RLQA Band3 Fitness Tracker Review: a cheap smartwatch that does the basics (with a few quirks)

I’ve been wearing the RLQA Band3 fitness tracker on my wrist for a bit now, using it like I’d use any cheap smartwatch: steps, sleep, notifications, and checking my heart rate during walks and workouts. I didn’t baby it, I wore it to work, in the shower, on a couple of runs, and even while messing around doing DIY at home. I went in with low expectations because of the price and the generic look, and honestly, that helped keep things in perspective.

The first thing I noticed is that it behaves like a typical budget tracker: setup through the GloryFit app, basic interface, and a bunch of health features that sound fancy on the box. In day-to-day use, though, you quickly see which features are useful and which are more “nice to have” but not very reliable. Steps and basic notifications are fine; blood pressure and some of the sleep stuff are more questionable.

The watch is rated IP68, so I didn’t worry about water. I wore it in the shower and rinsed it under the tap after a sweaty workout and it kept going without any drama. The battery also surprised me in a good way: I didn’t have to charge it every day, which is kind of my main complaint with more expensive smartwatches. Here, you charge it once and forget about it for several days.

Overall, my first impression is: this is a low-cost tracker that gets the job done for basic activity tracking and notifications. It’s not a medical device, the app is a bit clunky, and some readings feel more like estimates than real measurements. But if you want something cheap to count steps, buzz your wrist when you get a message, and last a week on a charge, it does that without too much fuss.

Considering the price, this watch sits firmly in the “budget but decent” category. You’re not paying for a big brand name, and it shows in some areas (manual, app polish, sensor accuracy), but you still get a lot of features on paper. The key is to be realistic about what you’re actually going to use. For steps, basic heart rate, simple sleep tracking, and notifications, it does the job without falling apart. For blood pressure or super detailed fitness stats, it’s clearly not on that level.

Compared to more expensive fitness trackers from Fitbit, Garmin, or even Xiaomi, you lose some accuracy, nicer screens, and better apps, but you’re also paying a fraction of the price. If you just want to try out a fitness band for the first time, or you want something cheap for a teenager or as a backup device, the RLQA Band3 makes sense. If you’re a serious runner or very focused on health metrics, you’ll probably be happier spending more on something higher-end.

The Amazon reviews around 4.3/5 feel about right to me. Some people love it because it’s cheap and does the basics. Others are frustrated with sleep not recording properly or the blood pressure being off. Both sides are understandable. It’s one of those products where you either accept its limits and you’re happy, or you expect too much and it feels disappointing.

In the end, I’d say the value is pretty solid if your main goals are: count steps, see roughly how active you are, get buzzed when your phone gets a message, and not charge your watch every day. For that, it’s good value for money. If you think you’re getting a premium smartwatch experience for this price, you’re going to be let down. It’s a basic tool that mostly works, and at this price point, that’s already not bad.

Design-wise, the RLQA Band3 is pretty standard: a rectangular 1.47-inch TFT screen with a black silicone strap and a regular buckle. If you’ve seen any budget fitness band on Amazon, this looks like that. It’s not ugly, it’s just plain. The black color is neutral and works with most outfits, so I could wear it at work without feeling like I had a toy on my wrist. It doesn’t try to look like a luxury watch, which is fine at this price point.

The screen is bright enough indoors and just about okay outside, as long as you crank the brightness up. In direct sunlight you sometimes have to tilt your wrist to catch the right angle, but I could still read the time and steps. The bezels are not super thin, so you don’t get that edge-to-edge look, but again, for a cheap tracker, I wasn’t expecting anything fancy. The touch response is decent: swipes and taps register most of the time, with the occasional missed swipe when your finger is sweaty or wet.

One thing I liked is the number of watch faces available in the app. There really are a lot of them, from very basic digital displays to more playful ones. You can also upload your own photo, which I tried with a simple background. It worked fine, and it makes the watch feel a bit more personal. Just don’t expect super sharp photo quality – the screen is small and the resolution is limited, but it’s good enough for something simple.

