Amazfit Helio Strap Review: Screen-Free Fitness Tracking Without the Subscription

The Amazfit Helio Strap enters the increasingly competitive screen-free fitness tracker market with a compelling proposition: comprehensive health and activity tracking without a display, without subscription fees, and at a fraction of the cost of established players like Whoop. Priced at just £99, this lightweight band promises 10 days of battery life, accurate heart rate monitoring, and detailed sleep analysis—all managed through the well-regarded Zepp app.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, screen-free fitness trackers focus exclusively on biometric data collection and analysis, eschewing notifications, apps, and interactive displays. The philosophy centres on unobtrusive health monitoring that doesn't interrupt daily life or tempt you to check yet another screen. The Helio Strap embraces this minimalist approach whilst delivering surprisingly sophisticated tracking capabilities.

With Whoop commanding a £200+ annual subscription alongside hardware costs, the Helio Strap's one-time purchase price positions it as an attractive alternative for health-conscious consumers unwilling to commit to recurring fees. But can a £99 device genuinely compete with premium subscription services? Let's examine whether the Amazfit Helio Strap delivers substance alongside its undeniable value proposition.

Design and Build Quality

Minimalist by Design

The Amazfit Helio Strap epitomises minimalism. The compact tracking module measures just 24.3mm × 33.97mm × 10.59mm and weighs a mere 20 grammes—light enough that you genuinely forget you're wearing it. The rounded rectangular form factor sits flush against the skin, with no protruding elements to catch on clothing or feel obtrusive during sleep.

The module houses the optical PPG heart rate sensor on the underside, alongside the magnetic charging contacts. A single small LED on the face provides minimal feedback—a brief flash when you tap to record an activity, or indicator lights during charging. That's the extent of the physical interface. No buttons, no screen, no distractions.

Build quality proves entirely adequate for the price point. The tracker module features a matte plastic shell that feels solid if unremarkable. It won't win design awards, but it doesn't feel cheap or fragile. The 5ATM water resistance rating means you can swim, shower, and exercise in the rain without concern—a practical necessity for any serious fitness tracker.

Comfortable Wearing Options

The included silicone strap offers two wearing configurations: traditional wrist placement or bicep mounting. The wrist strap follows conventional design with a buckle closure and multiple adjustment holes. Material quality proves perfectly serviceable—soft enough for all-day comfort without causing irritation, though it can become slightly sweaty during intense exercise.

The bicep mounting option distinguishes the Helio Strap from many competitors. Some users find bicep placement delivers more accurate heart rate readings during certain activities, particularly those involving wrist flexion. The alternative placement also appeals to those who prefer their wrists unencumbered or who already wear a traditional watch.

At just 20 grammes, the Helio Strap practically disappears once fitted. You can wear it comfortably 24/7 without irritation, even during sleep—essential for accurate sleep tracking. The lightweight design compares very favourably to smartwatches that can weigh ten times as much.

The singular disappointment in the design department comes from Amazfit offering only one strap colour: black. Whilst this proves versatile, the lack of personalisation options feels limiting compared to competitors who offer multiple colour choices. It's a minor quibble, but one that may matter to some users.

App Experience and Daily Use

The Zepp App: Comprehensive and Capable

The Amazfit Helio Strap relies entirely on the Zepp smartphone app for configuration, data viewing, and analysis. Fortunately, Zepp represents one of the more accomplished fitness tracking applications, offering comprehensive data presentation without overwhelming complexity.

The app's home screen presents your daily metrics in a clean, scrollable interface: steps, heart rate zones, sleep score, effort score, and activity summaries all appear with intuitive visualisations. Tap any metric to access detailed breakdowns, historical trends, and contextual insights. The interface follows modern design conventions with generous white space and clear typography—a pleasant environment for exploring your health data.

Zepp's sleep tracking presentation particularly impresses. The app breaks down your night into sleep stages (light, deep, REM), provides a sleep score with contributing factors, and offers genuinely useful insights about sleep quality and consistency. Breathing quality during sleep receives dedicated tracking, alongside heart rate variability measurements—metrics typically reserved for more expensive devices.

Activity tracking data receives similarly thorough treatment. Each workout displays duration, heart rate zones, route maps (for GPS-enabled activities tracked via phone), and comparative metrics. The effort score system attempts to quantify training load and recovery status, helping you understand when to push harder and when to rest.

However, the Zepp app isn't without limitations. The interface can occasionally feel cluttered, particularly when Amazfit promotes paid software features or additional services. Whilst the core functionality remains entirely free, the prompts to upgrade to premium features appear rather frequently. Amazfit continues to improve the app with regular updates, gradually refining the user experience, but the commercial pressure within a supposedly subscription-free ecosystem feels slightly contradictory.

Daily Interaction: Genuinely Hands-Free

Living with a screen-free tracker requires minimal adjustment. Each morning, you open the Zepp app to review yesterday's data and overnight sleep metrics. Throughout the day, the tracker works silently in the background, monitoring your heart rate and detecting activities automatically.

