Bong II Band: First Thoughts

I don’t know when wearable tech first became a thing, but somehow it snuck up on us and suddenly everyone was paying attention. Plenty of people have huge expectations for these little gadgets strapped to their heads, wrists, and necks—as if wearing one would automatically log every meal, every trip, every wild maneuver, every river crossing, and with a single button press instantly display your HP, MP, strength, intelligence, agility, stamina, spirit, haste, crit rate, specialization, and tenacity.

Reality is harsh. You’re dreaming.

The first wave of bands that got people’s attention were led by Jawbone. Those things weren’t exactly cheap, the practicality wasn’t exactly a pleasant surprise, and durability wasn’t exactly great either (remember that product with the three-month death curse?). The result was that they became toys for a handful of geeks with money to burn, and most people just watched from a distance (myself included).

As a prodigal son, it’s not that I didn’t want to buy, buy, buy—but you need a solid, necessary excuse to chop off your hand. You need an absolute reason like “I’m doing this for my health” to reduce the guilt of wasting money. Back then, the ones with good features were too expensive, and the cheap ones didn’t work well, so I held back.

Then in July this year, I saw the pre-order news for the Bong II band. I’d actually been following their first-gen product—never used it, but it looked decent enough, at least by domestic standards. So out of curiosity I checked the pre-order price for the second gen: 99 yuan.

What? 99 yuan? The first gen was over 600, right? I looked it up and sure enough, it was 99. I also saw what it looked like, and instantly understood why it was 99.

Honestly, it’s ugly.

Bong II’s early promotional ads were a series of “don’t be ridiculous” images—one-year battery life, automatic recognition, all sorts of explosive new features. Sure, the hype was massive, but even with your thigh doing the thinking you could tell it was overpromising. People aren’t stupid; everyone knows a tiny thing like this just has a sensor and Bluetooth inside, and mostly relies on the phone it’s connected to…

Still, 99 yuan isn’t much. Worst case, I’d just consider it a wasted meal. So I ordered, ordered, bought, bought, bought, bought, bought~ The official site said September shipping.

Then I forgot about it, until recently when I saw people complaining that Bong II shipping was delayed again, and I remembered I’d bought this thing…

I rushed to check the status. On September 20 it still showed “preparing stock.” I kept watching for two more days, and on the 23rd it became “shipped.” Kept watching, and on the 27th I finally got a YTO tracking number. After three days in transit, on September 30—the last day of September—I received the Bong II band. Let’s just call it “received in September.”

Now for the pictures…

The box is tiny.

Inside there’s another layer of packaging.

The packaging isn’t fancy—pretty cheap, but at that price you get that tier.

The band itself appears. It looks a bit better than the official photos. The little ring on the back is for removing the battery.

Close-up of the band.

Put it on following the manual.

Front view.

Then I quickly noticed that after wearing it from the back as the manual shows, the round ball on the front was on the opposite side from the official images. So I took it off and flipped it around.

The manual is just a folded piece of paper with a QR code inside. Scanning it doesn’t lead directly to an APK—it links to the official download page, requiring a second click.

The app installed smoothly. First launch requires logging into a Bong official account. If you pre-ordered, you can log in directly with your phone number, and that number also becomes your identifier for adding friends and registering.

The first screen after login asks you to set your height, weight, and gender.

Then you pair the Bong II. The pairing method is to touch the little ball on top. The official description is full of swagger: just a light touch…

In reality, the sensor is completely unpredictable. Sometimes one press works, sometimes I have to rub it back and forth, sometimes I have to slap the ball with my hand…

Anyway, after much struggle the little ring on the band finally lit up and pairing succeeded.

The app interface is simple: the home screen shows status, the PK leaderboard shows points comparisons with friends, the apps section has add-ons, and settings has basic options. Here you can see the battery is full.

What does this mean? It means my luck is great, you know? Because a friend of mine in the same city wasn’t so lucky.