In day-to-day use, the design fades into the background, which I see as a plus. It’s light, doesn’t catch on sleeves much, and the rectangular shape makes it easy to read text messages and stats quickly. If you want a stylish accessory, this isn’t it. If you just want a discreet tracker that looks like every other budget band, it gets the job done. I’d call the design functional and low-key rather than pretty or impressive.

Battery life is one of the better points of this tracker. The specs claim up to 7 days of use and 30 days standby from the 200 mAh battery, and in real life, it’s pretty close if you don’t abuse all the features. With continuous heart rate on, notifications enabled, and checking the screen a normal amount, I got around 5–7 days before I felt the need to charge it. That’s with wearing it day and night, including sleep tracking.

If you start a lot of sports activities with GPS via the phone, keep the brightness high, and play with the menus all the time, you’ll be closer to 4–5 days. But even then, that’s still a lot better than some more expensive smartwatches that barely last two days. For me, not having to think about the charger every night is a big plus. I just topped it up once a week and forgot about it the rest of the time.

Charging itself is pretty quick. It goes from low battery to full in about 2 hours, as advertised. The magnetic charger snaps on easily enough, though like most of these, you have to place it correctly or it won’t charge. I just make sure I see the charging icon on the screen before walking away. There’s no wireless charging or anything fancy, but again, at this price, that would be unrealistic.

In practice, the battery is one of the main reasons I’d actually recommend this to someone who just wants a simple tracker. It’s not the longest-lasting device on the planet, but it hits a good balance between size and endurance. You put it on, wear it almost a week, charge it for a couple of hours, and you’re good again. Very low maintenance, which fits the whole “budget but practical” vibe of this watch.

In terms of comfort, the RLQA Band3 is actually one of its stronger points. It’s very light, and the silicone band is soft enough that I could wear it all day without feeling annoyed. I wore it tight enough for the sensors to sit properly, but not so tight that it left deep marks. After a couple of hours, I mostly forgot it was on my wrist, which is exactly what you want from a fitness tracker you’re supposed to wear 24/7.

During workouts, the band stayed in place pretty well. I used it for walking, light running, and some bodyweight exercises, and it didn’t slide around much. The buckle is basic but secure, and I never felt like the watch was about to fall off. When sweating, the strap can get a bit sticky like any silicone band, but it wasn’t worse than other cheap bands I’ve tried. A quick rinse in the sink sorted that out.

Sleeping with it on was also fine. Some watches feel bulky and annoying when you roll over in bed, but this one is slim enough that it didn’t bother me. I’m a side sleeper and I didn’t wake up because of the watch, which is a good sign. The only small downside is that the green sensor light can sometimes glow faintly if you move your wrist and the heart rate kicks in, but it’s not bright enough to be a real problem.

If you have very small or very big wrists, you might need to adjust it a bit to get a good fit, but the number of holes on the strap is decent, so you should find a setting that works. Overall, I’d say comfort is solid: nothing fancy, but I never felt the urge to take it off mid-day, which for me is the real test. For a budget tracker, it passes the comfort test easily.

For everyday use, the RLQA Band3 does a decent job. The interface is simple: swipe through steps, heart rate, sports modes, weather, and settings. There’s a slight delay sometimes when moving between screens, but nothing that makes it unusable. For a 64 MB budget device, I wasn’t expecting buttery smooth performance, and it behaves about how you’d expect: basic but usable.

Notifications are one of the main reasons people buy these, and here it works fine. You can get call alerts, messages, and app notifications (WhatsApp, etc.) on your wrist. It buzzes with a vibration that’s strong enough to notice but not crazy. You can’t reply from the watch, obviously, but you can read short messages and see who’s calling, which is handy when your phone is in your pocket or bag. I didn’t have any major issues with missed notifications once everything was set up in the app permissions.