To manually record a workout, you simply tap the tracker module twice—the LED flashes to confirm—then begin exercising. When finished, tap twice again to stop recording. The simplicity proves refreshing compared to navigating smartwatch menus whilst sweating through a workout.

The automatic activity detection works reasonably well for common exercises like running, cycling, and walking. However, it occasionally misses activities or incorrectly categorises them. This inconsistency means you can't rely entirely on automatic detection for comprehensive activity logging—manual workout recording delivers more reliable results.

Battery life in real-world use exceeds Amazfit's conservative 10-day estimate. During testing, the Helio Strap achieved 11 days and 18 hours between charges with continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, and several recorded workouts. This exceptional endurance means you can genuinely forget about charging for nearly two weeks—a liberating experience compared to smartwatches requiring nightly charging.

When charging becomes necessary, the magnetic cable attaches securely to the tracker module. A full charge requires approximately 90 minutes—reasonable given the capacity on offer.

Health and Fitness Tracking Performance

Heart Rate Monitoring: Accurate Where It Matters

The optical PPG heart rate sensor proves surprisingly capable for a device at this price point. During testing across various activities—running, cycling, walking, and strength training—the Helio Strap delivered heart rate readings that tracked closely with reference measurements from established fitness trackers.

Resting heart rate measurements proved consistently accurate, showing minimal variation when compared to medical-grade monitors. During steady-state cardio activities, the tracker maintained accurate readings with only occasional brief dropouts. Heart rate zone calculations appeared reliable, making the data genuinely useful for training guidance.

However, during high-intensity interval training and activities involving rapid changes in intensity, the Helio Strap sometimes struggled to keep pace with sudden heart rate fluctuations. Brief lags of several seconds occurred when transitioning from rest to maximum effort. For most users, this limitation won't significantly impact training effectiveness, but competitive athletes seeking split-second accuracy may notice the delays.

The bicep mounting option did seem to improve heart rate accuracy during activities like rowing and weightlifting, where wrist flexion can interfere with optical sensors. If you regularly perform exercises that involve gripping, the bicep placement proves worth investigating.

Sleep Tracking: Surprisingly Sophisticated

Sleep tracking represents one of the Helio Strap's genuine strengths. The combination of heart rate monitoring, accelerometer data, and Amazfit's analysis algorithms delivers impressively detailed sleep metrics.

The tracker accurately identifies when you fall asleep and wake, segments your night into sleep stages (light, deep, REM), and calculates a sleep score based on multiple factors: total duration, stage distribution, interruptions, and consistency. The sleep stage detection proved reasonably accurate when compared to reference devices, though all consumer sleep trackers employ estimation rather than medical-grade polysomnography.

Beyond basic sleep staging, the Zepp app presents genuinely useful supplementary metrics. Breathing quality assessment identifies potential sleep breathing disruptions. Heart rate variability during sleep offers insights into recovery status and overall health. Morning readiness scores help you understand how well you've recovered for the day ahead.

The sleep tracking insights prove sufficiently comprehensive to identify patterns and drive meaningful improvements to sleep hygiene. Whether the tracker reveals you're getting insufficient deep sleep, experiencing too many interruptions, or maintaining inconsistent sleep schedules, the data empowers actionable changes.

However, the Helio Strap lacks the sophisticated sleep coaching features that premium services like Whoop provide. You receive data and basic insights, but limited guidance about how to improve beyond general recommendations. For users seeking detailed sleep optimisation coaching, this represents a genuine limitation.

Activity Detection and Effort Score

The automatic activity detection system proves inconsistent. Whilst the Helio Strap reliably identifies obvious activities like running and cycling, it sometimes misses shorter workouts or struggles to categorise less common exercises correctly. Walking detection works well, but strength training often goes unrecognised unless manually logged.

The incompleteness means you can't entirely trust automatic detection to capture your complete activity picture. Manual workout recording via the tap gesture delivers far more reliable results, though this obviously sacrifices some convenience.

The effort score system attempts to quantify training load and guide recovery decisions. Based on your recent activity intensity and duration, the score indicates whether you're well-recovered and ready to train hard, or whether rest would prove more beneficial.

Unfortunately, the effort score fills too quickly and too easily. Even moderate activity rapidly elevates the score, potentially leading you to believe you've trained harder than reality. The system lacks the nuanced calibration that makes similar features on competitors genuinely useful for training periodisation. It provides a rough directional indicator, but shouldn't drive serious training decisions.

Limitations and Missing Features

Several notable capabilities remain absent from the Helio Strap:

No GPS: The tracker relies entirely on your smartphone for GPS data during outdoor activities. If you run without your phone, you won't receive route maps or accurate distance measurements.

Limited Sport Profiles: Whilst the tracker monitors heart rate during any activity, it recognises only common exercises for automatic detection. Niche sports require manual logging with limited specific metrics.

No Ambient Light Sensor: This absence means the tracker can't automatically adjust LED brightness or contribute light exposure data to sleep analysis.

Missing Advanced Analytics: Compared to Whoop's sophisticated training load optimisation, recovery scores, and strain analysis, the Helio Strap's insights remain relatively basic. You receive good data but limited guidance about what to do with it.

