Key Features
Review Price:
£149
Tracks core body temperature
A heat flux sensor estimates core body temperature for warm-up and heat strain insights.
Up to 14-day battery life
Drops to around 11 days with EDA stress monitoring enabled.
Can track heart rate, stress, daily steps and sleep
Continuous heart rate, HRV, EDA-based stress, step and sleep tracking.
Introduction
The Whoop rivals are coming thick and fast, and the latest to throw its screen-less body into the ring is the Speediance Strap Pro.
Joining the cheaper Speediance Strap, the Pro is currently the only band that promises to track your core body temperature. It uses that additional temperature data to tell you when you’ve warmed up properly before a workout, or it could be used to indicate signs of illness or other stresses on the body.
The Speediance Strap Pro lands with an affordable price and without needing an added subscription to put it to best tracking use. Does the Chinese-based brand that also builds connected gym equipment know how to build a great fitness band? I’ve been wearing it for a few weeks to find out.
Price
The Speediance Strap Pro costs £149/$159, which puts it squarely in the bracket of more affordable screen-less bands.
It’s cheaper than buying a Whoop 5.0 or Whoop MG by some distance and more affordable than the subscription-free Garmin Cirqa (£179.99/$199.99). It costs the same as the Polar Loop (£149.50/$199.99), but it’s not quite as cheap as picking up the Fitbit Air or the non-Pro Amazfit Helio Strap, with both bands sitting below £100/$100.
While a subscription isn’t required to use the Pro, there is the option of one, which Speediance calls its Wellness+ subscription. There is a one-year trial so you can find out if you need to spend the extra £12.45/$19.99 a month or £149.99/$149.99 annually to access it.
Design
- Standard and Pro models available
- Range of different coloured bands available
- Comes with armband in the box
The first thing to address is that the Speediance Strap comes in Pro and standard models. I was testing the Pro version, which mainly seems to get you a lighter design and an added EDA sensor.
It’s definitely a Whoop-esque approach to the design, with the tracking module clipping into a titanium buckle with a stretchy knit band threaded through to keep it in place. The buckle comes in two titanium colours, with three colour options available for the AirKnit strap I tried. There’s also a FlexKnit band, which adds a Velcro strap and is designed for more intensive training use.
An interesting move by Speediance is to include an armband strap in the box so you can move the sensor to your upper arm. Most other screen-less bands that support wearing further up the arm make you pay for that extra strap. It’s a smart move to include it.
I’d say it’s quite a nice-looking band that’s been comfortable to wear both on my wrist and upper arm. It’s easy to push the module out, and you can leave it in when you need to place it onto its sleek charging dock.
It’s waterproof up to 50 metres depth, so like most other bands, this is one you can keep on for swims and showers. When you do that, the strap does invariably get wet, but thankfully does dry off pretty quickly.
Health and fitness tracking
- Tracks core body temperature
- Tracks sleep, heart rate, SpO2 and heart rate variability
- Automatic activity detection included
There are some very familiar sensors and metrics at the heart of what makes the Speediance Strap Pro tick. Let’s deal with the sensors first. You’ll find optical sensors to continuously track heart rate, heart rate variability and breathing rate. An EDA sensor can monitor for signs of stress.
Dealing with those core, more familiar features and for data like resting heart rate and heart rate variability, these chimed in nicely with other smartwatches I tend to rely on for the same data. Step counts on some days were within a few hundred steps of other trackers. Other days there was a difference of a few thousand steps.
For sleep, the sleep duration had its good and bad days. Some days it matched up the sleep duration of other sleep trackers, on other days it registered that I’d fallen asleep extremely early when I’d just been sitting on the sofa watching TV.
The sleep summaries provided aren’t super useful and are a little on the general side without being laser focused on your particular metrics.
One of the big differences between the Pro and non-Pro straps is the addition of an EDA sensor to delve deeper into your stress. Fitbit has used this sensor to do something similar, with Speediance requiring a couple of days of monitoring to establish your baseline. Then it can dish out your current stress status and plot stress on a graph throughout the day. Again, I think the insights are buried in the graphs and numbers a little too much.
The big story is Speediance’s claim to be able to track your core body temperature. Most other bands that promise to keep tabs on your temperature are looking at skin temperature.
