ..... both are very basic, simple and straight forward watches with no bells and whistles but they are the only watches that can provide continuous heart rate and blood oxygen. Every other cheap watch out there that can provide heart and oxygen levels do so manually, which means every time you want to measure, you have to stop, turn on the setting and do a measurement. The Xiaomi and Huawei can be set up to just continuously measure throughout the day and log everything on your phone app ... this is especially important if you want to monitor your sleep.
We couldn't settle on either so I bought one of each a year ago. I wore the Huawei and the wife had the Xiaomi. Both worked great and once they were set up we never had to monitor them .... we could manual spot checks if we wanted to or just review the daily data on our phones. And most importantly it gave us the info we needed to do something about it sleep.
I work outside a lot doing carpentry work and renovations and I always wore the watch. My wife is not as active because of a chronic condition so she stays relatively quiet. After a year, her Xiaomi watch face fell off! Mine is still working fine. We had to buy her a new one as the warranty period expired. I offered to get her a Huawei but she liked the Xiaomi better .... and for the cost, we didn't mind buying another one.
The only other thing that broke down for either watch was the rubber watch band ..... there are cheap easy replacements on Amazon and we just bought a bundle ($20 for 10 Xiaomi bands ... $15 for four Huawei bands)
The battery life is about a week on both watches ... and that's with continuous monitoring on! Just remember to clean off the contacts when charging because those get dirty fast.
Otherwise both are a great value and we enjoyed both. Huawei is a bit more expensive but more durable. Xiaomi cheaper but didn't last as long.
Like I said, you can get cheaper watches with similar features but these two are the cheapest ones that can give continuous monitoring.
Thank you!