Zebronics ZEB-FIT100 review: Affordable fitness tracking

If there’s one thing common between almost all domestic and Chinese smartphone/consumer electronics brands, it’s that all their offerings are priced much more competitively as compared to more established names. Due to this, everything from smartphones to TVs to air conditioners has become quite affordable.

One such home-grown brand is Zebronics. The IT peripherals maker recently launched its ZEB-FIT100 fitness band. On the face of it, the ZEB-FIT100 seems like a pretty well-rounded wearable. But should you prefer it over the Xiaomi Mi Band 2, even with its lower price of Rs 950?

Let’s find out, in our review of the Zebronics ZEB FIT-100.

Design and build quality

The ZEB FIT-100 has a fairly straightforward design. The tracker module is essentially a rectangular piece of plastic that’s held securely in a silicone wrist strap. The tracker can be easily taken out of the strap and charged using the provided clip-on charger. It has a 1.24-cm OLED screen and a button on the left which we can be used to cycle between different information display modes such as steps walked, distance travelled and calories burnt. By default, the display always shows the clock, day and date, and a battery status bar.

Overall, I found the design and build quality of the Zebronics ZEB FIT-100 to be pretty okay. The band is not exactly the sturdiest and takes a while to fasten around the wrist too, but it’s comfortable. The small screen is also quite alright, although it’s almost unreadable under direct sunlight.

Tracking performance and companion app

Just like all fitness bands, the ZEB FIT-100 syncs to iOS/Android smartphones using Bluetooth. All of its recorded fitness data is synchronized to your account, via the ZEB-FIT companion app.

To get started, all you have to do is install the app and pair the ZEB FIT-100 to it over Bluetooth. Once this is done, every piece of logged fitness data, from hours slept to steps walked to calories burnt, can be viewed in the app. It has four subsections, as explained below:

Mainpage: This screen displays a summarized view of fitness data such as daily step goal progress and distance walked. It can be swiped to the side to see sleep-related data.

Details: As the name suggests, it shows a comprehensive view of the fitness data, complete with graphs and averages. The data can be viewed for different time periods – week, month and year.

Device: This is where information regarding the fitness tracker such as firmware version and battery status can be checked. Here, you can also configure settings like SMS/call notifications and sedentary alerts.

User: On this screen, user profile details and information such as daily step goal can be configured.

I played around with the ZEB FIT-100 for a little over a week, logging everything from sleep to high-intensity activities like running with it. During my testing, I found Zebronics’ fitness tracker to be a pretty decent overall package.

The ZEB FIT-100 logs standard parameters like sleep and steps walked quite accurately. As for the distance travelled, it could have surely been a little better.

There are some aspects of the FIT-100 that I found to be really impressive, and one of these is Bluetooth connectivity and synchronization. Once paired, this thing synchronizes with the companion app in a snap. During my testing, not even once did I encounter any problems with this functionality.

Then there’s the battery life, which is absolutely great. With continuous fitness tracking, the battery lasts around 8-10 days. The ZEB FIT-100 is definitely one of those fitness trackers that you won’t have to worry about having to charge every now and then.

Verdict