Amazfit Helio Strap PRO - I'm Confused! (First Impressions)

Branding and Clarity Issues02:30

Much of this is down to the weird lack of clarity and branding around this device because the name as a pro version of the Amazfit Helio Strap might not be the right way to go. If the website had just said only suitable for Hyrox users or mostly made for Hyrox users for other athletes get the normal version or maybe they should have just called it the Amazfit Helio Strap Hyrox. That would have been very clear. There was sort of a Hyrox edition of the Amazfit Helio Strap before, so that would be confusing as well, but it wasn't known it would be so Hyrox focused based on the title and the first description.

The creator is Rob, a post-doctoral scientist specializing in biological data analysis. That would normally be the focus of videos, data and data science. However, given how surprised it was when receiving the Helio Strap Pro, initial impressions are shared, also just because of being so confused and because it was wanted to make sure that people know what they are likely buying. This was bought with own money and still waiting for a few answers to some questions from the Amazfit rep and most of the information shared today is based on research done on Amazfit. There might be some mistakes in how what was read online or what Amazfit wrote on the website was interpreted. If there are any mistakes that need to be fixed, they will be added to the pinned comment on top. A deep dive and a full review of this set of devices will be done as well.

Helio Core Motion HR Comparison to Non-Pro04:30

First of all, you get what looks like a normal Amazfit Helio Strap pod, and it is mostly the same, though not exactly the same. It has the same Bio Tracker 6.0 PPG heart rate sensor, same battery size, same water resistance, same look, same size, same shape, same most things. The major reported internal change is that the original Amazfit Helio Strap uses a six-axis movement system. So 3-axis accelerometer plus 3-axis gyroscope. Now the Helio Core Motion HR which is what this is called now adds a 3-axis geomagnetic sensor producing a 9-axis motion sensing system. How important that actually is for most people is not sure. It could also potentially be used to improve heart rate tracking during running for instance to get rid of that lock onto your cadence. So basically it should give better information about orientation and movement direction but it doesn't necessarily mean any better performance for heart rate though it could be so but that has to be seen. Also even though the battery is the same in terms of size is reported. They do report 11 days of battery life on the pro to up to 10 days on the non-pro Helio Strap. At least what it said on the website. So this might just be a calculation difference because such a difference cannot be imagined between the two if they have the same battery and basically the same internals more or less. When comparing the Amazfit Pro to the non-pro, a few more sports profiles are gotten with the Pro version. Though again this could easily be introduced also on the non-pro with just a firmware update. So, the main heart rate and sports unit is essentially the same between the Pro and non-pro version.