HiFuture has released its brand new fitness smartwatch, the FutureFit ZONE. If you haven’t heard of them, HiFuture is a relatively newer company, founded in 2016. HiFuture focuses on creating premium quality consumer electronics and mobile audio accessories, with a vision of providing consumers with high-quality products at affordable prices. Partnering with brands like Qualcomm, Realtek, BES, and others, they create some pretty reliable technology.
The FutureFit ZONE is without a doubt an affordable fitness tracking smartwatch. You can currently find the product on its website for about $45 USD, or even less when using any available discount codes.
Compared to the rest of the market, this is a really solid price for the features that the ZONE comes with. The watch comes in three color options of black, silver, and pink metallic.
The watch comes with tons of features like heart rate, oxygen, blood pressure, and sleep monitoring, as well as a pedometer and 24 different sports modes to track your workouts. With an IP68 waterproof rating, you can be prepared to take the device almost anywhere.
More Specs and Features
At the root of it, the ZONE is just loaded with features. First off, with 24 different available sport modes, you can track the metrics of all of your workouts.
Once you download the app, you will be able to see some stored data about your heart rate, daily steps, and such, but I feel that the information you can find leaves a lot to be desired.
I couldn’t seem to find much information about individual workouts; it just seemed that the info was added to a running total of steps and calories burned for the day. The watch showed that I burned a total of about 465 kcals burned over two weeks, which is obviously way too low. I took the watch with me numerous times to intense workouts or mountain biking sessions.
I do believe the heart rate sensor is accurate, if nothing else, but I have no way of confirming the measurement accuracy of the blood pressure reading or oxygen levels. Regardless, I wouldn’t suggest using the watch for medical purposes.
Additionally with the app, you can find and download unique custom watch faces to personalize the feel of the watch so that you can opt for whatever aesthetic fits your style. Another small feature that I think is important to look for is the wake-up function. The Zone can be woken up automatically when you turn your wrist and bring it up, which is honestly something I didn’t really expect from it.
Besides the features that I would consider ‘extras’ there are some other essential features that are worth mentioning if you’re considering making the purchase. With 14 days of standby battery life, I think a dead watch will never be a concern. Two weeks is impressive for most smartwatches that I’ve experienced. I’m lucky to get two full days out of my Samsung Galaxy Watch Active 2.
Besides this, the watch can receive notifications from your phone like most smartwatches, set alarms, use it to find your phone, adjust the brightness, and set different reminders through the app. It also tracks distances for your workouts as well as your daily walking distance but it doesn’t mention anywhere on the website that it uses GPS, so the data should be taken lightly as I am guessing the metrics are pulled from your step count.
Cheap or Inexpensive?
On the outside, the Zone feels good. The wristband is comfortable and interchangeable, and the watch itself is pretty lightweight. It comes with plenty of room for size adjustment so I don’t think that most people should have to worry about needing a new wristband size.
The display is plenty large, but the actual screen doesn’t cover the entirety of the watches face like the photos seem to show on the website. Of course you won’t really notice this minor flaw if you use a watch face with a black background, but it is very noticeable and rather unattractive in my humble opinion if you prefer a more colorful watch face.
Besides this, the display resolution and refresh rate are both fairly low compared to the more high quality watches that I’ve owned previously. It gives the whole watch a very clunky or outdated feel as far as software goes, but it’s another thing that can be easily overlooked if you just want a low budget watch to time your workouts, set alarms, receive notifications, etc.
In an interesting if not minor detail, the button on the side of the watch can be pressed or spun, but it doesn’t do anything besides wake up the display and open the app drawer. The spinning function doesn’t do anything at all as far as I am aware of.
Another aspect where I feel the ZONE lacks quality is the app. The whole UI looks pretty early development, and it seems to lack some important features as I previously mentioned.
I would like to be able to see the actual battery percentage and I think it would be cool if I could download additional apps to install on the watch like a weather or a calendar app. Besides this, the app also gets rather annoying by hitting you with notifications. This is every time you disconnect the watch from your phone either intentionally or accidentally.
It is also a bit irritating to mange which push notifications the watch sends because the list of available app is not based on those installed on your phone but rather a select list of popular applications like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and a few others. I will give them some credit because it seems to still be early on in development, but I think making improvements to the app should be a priority.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a low budget smartwatch with essential features to help you track your day to day fitness, the FutureFit ZONE could be a worthy option for you.
While it’s not the best looking, and its software needs work, it does all of the things (and more) that I think a fitness smartwatch needs to do.
The watch has not been accurate in tracking calories burned but it has done a solid job of distances, time, sleep and other metrics. It boasts an impressive battery life and a solid waterproof rating. It’s comfortable and lightweight and after a small period it doesn’t even feel like it’s there.
You can currently purchase it for under $40 through HiFuture’s website. For a limited time you can use promo code HIFZONE to knock an additional $7 off the price.
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