Amazfit Helio Strap review: This budget tracker without a screen gives Whoop some tough competition
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Amazfit Helio Strap: One minute review
The Amazfit Helio Strap is a less expensive alternative to the Whoop band or some of the best fitness trackers like Fitbit, as long as you go in with the right expectations. The hardware itself is very cheap, and no registration is required to use the Helio Strap on a daily basis.
In return, you get all-day health and fitness tracking, which is more focused on active workouts than other lifestyle wearables. Amazfit doesn’t provide detailed training readiness information like the Whoop band, but with stats that focus on your training load and overall condition, you don’t need a degree in sports science to join the dots and reap the benefits.
This is a lower quality band than some of the competition. Its central part is plastic, with no metal parts, but this is a win for comfort as it reduces weight.
Amazfit Helio Strap: Specifications
|
Element |
Amazfit Helio Strap |
|
Price |
$99.99 / £99.00 / $179.00AU |
|
Size |
33.97 x 24.3 x 10.59mm |
|
Weight |
20g per belt |
|
Case/bezel |
Fiber reinforced polymer |
|
Show |
N/A |
|
GPS |
N/A |
|
Battery life |
Up to 10 days |
|
Communication |
Bluetooth |
|
Water resistance |
Yes, 5ATM |
Amazfit Helio Strap: Price and Availability
- It costs $99.99 / £99.00 / $179.00AU
- Below the Polar Loop
- A lot less than a Whoop subscription going forward
Despite having less technology inside than traditional fitness trackers, the price of these screenless wearables (except the Whoop MG) is more aggressive than other categories. It’s because they are a lifestyle they buy like anything
The Amazfit Helio Strap is one of the better priced options, however. It costs $99.99 / £99.00 / $179.00AU, much less than the Whoop band or the Polar Loop.
There is no need for ongoing registration here either, although one is offered. It is called Aura (not to be confused with Oura). This adds an AI-based health advisor and lots of relaxing audio-based content, which costs $69.99 (about £52 / AU$100) a year, although during testing we were given an annual price of £19.99. There is also a free 14-day trial.
Amazfit Helio Strap: Design
- The screen doesn’t have it
- It doesn’t feel premium, there is no metal
- Extremely light – set and forget
The Amazfit Helio Strap is wearable without a screen, and it’s exceptionally light. It weighs only 20g, including the strap. You can appreciate the very low style of the central unit of this, which is a plastic puck. All you see when wearing the Hello Strap is the strap itself, attached to the tracker block using traditional watch straps. Amazfit also offers an armband, if you choose to wear it on your wrist.
Sometimes I had to check to see if the watch was actually attached, which is not the case with the GPS-enabled watches I wear every day. There is one important caveat to note in the design, however; the Amazfit Helio Strap is not as thin as you might think. It sticks out from your wrist and its sides don’t fully hug its face either. Personally, it’s more intense than the Coros Pace 4 watch I was using at the same time, which contradicts the vibe most of these screenless watches try to give off.
That said, Amazfit doesn’t market the Helio Strap as a regular step and sleep tracker. It clearly has a keen exerciser in mind, as you can see from the Hyrox-themed strap attached here. Hyrox and Amazfit entered into a partnership (Amazfit is now the official timekeeper of the event), but the standard type of band is two-tone dark gray.
This watch is no friend of those long-sleeved tights that hug the wrist, but actually wearing the Hello Strap was not comfortable at all. Of course, you’ll still need to make the strap reasonably tight to get the most accurate heart rate results so mounting the small sensor on the back will leave a footprint on your arm. It comes with a field.
Amazfit rates the watch’s water resistance at 5ATM, so you won’t have to remove it very often. The official guidance is that the Helio Strap is “good for splashing, freezing, showering, swimming” but should not be worn in a sauna or “hot shower” as the steam can damage internal seals.
Amazfit Helio Strap: Features
- Very little in terms of features
- Transfer HR data to exercise machines and fitness watches
- Set 10 haptic alarms
Wearables like the Amazfit Hello Strap have yet to impress us with their extensive feature list (after all, they are built. not to contact him) but it does more than you might think.
It has a temperature sensor, for example, which is used to check the variation in the normal at night. Such a change can be an indication of illness. You can also set up to 10 alarms, which use the Helio Strap’s vibration motor to alert you. It’s not a very strong buzz, though, so you might not want to rely on it to get you going every day.
