Oppo Band Style drops some metal on the budget fitness tracker

Just days after teasing it, Oppo has officially launched the Oppo Band Style as a more stylish version of its first Oppo Band fitness tracker.

The Band Style will live alongside the first Band and basically shares the same specs sheet with the tracker that launched in China in June last year.

The key difference is that instead of an all-in plastic design, the Style is offered up with a stainless steel ring that surrounds the touchscreen display. It's also available with a fluro rubber band and aluminium alloy clasp or the same sport strap available on the standard Band. This is still also one just for Android phone users.

It comes with your choice of black and vanilla color 14mm-sized band options and it measures in at 11.95mm thick. Up front is a 1.1-inch, 126 x 294 resolution AMOLED display and there's an optical heart rate and SpO2 sensors around the back. As a package, you're still getting something that's water resistant up to 50 metres, making it fit for the pool and a shower.

Along with tracking heart rate and blood oxygen levels, there's an accelerometer to track activities with 12 exercise modes supported including running, cycling, swimming and cricket. Just don't expect it to track your cover drives.

On the smartwatch front, it'll dish out notifications from your apps or alert you to incoming calls, let you see weather reports, control your music and offer a way to control your smartphone camera as well. There's no sign of the NFC that came packed in the China version of the Oppo Band though.

Like the first Band, there's an 100mAh capacity battery that should deliver up to 12 days of tracking time before you need to reach for the charger.

It's launching in India first with a price that when converted, works out to about . That's roughly around the same price as the Oppo Band. There's no details as yet if the Style will be launching further afield.

If you look at how it compares to other budget fitness trackers at around this price, it sounds very similar to something like the Realme Band, though the Style has arguably a better-looking design, bigger screen and the promise of slightly more battery life. It also sits in Xiaomi Mi Band 5 territory, which does offer an identical screen, but does crucially, work with Android and iOS devices.

The arrival of the Style though shows once again that there's an appetite to make tracking your health and fitness more affordable to do and that can only be a good thing. Hopefully the Oppo Band Style can live up to the positive experience we had with the Oppo Watch and the Oppo Watch LTE.