Hands-on: Huawei TalkBand B1 – The hybrid wearable Bluetooth headset and sports band

Almost every manufacturer would like to showcase their wearables and Huawei has joined the pack by unveiling its TalkBand B1 at Mobile World Congress. Instead of a Smart Watch, the TalkBand B1 is a rather different accessory all together. Essentially this is a Bluetooth headset with an integrated 1.4″ OLED display that can be stowed onto a colourful strap. Apart from answering calls, the headset is also capable of displaying the time and track your physical activities as well. The display is not touch enabled so you would need to press a button to toggle between the time, fitness level and sleep monitoring.

Powering the device is a rather small 90mAh capacity battery which is rated to last 6 days but surprisingly takes 2 hours to charge fully. The Bluetooth headset can be paired using NFC and it comes with water and dust resistance rated at IP57. Interestingly the strap also doubles up as a charging dock where one end of the strap is a hidden USB connector for charging.

In the hands, the TalkBand B1 looks cheap while the OLED display isn’t really particularly bright. The build quality could have been better and it isn’t on par with early wearables like the Pebble Smart Watch. We are not sure if this is just an early prototype but the straps on the demo units at Mobile World Congress looked rather worn out.

With its suggested retail price of 99 Euros (about RM450), the TalkBand B1 is going to have a hard time considering its limited features and sub-par build quality. If Huawei could make solid products like the MediaPad X1, there’s no excuse why they can’t come out with a better wearable device. Hopefully they would improve in their next attempt.

Head after the break for the hands-on video and photos.