Xiaomi Mi Band Review – the cheapest activity tracker

3A couple years ago I was one of the earlier adopters in fitness tracker with the jawbone. Since that unit became faulty with a defunct vibration mode, I sort of stopped using it, until I was introduced to Mi Band by Yee Hou, Xiaomi’s answer to activity tracker than costs only RM 69 instead of the usual RM 300-400 from other brands.

This is my short review and why you may want to think of getting one.

mi band on my wrist and being charged

WHAT IS AN ACTIVITY TRACKER AND WHY DO I NEED ONE?

Well, an activity tracker is basically something that you wear on you 24/7 and tracks what you do to a certain extend. In the case of Mi Band, it tracks your step counts as well as the number of hours you sleep. You can usually view these information on a connected mobile application or the tracker itself.

Additionally, some activity trackers also has reminder functions, calorie counts, alarms, or even connect to heart rate monitors.

In the case of Xiaomi’s Mi Band, it has the following functions worth mentioning, additionally, it is paired with the phone with Bluetooth 4.0.

• step counting
• sleep tracking
• alarms
• alerts
• rope skipping & sit ups

mi band as a pedometer

STEP COUNT FUNCTION:

The one feature every activity tracker has is the step count. In essence, this is just a pedometer that counts pretty much every single step you take throughout the day.

Mi Band’s feature is pretty basic, it’ll try to “guess” when you are running versus walking, but I find it generally doing a pretty poor job of guessing, though the step count is quite spot on.

The default goal is 8,000 steps per day, once you reach 1/3 of that, the band blinks one of 3 LEDs when you bring the band up from your wrist in a “look at your watch” gesture. 2 LEDs when you reach 2/3, and all 3 plus vibration when you hit the 8000 mark.

However, the gesture doesn’t always work, and I prefer to use the application to view the step count anyway.

On the app, you can also view a breakdown of today’s steps, and view a history of previous days/weeks/monthly average. However, there is no way to view detailed breakdown of yesterday or any other day’s count. There is also no web-version of the app.

mi band sleep tracking

SLEEP TRACKING:

Unlike other fitness tracker that requires you to manually enter a sleep mode, Mi Band tracks you sleeping pattern at night automatically, and with that there’s pros & cons.

You will never forget to manually click a button before you go to sleep, but at the same time, the band has no ability to track afternoon naps. It’ll merely come up as inactivity period(s).

You also cannot edit sleep time on the application. I wish this could change in the future via updates.

However, it still does its job quite well 90% of the time, giving you a pretty good idea of how much sleep (or the lack of) you get throughout the week.

mi band alarm & charging

ALARM, BATTERY, & OTHER FUNCTIONS:

Another neat feature of Mi Band is the alarm function. You can set 3 recurring alarms and the band will vibrate and blink at those set time. It’s a great way to wake up without having to bother the person sleeping next to you (or at the same room).

The battery life on Mi Band is advertised at 1 month per charge, and from experience it is actually even better than advertised. I still have 27% left at day 36. I’ll trade not having a display for long battery life any day.

Mi Band also has other, less useful features like being able to share your target achieving streaks or daily step counts on social media platforms such as Facebook or WeChat, and you can also track sit ups and rope jumping, though I’ve never really bothered with those.

CONCLUSION:

Mi Band is a great little piece of gadget that is absolutely worth the price you pay for it. Sure, the functions are pretty basic, but it does it well and has excellent battery life to boot.

If you’re looking into having a basic tracker to be a healthier and more active person, Mi Band is not a bad way to start.