With the Oura Ring 5, Fitbit Edge, and Garmin Cirqa dominating this year’s fitness tracker new releases, I was extremely excited to test out the lesser-known Luna Band. A screen-free, subscription-free fitness tracker, the Luna Band certainly looks the part.
But is looking the part enough to make it one of the best fitness trackers? The TL;DR is this: at some point in the future, yes. 100%. The Luna Band has so much potential. But right now? It doesn’t feel finished. There are tons of “Coming Soon” banners in the app, and you can’t customize any personal targets — which is such a shame, because I genuinely adored testing it. I would recommend buying it, but not for a few months.
I’ll get into all the gnarly details in this Luna Band review.
Latest Videos FromTom’s Guide
Luna Band review: Specs
Luna Band review: Price & availability
The Luna Band is $149 from Amazon U.S. and £129 direct from Luna in the U.K. This is $50 cheaper than the Garmin Cirqa and $50 cheaper than the Whoop 5.0 (from $199 to $369 per year).
However, the Fitbit Air ($99) and Amazfit Helio Strap ($99) both undercut the Luna Band by $50. The Luna Band looks much more appealing — and feels nicer on the skin — than the Amazfit Helio Strap and the silicone-y Fitbit Air strap (unless you pay extra for the upgraded knit option).
Luna Band review: Design
The Luna Band looks fantastic. I have nothing bad to say about its appearance. I tested the beige option, but it also comes in black and green. You get two straps, S-M and M-L, which are between 240mm and 295mm long. There’s a decent amount of Velcro at one end, so you can tighten the strap to your preference. I have wrists that can only be described as “Victorian child”, and it fit me perfectly without looking weird.
The Luna Band is also 5 ATM rated, which means you can wear it while swimming, but avoid high-impact water sports or scuba diving with it. I wore it in the ocean, and it both stayed put and didn’t get damaged.
The fabric not only looks good, but it doesn’t trap heat or sweat, unlike the silicone wristband on my Apple Watch SE 3.
Luna Band review: Fitness features
The Luna Band offers a huge range of fitness tracking functions. However, you have to go into the “Health and Activity” tab of the Luna app to start a workout — it’s not on the home page (even though surely it should be?).
Once I found the fitness section, I could scroll through 57 activities, although one of these is “Steam and Sauna Room,” not sure how “active” that one is. (To its credit, it does have a “Recovery” label next to it.)
There’s no onboard GPS, so when you go for hikes, cycles, or runs, it won’t generate a nice map like Amazfit Helio Strap or Garmin Cirqa — even if you take your phone with you. This band feels more suited to general lifestyle use rather than conscious training programs.
Automatic workout detection is a little blurry: I went for a run, but I clearly wasn’t running fast enough or long enough, as the Luna Band auto-detected a 4-minute run. This is a huge shame because my heart rate was between 144 and 162 BPM for thirty minutes on that day, but the band didn’t classify that as a run. There isn’t a huge amount of post-run analysis other than heart rate, so if you’re a serious runner, I’d recommend the Amazfit Helio Strap, Garmin Cirqa, or Fitbit Air instead.
However, this is also an issue on the Amazfit Helio Strap. After these hiccups, I learned my lesson — and started a workout manually from the app every time. After workouts, you get a nice heart rate zone bar chart and cardio versus strength efficiency.
I found the HRV to be somewhat unreliable. For a portion of my testing, I wore the Luna Band with my Amazfit Helio Strap, and the latter tracked my HRV at around 20 ms higher than the Luna Band. Of course, I can’t say for certain which was correct, but it’s worth mentioning.
Some features, like blood oxygen, are grayed out with a “Coming Soon” badge. There are tons of “Coming Soon” graphics in the app — I joked to my colleagues that it looks like a “Coming Soon” wasteland.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t test these “Coming Soon” areas. Does the blood oxygen saturation feature work? Who knows! For now, the Garmin Cirqa and Fitbit Air pip the Luna Band to the post here.
Luna Band review: Extra features
The Luna app is replete with cool, lifestyle-oriented features. The home page has your ideal daily plan (but you can’t change it — more on that) and your peak score. Everything else shows up in the “Health” tab.