There’s controversy about the Bong II battery. Some people opened it up and found it looked heavily “Iraqi-grade”—wondering if it was recycled. I wanted to open mine and see, but that battery requires prying open with the included ring tool. I pried for ages until my fingernails nearly scraped off and still couldn’t open it… Considering it works and has plenty of power, I left it alone.

Bong official offered a solution for this: they’ll send you a new one. Good attitude. Plus, Bong’s official WeChat account reports daily production status and solutions to after-sales issues.

Then there’s data collection and statistics…

I put on the Bong II at 9 AM on September 30. During the day I cycled 7 km home at noon, then cycled 7 km to work at 2:30 PM, cycled 7 km home at 6:30 PM, and at 7 PM went out to the track to run 6 km in about 40 minutes.

Here are the stats before I went to sleep.

And here’s the Endomondo data for the run.

Honestly, the data is fairly accurate… except for cycling. Bong’s sensor probably has trouble detecting cycling because your hands don’t move much—how would it know if you’re riding or walking? Especially in bad city traffic at low speed, Bong just classified it as walking… The running part is fine. For sleep tracking, it said 2 hours deep sleep out of 6 hours actual sleep. I don’t know much about this, and I can’t tell if I slept well or not.

Bong officially says there will be tons of third-party apps…

Actually that apps page is just an embedded web page. You click to install web plugins that access your info, then use that info for simple or complex data analysis. The focus is on the analysis method; it doesn’t affect data collection.

Because the apps page is embedded web content, responsiveness isn’t great. Many buttons give no feedback when pressed, and slow network means you tap and wait ages for a refresh before data appears. I hope they improve this.

In settings, Bong II shows alarm support, but… but… you can only set one alarm.

And the alarm vibrates. How weak is that vibration? Let me put it this way… it’s like… ahhh… forget it, it’s about as good as no vibration at all.

Short! Flat! Quick!

That’s the Bong II’s vibration alert in a nutshell.

Syncing the Bong II is simple: open the app, on the main screen touch the Yes button on the band, the screen prompts, and data sync begins. I synced quite a few times and it went smoothly every time.

Bong II supports detailed trajectory tracking settings and allows you to turn it off to save phone battery. I felt it was okay, so I left it on.

Bong II has a time-telling feature. How does it work? When you want to see the time, you touch the Yes ring on top.

Then the ring starts flashing. First red light. For example, if it’s 11:30, the Bong ring flashes like this:

Red! Red! White! (pause) White+Red! White+Red! White+Red!

One red light = 5 hours One white light = 1 hour One white+red = 10 minutes

So that’s 5x2+1=11 hours 3x10=30 minutes

11:30.

Drunk yet? I’m drunk.

Using the Bong II to check the time regularly is an effective way to activate your brain cells and strengthen your mental arithmetic.

Bong II supports firmware updates via Bluetooth wireless. I tried it: first detect version, second confirm update, both requiring touching the Yes ring.

The update takes about 3 minutes, after which I noticed no difference.

The Bong band’s process drains battery in the background. On my Sony Z1, it ranks just below screen and Android system, adding 17% consumption. Considering it was my first day and I was syncing constantly, normal use should have less impact.

Final thoughts: I never had high hopes for this thing. I just wanted to log running and cycling data for fun. For 99 yuan, it does that much—at least running and sleep tracking are decent. After all, when I’m at work in the morning my hands are still, and it didn’t think I was sleeping.

From what I’ve read online, Bong II has quite a few quality control issues, including people receiving dead units (like that unlucky friend I mentioned), and some had overly high expectations leading to greater disappointment. At this price, it does what it can. Bong’s software is passable—at least I had no sync problems, and updates and data collection are fairly complete.

The biggest complaint is the Yes button. As the only interactive button on the band, its response is waaaay too insensitive—no, sometimes it’s overly sensitive. Sometimes I rub for ages with no response. The app needs this button for everything; how can it be this unreliable? Or at least tell me the correct way to touch it.

I paid for this out of my own pocket and I’m giving my honest impressions—praise where due, criticize where due. Buy or not? Up to you. At least I think it’s passable, and I’ll happily keep wearing it until I can afford Android Wear.