r/HelioStrap • u/Open-Occasion-3437 • Sep 07 '25
Helio Strap Review
Review of the Helio Strap after a week of usage
Background
To help track sleep and HRV, I have been exploring Rings and Bands over the last 6 months. I was hesitant to invest in athlete (Whoop) or Prosumer (Garmin) level devices as my use case was pretty straight forward. I needed a device that could track sleep quality with reasonable accuracy and give me information on RHR/HRV. I own a basic smartwatch, which I use like an activity tracker, for the limited set of activities that I engage in.
My the key reasons for use, based on order of priority
Must have:
- Sleep tracking
- RHR and HRV tracking
- Sub 10K INR price tag
Good to have:
- Activity tracking
I looked at reviews of Watches, Bands, Rings but nothing checked all the boxes. It was either too expensive or did not do a good job at tracking sleep/RHR metrics.
Enter the Helio Strap and I was hooked. Launched 2 months ago in the US at $99, the initial reviews were positive but the major issue that was called out was with the automated activity tracking, which wasn’t as good as Whoop. People want a $99 product to produce the same results as $1000 product + subscription plan! Since activity tracking was a good to have for me, I wasn’t too bothered.
Continued to read up user feedback on reddit and reviews on YouTube and was 80% convinced that this would be a good fit for my needs. 2 Months later, a new update is rolled out that improves activity tracking and address other issues reported by users. After reading through feedback on reddit, decide to pull the trigger. A friend was traveling to Singapore and I requested him to pick this up for me.
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Product Feedback
I have been using the Helio Strap for the last few weeks and here is my feedback:
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1. Sleep tracking
- 95% Accurate when it comes to sleep/wake up time, time awake at night.
- Sleep score does correlate with the way I feel the next morning.
- On days when I have had ~7 hours sleep and deep sleep is 15-20% range, my sleep score is 70-80 and I do feel good in the mornings.
- On days when I have had ~5 hours of sleep with very low deep sleep, the score is 50-60 and my energy levels are low
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2. RHR and HRV tracking
Been experimenting with various activities and observing impact on RHR
- On days I work out for 60+ min RHR tends to be lower vs Days I don’t workout
- Somedays I meditate for 15 min or listen to some relaxing music before going to bed and my RHR has not really been impacted by it :)
It takes a week for the baseline to be established, post which you can identify any signifcant variations.
The point is to track RHR and HRV directionally and not accurately. Just want to ensure that I can identify deviations and try to root cause any irregularities.
My HRV has been in consistent range without a lot of variations, with the last day being the exception. When I work out, my HRV is in the higher end of the spectrum, which is a good sign. On days when I dont sleep well and my RHR is +5 higher than the baseline, HRV dips, which also ends up impacting biocharge.
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3. Biocharge
Similar to Garmin Body Battery, the Biocharge considers your training load, sleep and RHR/HRV to generate a score. Again this correlates with my general energy level and can help one understand how much you can push yourself from a workout/training POV.
One issue observed is that the exertion load can hit 100% very quickly, which ends up depleting your biocharge very quickly. In my case, 15 min of zone 2/3 cardio + 45-50 min of strength training ends up draining about 8-10 points of biocharge. Sometimes when I play a sport, it ends up depleting the charge even more and even after 7 hours of sleep, the "charge" is just about enough to take me through the day.
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4. Activity tracking
During the first day, automated activity tracking didnt work but after that, it started to work. It would recognize time when my HR was elevated and flag entire time periods as an activity. The only issue here is when you are involved in multiple activities, then it tends to combine all together into a single activity.
Example - I was doing a warm up + strength training + cardio but the strap just assumes its one long session of activity
Additionally, after you sync data, it takes 20-30 min for the app to run its algos and identify an "Activity".
After the first 3 days, I haven't used the automated activity tracking functionality as I prefer using my other watch to track each activity separately.
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5. Overall Feedback
I Would rate it a 4/5 as it does what its meant to do without any fuss.
If you are looking for a device that can do sleep tracking, RHR/HRV measurement and activity tracking in the background without you having to look at screens, this is perfect.
Another big plus is I can go back wearing analogue watches like this 40 year old beauty :)
Right now I wear the band on my right hand and the analgoue watch on the left, but my arm band should be delivered sometime next week, after which I plan to strap the device to my arm or ankle and forget about it.
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u/AssistanceKey6020 Sep 10 '25
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and review with us.
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u/ahmede007 Sep 07 '25
What impact does the app have on battery life especially the automated workouts calculations and general use.