Xiaomi introduced the Mi Band, the company’s first fitness band at the Mi 4 launch event back in July. Priced at just 79 Yuan in China or approximately US$ 13, this is the cheapest fitness band till date. Is this on par with the other fitness trackers that cost five or ten times more than this? Let us find out.
Unboxing
We unboxed the fitness band recently, check out the Mi Band unboxing.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tt6AxYQ3qo
Box Contents
- Xiaomi Mi Band device with wristband
- USB charging cable
- User manual
Design and Build
The core unit is the heart of the Mi Band. It is very small with dimensions of 14×36 x9mm and weighs just 5 grams. It has polycarbonate body and brushed aluminium finish on the top. There are three tiny LED lights on the top that glow in Blue, Green, Orange and Red colors. These colors can be changed from the app.
There is a charging connector in the bottom. It doesn’t have any buttons since it automatically pairs up with a smartphone and doesn’t need to be turned off.
The charing pin goes into the USB charging cable when it needs to be charged. You can plug the cable into a PC or a wall charger to charge it.
The core unit goes into the wristband band. The wristband is made of TPSiV, a silicone material from Dow Corning, which makes it durable. The band is 230mm in length, and is adjustable even if you have large hands. The small button lock tightly locks the band so that it doesn’t come off easily. The band comes in black color, but there are different colored bands in Orange, Pink, Green, Blue and Cyan that are available separately. Xiaomi also sells wrap-around and leather bands that would offer a premium look.
It has IP67 ratings for water resistance, so you can even wear the Mi Band in shower. Inside, it has ADI’s MEMS Accelerometer sensors and Dialog DA14580 low-power Bluetooth chip. This Bluetooth chip is programmable, so it can store data even when it is disconnected from the smartphone and is also compliant with the Bluetooth v4.1. It has vibration motor and LED lights. It also has a small 41mAh (Input current: 25mA and Input voltage: DC 5V) lithium polymer battery which is just 8mm thick. For the price the hardware is brilliant and it uses the latest technology.
Does the Mi Band work with other Android smartphones?
At the announcement Xiaomi said that the Mi Band is supported with Mi 3 and Mi 4 smartphones running Android 4.4, later it added the Redmi Note 4G to the list. So does it work with other Android smartphones running on Android 4.4 (KitKat)? Yes, it does. It should also work fine with Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) since it has support for Bluetooth LE. We have tried it with several smartphones including the Android One series and Moto G, it pairs and works perfectly. There are minor issues with app scaling, otherwise it works fine. Option to unlock the smartphone without a password only works with Mi 3 and Mi 4 smartphones. For this, you have to take the band near the smartphone, so that it gets unlocked immediately. You even get a vibration feedback for it. Currently the Mi Band app is available only for Android so it works only with Android devices.
Performance
The Mi Band can track your steps and your sleep. Unlike some fitness bands that lets you enter your sleep timing manually, this has automatic sleep tracking. The app downloaded from the Mi Shop is only in Chinese, but you can download the APK for the English version from the Mi UI form. Some phones might still show some details in Chinese depending on the device. Since this uses Bluetooth 4.0 LE to connect to devices, the firmware updates for the Mi band are pushed wirelessly.
The Mi Band immediately pairs with your smartphone over Bluetooth once you start searching for it using the app. During setup it asks for your gender, age, height and weight. You need to provide your Mi account so that all your data gets stored in your account, which can later be synced to your smartphone later if you want to switch your smartphone. It syncs data from the band to your smartphone only when you open the app.
You can set the number of steps you aim to cross in a day. Once set, it tracks your steps and gives you the total distance covered, total calories burned, total number of duration you took to cover the distance and more. It also motivates you by showing the number of days you crossed the goal. One you have crossed 1/3rd of your goal, one light blinks on your Mi Band, if 2/3rd of your goal is reach, two light blink when you raise your hand, if you have reached your goal it vibrates and all the three lights blink to let you know you have reached the goal. You can share daily activities to social networks, but only to Chinese websites such as WeChat, Weibo etc. It shows you your activities for the day, but you can’t go back to check details about the activities of a day in the past. You can get a total steps and duration for a particular day.
Coming to sleep tracking, the Mi band automatically tracks your sleep when you are wearing it. If you find any issues with the time you slept and woke up, you can edit them manually. It tracks your sleep, including deep sleep, light sleep and awake time too based on your movements. You can share the sleep data easily, similar to the fitness tracking.
Since it uses just an accelerometer, it tracks the movement of your hands to calculate your steps, similar to most fitness accessories. Accuracy of sleep tracking is also not the best. Occasionally it shows that I’m awake in between deep sleep. It also shows something called “Ready to sleep”, as early as 8PM. It is not clear how the Mi Band calculates if I’m Ready to sleep. It doesn’t track short naps in the afternoon or 20 minute power naps. If you forget to wear the band to sleep and place it still, it automatically thinks you are sleeping. So it is recommended to wear it always. The Mi Band doesn’t let you track your food like the Jawbone or Fitbit does.
Alarm
Another interesting feature is the silent alarm. It uses the built-in vibration motors to gently vibrate to wake you up. Alarm can be accessed from the app’s menu on the top. The Smart Alarm feature wakes you up 30 minutes before the time you have set if you are in light sleep or in the ‘ready to wake up’ state.
Battery life and Call notification
The battery life of the Mi Band is just brilliant. I started using it when it was at 77%, after 14 days of usage it still has 61% of battery left, which is amazing. Based on this, it might last more than a month. The Mi Band glows in Red when the battery is low. In the settings there is Search for Mi Band option, which makes the Mi Band vibrate and blink the LED lights. Since it doesn’t make a noise, the vibration alone can’t help you find it if it’s hidden somewhere. You can also change the color of light from the settings. As discussed earlier, the three LED lights can glow in four colors.
Another interesting feature is the incoming call notification. If your phone is far away, you can enable this feature to alert you with vibration so that you don’t miss a call.
Conclusion
Overall the Mi Band is a good fitness tracker, which can also track your sleep for the price tag. It doesn’t have any complicated setup procedures and works as promised. Even though it doesn’t have a display, the call notification is good. Xiaomi can do more with this by implementing the same for other notifications, making it change the color of the LED lights to Blue if it’s a WhatsApp notification, Red if it’s just an email etc. At a price tag of just 79 Yuan, $13 or about Rs.800, it is definitely worth the price, but it is available only in China currently. It is available from several third-party sellers who would ship it to your country, but you have to shell out about $30 or $40 for that. Xiaomi doesn’t say when or if it’ll launch outside China. If it does, just grab it.
Update 2: Xiaomi launched the Mi Band in India at Rs. 999, which is definitely worth the price. The Mi Fit app was launched on Google Play recently, so that users can easily get the English version of the app easily rather than side-loading the APK. The app is also available for iOS users through iTunes Store.
Update: A Xiaomi forum member has tweaked the default app to enable notifications for all the apps. This is available in a separate notify version that is released along with the default version. Read the notification FAQ before using the notify version. Also keep in mind that enabling custom notifications will drain Mi Band’s battery quickly.
Pros
- Affordable
- Automatic sleep tracking
- Brilliant battery life
- Water resistant (IP67)
Cons
- Notifications only for calls
- Only works with Android (4.3+) smartphones (iOS version is now available)
- Currently available only in China (It is now available in several countries outside China, including India)