Xiaomi Mi Band is the cheapest fitness tracker available in the market when compared with the greats such as Fitbit and Jawbone. Mi Band’s price point at $13 makes it a cheap investment for pedometer and sleep activity tracker while the competition has fancier tracking technologies like blood pressure and heart rate monitoring. The question remains if it’s makes any sense getting one ?
Design
Mi Band is split into two parts, the band and the tracker. The band is made of hypoallergenic silicone, pretty similar to the one on the Apple Watch. Xiaomi provides multiple color band accessories, and availability various third-party bands increase the available options.
Tracker module is made of aluminium plate which has three dots on the front side which are indicator LEDs and the backside has the charging pins points.
Mi Band is IP67 certified so it’s can be worn all day without having to remove it during a shower.
Software
As important as hardware, Software also plays a very important role for the fitness trackers. Without proper UI to display all the data, then there isn’t any point tracking the fitness data.
Mi Fit app is available for Android and iOS. The app functionality seems pretty much the same in both platforms but some features unavailable on iOS as always.
Two of the most important features of the Mi Band is Sleep activity tracking and Pedometer.
Counting steps on this device is pretty accurate. The step count on my iPhone(M7 coprocessor) and the step count given by the Mi Fit app were fairly consistent. The activity tracker in the app was off, the activity classification of walking or running would get mixed up even though the steps were counted accurately.
Sleep activity monitoring worked well and I particularly felt the band was a lot more comfortable to wear compared to the Jawbone UP I’ve tried. It almost felt like wearing nothing on my wrist.
Accuracy of the sleep activity tracker didn’t impress me. During a journey in the bus or train, It didn’t detect I was sleeping for an extended period. The activity of deep sleep and light sleep chart in the app was not the best representation of the data recorded.
One of the most disappointing features was Auto-Unlock feature with the Mi Band. I tested this out with a Xiaomi Mi Note and I never could get the device set up with my Mi Note.
Battery Life
The best part of Mi Band is the battery life. I got straight up more than 30 days of battery life than advertised. This makes the device very handy and not having to plug the device back in every few days. Even under heavy usage of the device where I was getting a tons of notifications a day, the battery would last for about 3-4 weeks.
So should you get one?
I’d say yes, if you’re not looking to spend big bucks on getting all the daily fitness data out but still needing something to aggregate the information to make do better everyday. It’s a pretty cheap investment considering all other options. Unfortunately, Mi band is not available on Flipkart which says “Permanently discontinued” and Xiaomi website which says “Out of stock”. One of the best options available right now is to check out Gearbest which offers Mi Band for the cheapest price $15.99(₹1055) including shipping.
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