Mi Band Review

This is the review of the Mi Band from Xiaomi. Before I start, I wish to inform that I've been using the Mi Band from the 20th December 2014 till 11th January 2015 (today). Mi Band is a fitness tracker from Xiaomi that cost only SGD$19.99 from the official Xiaomi website. It is a band that you wear on your left/right wrist like a watch.(or even neck?) Currently, it has the ability to track your day activities and sleep.

Front box view of the Mi Band from Xiaomi

Back box view of the Mi Band from Xiaomi

If you are too lazy to read the specs printed at the back of the box, here you go.

• Battery: Lithium-Polymer
• Battery Capacity: 41mAh
• Voltage: DC 5.0V
• Input Current: 25mA (TYP)
• Connection Type: Bluetooth 4.0
• Water Resistance: IP67
• Contents: Mi Band, Strap, Charger Cable, User Manual
• Device requirements: Smartphone supporting Bluetooth 4.0, with Android 4.4 (Kitkat) or above. iOS is supported too.

The tracker itself is removable from the strap. Tracker feels solid and sturdy as it is made with 100% magnesium alloy. The front of the tracker itself are 3 multicolored LEDs that you can configure using the Mi Band app that's available on the Google Play Store. Overall, wearing the Mi Band is comfortable and extremely light. You will almost forget that you are wearing it. Nonetheless, you should take your Mi Band off and wash from time to time as dirt can get stuck around the band. This problem isn't just specific to the Mi Band, in fact it happens to all watches you might wear. Washing will make sure that the dirt will not cause any skin irritation that might happen for people with sensitive skin. 

Next, let's move on to the Mi Band app...

Activity tracking screen

Sleep tracking screen

Now, you must be thinking hard about why do I have only one entry recorded in the app. That brings me to my  gripe with the Mi Band. The Mi Band app 'deletes' your detailed activity record for the day at midnight. It is possible to view your activity records for the past few days but you lose the ability to view it in detail. 

Activity record for the 6th January 2015

Sleep record for the 6th January 2015

You can clearly see that the app provides a summarized view of your past days, without giving the user the ability to view activities in detail. In detail I mean being able to view stats for a particular day, eg. The amount of steps I took for that day at 2pm? (or insert any random time here). I should say that the activity tracking was rather accurate according to my tests, and sleep tracking works quite well too. Sleep tracking works automatically and there isn't a button to click before you go to sleep like other fitness tracker. 

Settings for Mi Band

Alarm setting for Mi Band

Typical things you would expect from a fitness tracker. Find band allows you to vibrate your band, hopefully helping you to find your band. You can configure Mi Band's light color (Blue, Orange, Green or Red). Incoming call feature will vibrate your Mi Band after a specified duration upon receiving a call. The Mi Band app is quite badly translated and some description just doesn't make any sense. The "Vibrate band when a you receive a notification" is actually the Mi Band app displaying notification on your phone upon any notification from the band. Others reading the description might think that the feature is to vibrate the Mi Band whenever you receive a notification on your phone. At least that was what I thought initially... :(

The alarm feature is either a hit or miss. I won't consider myself a heavy sleeper but the Mi Band vibrating on my wrist simply isn't enough to wake me up. 

Lastly, the battery life for the Mi Band is INCREDIBLE! Xiaomi advertised that the Mi Band will provide 30 days of battery life before needing a recharge. From my own testing and normal usage, 8 days of using the Mi Band drained about 13% battery. Let's do some math...

13% battery > 8 days of usage
100% battery > (8/13)*100 = ~ 61 days?

That's some amazing battery life taking into account that most fitness tracker don't even have enough battery capacity to last a week.

Conclusion: The Mi Band is a ridiculously good buy at just SGD$19.99. The hardware is good and is only limited by the sub-par software. I hope these issues will eventually get resolved one way or another via a software update/or even a firmware update to the Mi Band itself. At that price point, users can definitely try out the whole fitness tracking experience without breaking the bank, and to also decide for themselves whether this product category will work for them. I will definitely be updating this review if there are any updates to the Mi Band that will affect my experience using it on a daily basis. 

As always, take care and I'll see you soon.