A rare non-screen wearable, Amazfit also emphasizes its fitness tracking capabilities. You can manually start a specific activity that is tracked in an app on your phone, and the Helio Strap can be set to automatically detect a workout and record it for you. When you start a tracking session in the app, the Helio Strap can transmit live heart rate data to another device. Some advanced exercise machines support this, as do cycling computers and other fitness watches. It uses Bluetooth this time, not ANT+, which was the old heart rate chest strap technology.
What else should you be aware of? The Hello Strap uses a small charging puck that plugs into a metal connector on the back. It’s easy to lose, but it’s also easy to carry in a pocket.
Amazfit Helio Strap: Performance
- Battery life as described
- The accuracy of a solid heart rate
- Many metrics are provided within the program
Low maintenance is one of the best features of the Amazfit Hello Strap. Despite weighing almost nothing, Amazfit still claims to deliver “up to 10 days” of battery life. And that is completely consistent with our experience. After using it for a week, the Helio Strap had a 35% charge. Although two-week battery watches with screens are common enough, they weigh more than the Helio Strap.
Most of these wearable metrics rely on heart rate data. The Hello Strap’s are pretty solid with some minor issues that may not detract from their appeal too much, especially at this price point. Throughout the day, tracking is decent and there are no wild spikes as you walk around your home or office. This can happen if the tracker takes any sign of movement as a suggestion that your HR may be rising too fast.
You don’t manually start the activities tracked on the watch, but when you compare the results of long runs on the Helio Strap with those of the chest strap, however, the Amazfit Hello Strap occasionally overestimates the heart rate by about 10bpm. It’s not a huge difference for most, and it’s good enough to be an indicator of heart rate zones, but it’s still not as accurate as the best Apple watches. Amazfit talks about the Helio Strap as a wearable to pair with another fitness watch, to fill in the gaps of statistics all day and night, and during other workouts the results were accurate (relatively) and bang-on. But there is definitely room for accuracy tracking to improve the firmware update.
As for tracking steps, the Amazon Helio Strap recorded slightly lower numbers over the five-day period, except for one day when they were almost identical at 3000 steps. Over a five-day period the Helio Strap recorded 94% of the steps for the Garmin Forerunner 970. It’s also worth noting that the Garmin was worn on my dominant arm (the Helio Strap was not) so that played a part here.
Sleep tracking performance is solid. A few nights during the test I wore the Amazfit Helio Strap next to three other wearables to see how big the difference would be: Garmin Forerunner 970, Polar Loop and Coros Pace 4. All four of these watches failed to work at any time when you woke up briefly and wondered why the alarm clock read 4:55am. But those times you actually have to get up to go to the bathroom? It picks them up. The Amazfit Helio Strap also detected changes in sleep patterns and heart rate during those missed periods of wakefulness, however. – the next best thing.
It is also important not to underestimate the quality of the Amazfit Helio Strap app. Zepp, shared with other Amazfit wearables. And its design is perfect for wearable purposes like this. On the front page you get a handy summary of the stats you might want to see on a daily basis, with a system of traffic lights that also show which (if any) are a bit distracting. These include resting heart rate, sleep duration, skin temperature, exercise load and more.
This layout returns to a separate sleep tab, where we find statistics such as heart rate variability, Deep Sleep duration and skin temperature, and with the traffic light system.
Amazfit is also big on a concept called BioCharge, which is a measure of your overall energy level. What’s missing from the next step is what you get with Whoop, where the data is – and other pieces – they are used to clearly tell you whether or not you should exercise on a particular day. And Aura’s premium subscription is all about wellness and comfort for that kind of athlete-focused experience.
Amazfit Helio strap: Scorecard
|
Section |
Comment |
The result |
|
Price |
Cheaper than most and without forced registration? Typical of Amazfit, the Hello Strap is a decent value. |
4/5 |
|
Design |
It may not be a luxurious wearable but the light weight is comfortably sweet. |
4/5 |
|
Features |
While screenless wearables never feature, this one has a few neat additions including heart rate streaming. |
4/5 |
|
Working |
You get good statistical accuracy for some missed wake times during sleep tracking. |
4/5 |
Amazfit Helio Strap: Should I buy?
Buy if…
Don’t buy if…
Think again
First updated: January 2026
