Amazfit Helio Ring review: A good smart ring with a bad sizing problem

Price upon review

$199.99

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The Amazfit Helio Ring is Zepp Health’s first foray into the world of smart rings and hopes it can enjoy some of the success led by the Oura Ring.

Now Oura is no longer the only player in this space with the Samsung Galaxy Ring and newcomers like RingConn and Ultrahuman are also vying for a place on your numbers.

The Helio Ring works essentially the same way as those other smart rings, tracking metrics like heart rate and sleep, while when paired with Amazfit smartwatches, it offers a more reliable insight into your recovery needs. Like Samsung, Ultrahuman and RingConn, you don’t need a subscription to track it for proper use.

Even with a small number of smart rings, competition is fierce right now, so is the Amazfit Helio Ring actually the one you should be wearing?

Design and construction

• Available in one colour
• There are only three ring sizes available
• Uses a similar charging station as Oura

The Helio Ring, unlike other smart rings, comes in just one color, which I would describe as a nice mix of gold and gray, with an almost jagged effect that helps it stand out from other smart rings.

It’s made of titanium with a resin inside and a sensor bump you can feel on the underside of your finger, but it’s never uncomfortable to wear.

Mike Sawh

At 2.6mm thick, this isn’t exactly the thinnest smart ring you can wear right now. The Oura Ring 4 measures 2.88 mm, the Samsung Galaxy Ring is 2.6 mm thick and the Circular Ring Slim is 2.2 mm. If you want the thinnest, it’s the RingCon Gen 2 at just 2mm.

An interesting move by Zepp Health is to only offer the Helio in three ring sizes. That’s your choice of sizes 8, 10 and 12, making your options a lot more limited than with other rings. You also don’t get the option of a sizing kit, where measuring methods are offered to ensure you get the ideal size.

Luckily I was a size 8 and the fit was generally good. It didn’t twist on my finger and was comfortable to wear both during and outside of exercise and while tracking my sleep.

Mike Sawh

In terms of durability, it’s good to see that the Helio offers a water resistance of 10 ATM, which means it’s suitable for being submerged in water up to a depth of 100 meters and you can wear it while swimming and showering .

One problem I often encounter with smart rings is that they get scratched too easily. I haven’t seen any bad scratches yet, but it would still be a scratch I would recommend removing for scenarios like lifting weights or anywhere where it could be bumped and bumped.

Fitness and tracking

• Tracks steps, sleep, heart rate and stress
• Features a readiness mode like Rival Rings
• Works in combination with Amazfit smartwatches

The Helio has sensors that can monitor heart rate, blood oxygen levels, temperature and stress through heart rate variability measurements. There’s also an EDA sensor, a sensor that has appeared on Fitbit’s smartwatches and adds to its promises of monitoring your stress.

Mike Sawh

The idea, like other smart rings, is to use the Helio Ring as a recovery tool and wear it alongside an Amazfit smartwatch to track your workouts and create a more comprehensive view of your recovery needs. It means you can take the Helio to bed with you to track your sleep if you don’t want to wear a watch and miss the data.

When worn together, the idea is for data to be merged into the accompanying Zepp phone app using algorithms (Samsung does something similar). You may see different data on the individual devices, but when combined in the app, they provide the same insights.

As with most rings, what matters is that the smart ring can perform its monitoring activities. Then it’s time for the app, which has received a major overhaul since the launch of the Helio.

The app now feels like a better match for a smart ring than before. It’s largely free to use outside of Zepp’s AI-powered Coach Chat feature, which requires a premium subscription. However, I think most could live without access.

Mike Sawh

From the first screen in the app, you’ll see your readiness score, which looks at sleep and exercise data collected from your training data. Below that lies your core data, including resting heart rate and richer sleep data. You can also track steps and view additional metrics such as PAI Health scores fueled by increasing heart rate through exercise throughout the week. There are also additional tabs dedicated to sleep and effort (exercise).

If you’re looking for this ring to track steps, the daily step counts were very similar to the daily totals I recorded on the Samsung Galaxy Ring and the step tracking on an Apple and Garmin watch. Metrics such as resting heart rate and heart rate variability were also comparable across those devices. When I compared the sleep stats, the sleep scores were similar, as was the sleep duration, while sleep stages such as deep and REM were also similar.