Speediance is using what appears to be similar heat flux sensor technology used in the Core Body wearable temperature sensor. This heat flux sensor is able to detect heat moving from or into the body. The strap takes this information along with skin temperature data to deliver heat load and cold stress alerts. It’s also built into the manual workout tracking mode, detailing whether your body is sufficiently warmed up to tackle a workout.
When using that manual tracking mode, it will determine whether you’ve sufficiently warmed up your body to be prepared for exercise. I’m terrible at warming up, and it seemed to be reflected in the temperature readings that were shown. After a workout, you can see insights into your heat strain and maximum heat strain.
It’s pretty cold in the UK now and while I decided to work out at a pretty brisk pace with a good few layers, it clearly wasn’t quite hot enough to impact on that heat strain data. When I took the training inside, I could see my heat strain represented with an apsi score. Again, I feel like an added insight attached would add value to having these scores to look over post-workout, but I can see how this added piece of temperature data could be useful to look over.
While none of its features are designed for serious health monitoring, this is a metric that could prove useful if your data suggests something isn’t quite right.
Heart rate tracking accuracy was actually pretty good, especially when using the armband. I compared data to a chest strap on all workouts, and heart rate graphs painted a similar picture of the workout, with maximum heart rate readings that typically were 3-4bpm off a chest strap monitor.
The automatic activity detection, however, does a so-so job of accurately recognising workouts. When it wasn’t great, metrics like pace, distance covered and heart rate weren’t at all reliable. I think if you’re using it to track workouts, manual tracking is the way to go.
Outside of body and skin temperature tracking, the strap can act as a wellness monitor, keeping track of vitals like heart rate variability and blood oxygen levels and knowing when they’re out of range. There’s scope to turn to the app as a food diary and log your meals and receive a wellness age to see if you’re older or younger than your actual age.
On the whole, it can feel like quite a busy app to navigate, which aims to fit a lot in across a range of categories. I think Speediance could do a better job of packaging up some metrics and burying some for users to delve into if they want to.
While the large majority of the app is free to use, there is an optional subscription, which costs £149.99/$149.99 a year or £12.45/$19.99 a month and mainly unlocks AI-powered health and coaching features. These are features I imagine most will not feel are dealbreakers.
Battery life
- Up to 14 days battery life
- Charges fully in 90 minutes
- Uses proprietary charging cradle
Speediance says the Strap Pro can run for up to 14 days, which drops to 11 days if you choose to enable the EDA-based monitoring. That matches the battery life claims of the latest Whoop and beats the Garmin Cirqa (10 days) and Fitbit Air (7 days).
I found the daily battery drop was roughly around the 10% mark, which would put it close to that 11-14 day battery claim. The overnight drop has been roughly a few percent, so there isn’t any worrying drain when taking it to bed.
Charging is done via a wireless charging dock that sits on the back of the Pro’s sensor and takes 90 minutes to fully charge up. The battery performance is strong and puts it up with the likes of the Whoop in terms of stamina in between charges.
Should you buy it?
You want a subscription-free Whoop alternative
The Strap Pro tracks the essentials without a mandatory subscription, includes an armband in the box and lasts up to two weeks between charges.
You want the most polished app experience
The companion app is busy, insights are often buried in graphs and automatic workout detection can be unreliable.
Final Thoughts
The Speediance Strap Pro is another pretty solid screen-free band, though its software needs a little more polish for it to be the complete package.
Adding in both wrist and armband straps when most other bands don’t is a win. The core body temperature play gives it some niche appeal too. It’s a band I’ve liked living with on the whole.
If you’re looking for a more beginner-friendly band, I’d suggest the Fitbit Air, while I think Amazfit’s non-Pro Helio Strap (if you can find it in stock) is a good workout option that you can pick up for less and offers slightly better tracking performance in some areas.
To see how it compares to the competition, take a look at our selection of the best fitness trackers.
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How We Test
We thoroughly test every smartwatch we review. We use industry-standard testing to compare features properly, and we use the watch as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find, and we never, ever accept money to review a product.
- Worn for a few weeks as our main tracker
- Heart rate data compared against a chest strap
- Sleep and step data compared against other wearables
FAQs
No, the Speediance Strap doesn’t require a subscription. There is an optional subscription, which offers access to additional coaching, training and analysis insights.
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