Sleep tracking
Sleep tracking on the Luna Band is one of its standout features. It tracks from the moment you lie down rather than when you fall asleep, so you can see your precise sleep latency. You don’t have to do math, like with the Amazfit Helio Strap, which tracks from the moment you fall asleep. Remembering what time I put my phone down when I’m groggy in the morning is always a challenge.
Here’s a screenshot of an example night.
I love seeing the stratification of my sleep quality and my body’s response during the night. Tracking HRV is one of the most important things I look for in a fitness tracker.
However — and I’ll get into this in more detail in the “App” section — you can’t adjust your sleep targets. I don’t want my sleep target to be 7 hours; I want it to be 8 hours. You can’t change this because the band works out how much sleep it thinks I need. But I don’t care how much sleep the fitness tracker thinks I need — I want my target to be how much sleep I think I need. I checked with the built-in chatbot, and it told me you can’t customize these targets manually.
Peak score
At first, I hoped Peak Score would be more like Amazfit’s BioCharge feature, but it doesn’t really work like that. While BioCharge goes down during the day and resets at night, Peak Score uses your workout data, sleep data, and general wellbeing data to generate a set daily number. This means if you run a marathon, your peak score won’t change.
While this isn’t inherently wrong or bad, it’s worth noting if you’d like a dynamic number that reflects your activity for the day. For example, if you run in the morning and go to a boxing class in the evening and want to know how hard you can push yourself.
I like Peak Score, and I like Amazfit’s BioCharge. Both have their merits.
Luna Band review: App
The Luna app is less fitness-focused and more lifestyle-oriented. While it does still offer insights into energy, readiness, and so on, it also features tons of suggestions for eating, walking, and sleeping,
My prevailing thought regarding the app is that I wish Luna hadn’t released it unfinished. Because that’s what it is — unfinished. The app wants you to sleep for seven hours; walk 5,000 steps; burn 410 active calories; walk/run 8km a day. There’s no option to change any of these targets, or, if there is, it’s incredibly well-hidden — and the built-in AI chatbot doesn’t know how to change it either.
That brings me to my next point: there is, however, an AI chatbot in the app, because of course there is! I wish the Luna team had spent more time finishing the app — allowing you to actually set personal targets — rather than polishing said AI chatbot.
I don’t want to sleep for seven hours; I want to sleep for eight. I don’t want to walk 5,000 steps; I want to walk 10,000. Sure, you can do this manually, but I want the dopamine release of the app itself congratulating me for reaching my more difficult target.
It’s really unfortunate, because the app itself is beautifully laid out. The design team has done a great job. Everything is sleek, well-designed, and easy to understand. At first, I wondered if the app could do with more easily navigable customization tabs, but then I realised there were none. Again — a huge shame, because the Luna Band has serious potential.
However, there’s no subscription, which is a huge plus over Whoop, which requires a subscription, and the Fitbit Air and Garmin Cirqa, which lock some features behind a monthly paywall. Even so, I would recommend waiting for these “Coming Soon” features to actually arrive.
Luna Band review: Battery life
The Luna Band is rated for around 10 days. I found this accurate during testing — I charged it four times over a five-week period.
This battery life isn’t as good as the Whoop 5.0 (14 days) or Amazfit Helio Strap (14 days), but it’s better than the Fitbit Air (one week) and equals the Garmin Cirqa. I’m extremely happy with this battery life.
Should you buy the Luna Band?
Right now? No. I’d recommend waiting until the app is actually finished. There’s little point in investing in a new fitness tracker and learning the app when there’s actually not that much to learn right now.
This is such a shame, because I really enjoyed using the Luna Band. It’s sleek, pretty, inconspicuous. It’s much smaller and more feminine than the Amazfit Helio Strap, and cheaper than the Garmin Cirqa. On top of that, there’s no subscription, which is amazing.
Choosing the Luna Band’s rating was incredibly hard because I genuinely loved wearing this fitness tracker. Sleep tracking is fantastic. The app design is gorgeous. It’s just a shame Luna released it before it was ready.