Then we get into that headline readiness metric. This is something that Oura, Samsung, Garmin and many others are trying to offer to help you make better decisions about when to exercise or generally think about whether it would be wise to exercise more to have a relaxing day.

On some days, these readiness scores matched Garmin and Oura’s readiness scores and Samsung’s energy scores. However, there were some days where the scores were very different and this is a signal of the limitations of the ring to track exercises and the need for an Amazfit smartwatch that can fill some gaps in its tracking capabilities.

Mike Sawh

You can also see daily readiness insights in the Zepp app. One evening my heart rate was higher than normal, which could be a sign of stress, with some rudimentary advice to practice some relaxation techniques to lower that heart rate. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but for someone looking to get to grips with putting their tracking data into some context, it could be useful.

Another aspect here is the ability to track your stress and emotions. One day the app detected an emotional response asking me to log in. I didn’t see these recorded reactions until I got into the app, so a notification or prompt could make it a more useful feature to help understand what might be causing that emotional reaction.

I use the Helio with an Amazfit smartwatch, which is really the way to get the best use out of it. Not all Amazfit watches offer what Zepp calls “data fusion,” but most do and the T-Rex 3 I used is one of those supported devices. This way you get the training data that the Helio Ring can’t record, including training heart rate, to really make the most of those readiness scores.

Battery life and charging

• Battery life up to 4 days
• Fully charges in 1 hour and 40 minutes

Depending on which size you choose, the battery capacity of the ring varies slightly. A size 8 ring uses a 16.5 mAh battery, while a size 12 ring uses a 20.5 mAh battery.

Zepp Health says the battery lasts up to 4 days, so not quite the best battery life offered on a smart ring, but respectable nonetheless. For the best, you should grab the RingConn Gen 2, which lasts up to 12 days.

Mike Sawh

I’d say the promised battery life is optimistic, especially if you enable everything the Helio can monitor. Features such as automatic blood oxygen, the most accurate heart rate measurement and advanced sleep tracking ensure that the battery drains much faster.

You can get four days if you bring back some of that more advanced tracking, but it was closer to 2-3 days, with the battery sometimes dropping as much as 20% overnight. I found myself charging it as regularly as an Oura Ring Gen 3.

When you need to charge it, you have to place it right on a charging pad that looks almost identical to the charging pad, including Oura’s smart ring. I prefer the earbud-style charging case that Samsung and RingConn have followed, but at least you know the Helio will stay in place when it’s time to power it up.

It takes one hour and 40 minutes to fully charge from 0-100%.

Price and availability

The Amazfit Helio Ring launched at a price of £269/$299, but has since dropped to around £150/$170, making it one of the cheapest smart rings you can buy right now.

You can buy it from the official store in the UK and US and from retailers like Amazon/Amazon US.

By comparison, the Oura Ring 4 costs £349/$349 and requires an additional monthly or annual subscription. The Samsung Galaxy Ring costs £399/$399 and, like the Helio, requires no additional subscription.

You also have the impressive RingConn Gen 2 for $279, the Ultrahuman Ring Air ($349), and the Circular Smart Ring Slim ($264).

Check out our list of the best smart rings to see all the top options.

Should you buy the Amazfit Helio Ring?

The Amazfit Helio Ring is a smart ring that offers something different in design than its rival, even if it is not the thinnest available. The core tracking was good for me and now has a companion app that is a much better fit for what the Helio can track.

It feels like you need an Amazfit smartwatch to get the most out of it. Since both watches and rings aren’t ridiculously expensive, you can now buy them both for about the same price as a competitor’s ring.

However, there are some issues to consider. The lack of size options is the most notable, which immediately limits its appeal. It also offers battery life as long as Samsung, RingConn and, to a lesser extent, Oura can now.

If you can get it to fit, the Helio Ring will give you a good smart ring experience. I’m just not convinced that as a package it outperforms Oura and RingConn, while Samsung’s Ring offers a sleeker design, solid overall tracking, a more convenient charging solution, and a better battery to make up for the somewhat half-baked software. .

Specifications

• Battery life up to 4 days
• Works with Android and iOS
• Subscription-free app
• 2.6mm thickness
• PPG sensor
• Temperature and EDA sensor
• 10 ATM waterproof