Value Proposition: The Subscription-Free Advantage

Whoop Alternative at 20% of the Cost

The most compelling aspect of the Amazfit Helio Strap isn't any individual feature—it's the absence of subscription fees. Whoop, the category leader in screen-free fitness tracking, requires a £200+ annual membership alongside hardware costs. Over two years, Whoop costs more than £400. The Helio Strap costs £99 once.

For users intrigued by screen-free health tracking but unwilling to commit to perpetual subscription payments, the Helio Strap presents an obvious alternative. You sacrifice some of Whoop's advanced analytics and coaching features, but you receive the core functionality—continuous heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking, activity detection, and effort scoring—without ongoing costs.

The value proposition extends beyond mere price comparison. Many consumers have reached subscription fatigue, having accumulated monthly fees for software, services, and connected devices. A fitness tracker requiring yet another subscription faces psychological resistance regardless of its capabilities. The Helio Strap sidesteps this entirely with its one-time purchase model.

What You Gain and What You Lose

Compared to Whoop, the Helio Strap delivers:

Advantages:

• Zero subscription fees (£99 once vs £200+ annually)
• Longer battery life (10+ days vs 4-5 days)
• Lighter weight (20g vs 30g)
• Bicep wearing option included
• Water resistant to 5ATM

Disadvantages:

• Less sophisticated training analytics and recovery algorithms
• No in-depth sleep coaching
• Less accurate effort/strain calculations
• Simpler app with basic insights
• Inconsistent automatic activity detection
• Promotional pressure for paid features within app

For casual fitness enthusiasts seeking comprehensive health tracking without professional athlete-level analytics, the Helio Strap's compromises prove entirely acceptable given the massive cost savings. Serious athletes or those seeking deep training optimisation may find the limitations frustrating.

Competitors at Similar Price Points

Within the sub-£100 fitness tracker market, the Helio Strap faces competition from:

Xiaomi Mi Band 8 (£40): Features a screen and costs less, but requires more frequent charging and provides less sophisticated health metrics.

Fitbit Inspire 3 (£85): Includes a screen with comprehensive tracking, though some features require Fitbit Premium subscription. Battery life shorter at 10 days.

Huawei Band 9 (£50): Budget option with screen and basic tracking, but less advanced health metrics and shorter battery life.

The Helio Strap distinguishes itself through the screen-free philosophy and comprehensive biometric tracking without subscriptions. If you specifically want unobtrusive health monitoring rather than a notification-delivering mini-smartwatch, the Helio Strap offers compelling value.

Who Should Buy the Amazfit Helio Strap?

The Helio Strap suits:

• Health-conscious users seeking comprehensive biometric tracking without screens or distractions
• Former Whoop users unwilling to maintain subscription payments
• Athletes wanting lightweight, unobtrusive 24/7 heart rate and sleep monitoring
• Users prioritising battery life and charging convenience
• Those seeking an alternative to bulky smartwatches for sleep tracking
• Fitness enthusiasts willing to engage with data through a smartphone app
• Anyone interested in screen-free tracking without premium pricing

The Helio Strap proves less ideal for:

• Serious athletes requiring professional-grade training analytics and recovery optimisation
• Users wanting standalone GPS tracking without a smartphone
• Those seeking extensive automatic activity detection across niche sports
• Anyone requiring in-depth sleep coaching beyond basic metrics
• Users preferring at-a-glance data from an integrated screen
• Athletes needing highly responsive heart rate tracking during extreme interval training

Conclusion

The Amazfit Helio Strap succeeds in its primary mission: delivering comprehensive screen-free fitness tracking at an accessible price without subscription fees. For £99, you receive accurate heart rate monitoring, sophisticated sleep tracking, respectable battery life, and a lightweight form factor suitable for 24/7 wear.

Whilst the Helio Strap can't match Whoop's advanced analytics, recovery algorithms, or coaching features, it captures the essential appeal of screen-free health monitoring—unobtrusive biometric data collection that empowers informed health decisions without constant notifications or screen interactions.

The Zepp app, despite occasional clutter and promotional pressure, presents health data comprehensively and accessibly. Sleep tracking proves particularly impressive for the price point, offering metrics and insights that rival far more expensive devices. Heart rate monitoring accuracy satisfies for general fitness training, though competitive athletes may notice limitations during high-intensity intervals.

The true brilliance lies in the value proposition. At one-fifth the annual cost of Whoop with zero ongoing fees, the Helio Strap makes screen-free fitness tracking accessible to consumers who balked at subscription models. You sacrifice advanced features and sophisticated coaching, but you retain the core functionality that makes the category compelling.

For health-conscious users seeking comprehensive biometric tracking without screens, notifications, or subscription fatigue, the Amazfit Helio Strap represents an excellent choice. It doesn't pursue perfection—it pursues practicality, accessibility, and freedom from recurring fees. In that mission, it succeeds admirably.

At £99, the Helio Strap establishes itself as the most accessible entry point into screen-free fitness tracking. Amazfit need only refine the automatic activity detection and effort score calibration to elevate this device from "good value" to "genuinely great." For now, it stands as a thoroughly competent health tracker that respects both your wrist and your wallet.