Review: Amazfit Helio

Smart rings have arrived. They’re no longer the preserve of Finnish pioneer Oura; we have tested rings from Ultrahuman, Ringconn, and Movano in recent months, and our Samsung Galaxy Ring review is in the works. These finger-based trackers are easy to wear and provide potentially valuable insights about our health and fitness. As perhaps the dominant Chinese player in the fitness tracking space, Amazfit should be well-placed to jump aboard the trend, but the Helio smart ring feels like a work in progress.

Amazfit grew from Huami, founded more than a decade ago. The company has lots of experience turning out affordable gadgets, and Amazfit is a sub-brand that released its first smartwatch in 2016. Huami rebranded to Zepp Health in 2021, and the Amazfit app became the Zepp app, even though the Amazfit brand was retained for the devices. (Please just pick one name.)

We have tested a few of Amazfit’s fitness trackers, including the Amazfit GTR Pro (5/10, WIRED Review) and the Amazfit Balance (5/10, WIRED Review). Amazfit was bullish about the ring and watch combination, with the Zepp app aggregating data from both, so it sent me the Cheetah Pro alongside the Helio. (Amazfit also sells the ring bundled with other models.) The duo works well, but testing the Helio ring alone quickly revealed its shortcomings.

Rushed Ring

The Amazfit Helio comes in only one color and two sizes. Amazfit calls the color titanium. It is titanium alloy, but the finish looks bronze with a subtle, classy-looking dot pattern on the top and a tiny indentation on the other side to help you align the sensors correctly. The Helio weighs just shy of 4 grams, is 2.6 mm thick, and is comfy to wear. It is bulkier than a regular ring but not terribly so.

The Amazfit Helio is rated at 10 ATM for water resistance. You can swim or shower with it on. It comes with a wee, wireless charging plinth, just like Oura’s, and a USB-C cable, but you must supply a power adapter. Amazfit offers size 10 or 12. (Luckily, I am size 12.) Eventually, it will offer sizes 7 through 13. The limited options boost my impression that Amazfit has rushed the ring to market.

The ring seems durable. Mine is mostly blemish-free after a couple of weeks, and I tend to be tough on smart rings, though I did manage to gouge my porcelain bathroom sink. (You must remember to remove your ring before cleaning, lifting weights, or any activity where it is likely to touch a hard surface.) Like most smart rings, the Helio works best on your index finger, but this makes it more likely to come into contact with … well, everything.

Mighty Metrics

The Helio has the usual sensor suspects, including a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, 3-axis accelerometer, 3-axis gyroscope, temperature sensor, and electro-dermal (EDA) sensor. It can track your heart rate and heart rate variability, active minutes, total steps, calories burned, and a few other bits. You must install and link the Zepp app (iOS, Android) to review your data.

Sadly, the Helio cannot automatically track workouts, and your manual workout options are limited (walking, running, cycling, and treadmill). Tracking a route requires your phone’s GPS, which is par for the course. More annoying, the Zepp app does not allow you to enter workouts manually after the fact. If you want to record a workout not mentioned above, you can select it on an Amazfit smartwatch, but there is no way I can find to do this with the Helio ring, which seems like a major oversight.

Comparing a brisk hike on the Oura, Apple Watch, and Amazfit Helio, the Helio underestimated my steps but overestimated my heart rate. As I have found with most other smart rings, it seems poor at measuring high heart rates during intensive exercise. The step count has generally been within 200 of the Apple Watch.

Sleep tracking is probably the Helio’s best feature. It tracks overall quality, breathing, sleep stages (light, REM, and deep), and heart rate. It proved fairly accurate, mostly matching my favorite sleep tracker (the Oura), though the Helio consistently slightly overestimated my light sleep and REM phases and almost always gave me a higher sleep score.

Stress tracking is the latest feature to roll out to the Amazfit Helio, but it is in beta and did not work well for me. It occasionally sent me a notification that I was having an emotional swing, but these spikes rarely tallied with how I was feeling.

All your metrics are analyzed to give you a readiness score, just like Oura’s Readiness, Fitbit's Daily Readiness score, and Garmin's Body Battery. The scores seemed generous and were always higher than my Oura score. Amazfit also tracks your Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) score, which heavily focuses on raising your heart rate. If you score 100 points or above each week, you can dramatically reduce your risk of cardiovascular problems and raise your fitness levels.

Off the Pace

Unfortunately, the Zepp app lacks polish and feels busy and confusing. Luckily, you can fully customize the home screen, and you absolutely should, because the default layout won’t suit most folks. Occasionally, the app hung trying to load a page, and I had to restart it to get it working again. I also suffered frequent disconnections from the Helio. Sometimes, toggling Bluetooth off and on again would work, sometimes not. Most frustrating, I lost data twice because the battery died without warning me.

I struggled to get three days from the Helio's battery, and it never came close to Amazfit’s suggestion of four. The app never warned me when the battery was low, reminded me to charge before bedtime, or notified me when the Helio had finished charging. (Oura does all this.) I found it especially annoying with the Helio, because it sent me useless notifications about my emotional swings, so it knows how to send me a message.

The good news is that the latest app update (as of several days ago) seems to have added a permanent notification that displays the Helio’s battery level and warns you to keep running the app to ensure it works properly. I am not fan of permanent notifications, but it beats having no battery indicator at all.

The Zepp app also tries to upsell you on two subscription services. You do not need either of them. Zepp Aura is $70 a year and gives you AI-powered personalized sleep analysis and sleep sounds to help you drop off at night. Zepp Fitness is $30 a year and gives you an AI coach to help tailor a training plan. Even after the free trial, I was confused about exactly what each subscription offers.

For comparison, Oura’s subscription is $6 a month or $70 a year, but its value is clear (sleep analysis, health insights, trends, body temperature, etc.). The similarly priced Ultrahuman Ring Air (7/10, WIRED Recommends) and the Ringconn Smart Ring (6/10, WIRED Review) are better than the Amazfit Helio in its current state, and neither requires a subscription. Samsung’s Galaxy Ring is pricier at $400, but also subscription-free.

Ultimately, the best use case for the Amazfit Helio is as a sleep tracker for folks who already wear an Amazfit smartwatch but prefer to take it off at bedtime. When I tested the Helio with the Cheetah Pro, the Zepp app seemed far more accurate (probably because the data came from the watch, not the ring). The watch also adds the ability to track your daily activity properly.

The Amazfit Helio is impossible to recommend as a stand-alone fitness tracker. It has improved since I started testing, and I have no doubt it will improve more, but Amazfit should have delayed the launch until it was ready. Right now, you are paying $300 to be a beta tester.