There are a few things that are a given when it comes to a fitness band from Xiaomi — a great battery life for starters, a nice colour AMOLED screen, cross-platform compatibility and lots of features. You should expect nothing less from a product that has catapulted Xiaomi to the top of the wearable space globally.
According to a recent report by Canalys, Xiaomi overtook Apple to become the top shipping wearable brand vendor in Q2 2021.IDC Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker (March 2021) has said that the company has sold more than 7 million Mi Smart Bands in India alone so far.
The company has thrown every possible feature into this latest edition and yet it weighs a mere 13 grams — about the weight of two wedding rings. It has Bluetooth 5.0, is water-resistant up to 5ATM (swim workouts), has continuous heart rate tracking, sleep and exercise monitoring, stress monitoring, breathing exercises, women’s health and a lot of fitness modes.
New with this version comes the SpO2 (blood oxygen) measurement and the massive (relatively speaking) colour AMOLED display. They have kept the size of the band the same as Mi Band 5, but stretched the display to the corners — always a good thing. The 1.56-inch, 326ppi 450 nits AMOLED display is now oval, 50 per cent larger than the display on the Mi Band 5 and has watch faces that are designed to take advantage of this new shape.
Long battery life
Due to the size and battery life implications, it does not have a built in GPS. Instead, it relies on your connected phone’s GPS if you need detailed exercise tracking. Despite that, the band works really well and even manages to deliver 8–10 days of battery life with workouts every day.
Light users will see it touching 14 days easily. There’s no button (not even an on-screen one like before) so you control it with taps and swipes. But it’s quite intuitive.
At this price, there’s not much to complain about because it clearly offers more than some smartwatches too. It’s a great entry point into the world of wearable fitness tech and it costs ₹3,499.