The sports modes are there, but let’s be honest: you’ll probably use a handful of them at most. There are more than a hundred, but a lot of them are basically the same with a different icon. For walking, running, and maybe cycling, it’s fine. GPS is via your smartphone, so if you want proper route tracking, you need to bring your phone and start the activity from the app. Without the phone, it just records time, steps, and estimated distance.

Features like music control, camera shutter, and find my phone work as advertised, but they’re more small conveniences than life-changing features. Music control is nice when you’re walking and don’t want to pull out your phone to skip a track. Find my phone made my phone ring when I lost it under a pile of clothes, so that’s a win. Overall, performance is what I’d call “good enough for the price”: not polished, but it doesn’t get in the way of using the watch for basic stuff.

Out of the box, the RLQA Band3 is pretty straightforward: you get the watch itself, a small magnetic charging cable, and a basic instruction manual. No extra bands, no fancy packaging, just the essentials. The manual is usable but not very clear, especially around the sleep tracking and some of the health features. I can see why some people on Amazon complained that they couldn’t get sleep tracking to work properly – the explanations are short and a bit vague.

The watch uses the GloryFit app, which you have to install on your phone (Android or iOS). Pairing over Bluetooth took me a couple of minutes. It worked on the second try after I restarted Bluetooth, which is pretty normal for cheap wearables. Once it’s connected, you get access to the 200+ watch faces, health history, sports modes, and all the reminders (hydration, sedentary, alarms, etc.). The app is not pretty, but it’s functional. Think more “budget Chinese tracker app” than “polished Apple Health vibe”.

On paper, the watch promises a lot: 24/7 heart rate, blood pressure, blood oxygen, sleep tracking, 123+ sports modes, notifications, music control, camera shutter, weather, find my phone, and more. In practice, I’d say there are a few core features that work decently (steps, heart rate trends, basic sleep duration, notifications), and a bunch of extras that are either rough or just not very accurate, like blood pressure. If you buy it thinking it will replace a proper medical device or a high-end Garmin or Apple Watch, you’ll be disappointed. If you treat it as a cheap helper, it makes more sense.

Overall, the presentation is very “no nonsense budget gadget”: few accessories, a slightly confusing manual, but once you get through the initial setup, it behaves like a normal basic fitness band. Nothing special, nothing fancy, but it does what most people expect from a low-cost smartwatch: track movement, show the time, and buzz when your phone gets something.

This is where things get a bit mixed. For basic activity tracking, the RLQA Band3 is fine. Steps were in the same ballpark as my phone’s counter most days, sometimes off by a few hundred, but nothing dramatic. For casual use, that’s good enough. Calorie estimates and distance are based on those steps and your profile, so they’re just rough numbers, but that’s standard for trackers in this price range. If you want perfect accuracy, you’re in the wrong budget.

Heart rate tracking is decent for trends, not for precision. Resting heart rate looked believable and matched roughly what I get from other devices. During walks and light runs, it followed the ups and downs correctly, even if the exact number jumped around a bit. For interval training or very intense workouts, it lagged a little and sometimes took a few seconds to catch up. Still, for checking whether you’re roughly in a higher or lower zone, it’s okay.

Blood pressure and blood oxygen are where I’d say: take it with a big grain of salt. One Amazon review mentioned that blood pressure was very inaccurate, and I agree. I compared it a few times with a proper cuff monitor, and the numbers on the watch were often too optimistic or just random-looking. It might give you a vague idea, but I wouldn’t base any health decisions on it. Blood oxygen (SpO2) seemed less crazy, but I still see it as a curiosity, not a serious measurement.

Sleep tracking worked… most of the time. On some nights it logged my sleep duration pretty well, splitting between deep and light sleep. On other nights, especially when I went to bed late or woke up several times, it either missed parts of the night or under-reported the sleep. This matches what a couple of Amazon users said: sometimes it just doesn’t record properly. If you want a rough idea of when you went to sleep and woke up, it’s okay. If you want detailed sleep science, this is not it. Overall, I’d say it’s effective for basic health awareness but not for people who need precision.