A fine Sunday morning, and a fine product to review. Though it’s been quite some time now since Xiaomi launched its smart-band named Mi Band, we still wanted to review it, owing to our sheer appreciation for all of Xiaomi’s products, and the way they are designed, almost ready to take on those manufactured by the giant from Cupertino, it is usually compared with.
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So, if you are one of those who swear by the quality and sheer fluidity Xiaomi brings into its smartphones, you’re going to love what its foray into the wearables market got out. The Xiaomi Mi Band is a fitness tracker, which does a lot more than track fitness, and comes for $45 (with prices in India being Rs. 999). That’s dirt-cheap, when compared with similar bands from other top tier brands.
Packaging
The device comes in a simple, yet neat packaging, custodian to all of Xiaomi’s products. Inside the brown coloured package, you get the Mi Band, USB Cable and your general user manual. Nothing fancy in there, which is probably Xiaomi’s way of re-asserting the fact that it believes in the product and not the outer glitz and glamour.
Specifications
Launched on 22 July 2014, the Mi Band is powered by Google’s Android 4.4 OS. The smartband features an extremely power efficient accelerometer, with Built-in rechargeable battery that Xiaomi claims, has a standby time of over 30 days. The smartband can connect with your device via Bluetooth 4.0.
Build
While Chinese smartphones and products are usually considered to be mediocre in quality when it comes to their overall build, Xiaomi however has continued to defy that myth with all of its products.
Take for example this Mi Band. It isn’t just a rubberised material and low-quality workmanship. Xiaomi claims that the main core is built up using a 12 step process and uses aluminium alloy as its base material.The three indicator lights you see, are each 1 mm in diameter, and created using micro-laser perforation technology. Made up of 91 holes, each 0.02 mm across, each indicator is injected with UV adhesives to prevent dust from penetrating the device.
As for the band, it is built using TPSiV – one of the world’s best thermoplastic elastomers. Its has been proven to posses brilliant anti-UV, anti-microbial, and anti-allergic properties, meaning that it’s unlikely to irritate even the most sensitive skin. It is soft to the touch and fits snugly for ultimate wearing comfort.
Features
The device is a complete fitness tracker, as you would expect from a smartband. It literally keeps track of every step you take, along with your sleeping patterns. It records daily movement data- the number of steps you’ve taken and the calories you’ve burnt. You can set goals every day, like say 10000 steps, and it has three LED lights on the outside, that will indicate a few things- when you’re one-third and two-thirds of the way to your daily goal, the LED would blink one or two lights accordingly.
That is not all folks, the band also can monitor and track how you sleep, how long you have slept for, and even a graph that dissects the different stages of your sleep. As it tracks how you sleep, it will wake you up with shallow vibrations if you slept fitfully or lightly. You don’t need to worry about it coming in contact with water- it is water proof, certified by an IP67 Standard.
Oh, and if you own a Xiaomi smartphone, you can unlock it without needing to remember passwords by simply waving it in front of the phone. Of course, since anyone can simply use your band to unlock it, you need to make an account, first. Receiving incoming calls? Set your Mi Band to vibrate. This is especially useful when you don’t realize you are getting calls in noisy environments.
Now if you are wondering how exactly are sleep graphs and health data seen, or how are alarms set on a bracelet tracker which does not have a screen, you don’t need to look further than the Play Store and the Apple App store- there is an app to coordinate everything. It will sync with all devices of Android 4.4 and above. If you don’t like the rubber sporty straps it comes with (which are hypoallergenic , by the way), there are leather variants available.The straps have anti UV and anti microbal properties.
The core tracker is around 9mm thick, and weighs around 0.014 kg. The best feature about the Mi band is that it is perfect, literally. It is sleek; and is designed with exact feature usage in mind without any fluff. It is simplistic, not pretending to look like a ‘high end’ device, and delivers exactly what is promises. That goes for the app too.
Verdict
A simple interface, it just gives you variables that you actually need. And while it is insanely cheap, you should still not forget that you get all those features, at a $45 price tag it comes with.
Oh, and don’t you leave just now. We have a special discount coupon for you, sponsored by Gearbest.com. All our US users can purchase the Mi Band at a heavily discounted rate ($14.99) by using this code while buying it, exclusively through Gearbest. Happy buying.
Coupon code : XMMB
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