Xiaomi’s Mi Band 2, The New Affordable Fitness Tech

A band with a whole lot of fitness tech for not a lot of money.

Xiaomi’s never been only about smartphones. Though that’s what most Indian consumers believe (thanks to the immense focus that Xiaomi’s been laying on smartphones in the Indian marketplace). Little do most people know, Xiaomi makes electric bikes, electric scooters, home networking equipment, smart TVs and only God knows how many consumer electrical products.

If that wasn’t enough, Xiaomi just announced their rather emphatic entry into the Drone arena.

I’d say, Xiaomi has more products in its roster than perhaps AB de Villiers has strokes off his bat!

It’s fairly obvious then, that they’d focus hard on the Wearables space too. Their new fitness band, the Mi Band 2 is finally official (after months and months of speculations). Replacing the original Mi Band, the 2 continues the Chinese mega-brand’s tradition of economically priced, reasonably feature-rich products.

The company’s super competitive pricing enables Xiaomi to take on established industry stalwarts with of the likes of Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Fitbit to name a few. But that’s not all.

Like a good military strategist, Xiaomi is marshalling all its troops.

Leveraging it’s learnings, techniques and technologies from the smartphone arena, Xiaomi’s blessed the Mi Band 2 fitness band with a a 0.42-inch OLED screen. Smartwatch-style notifications arrive on the scratch resistant glass protected screen. For additional real-world experience, the glass even has smartphone-like anti-fingerprint coating for that extra layer of visibility.

The screen also houses a single physical button below the display, which enables the user to scroll between three different screens for time, steps and heart rate information. The only metric missing here is distance.

The silicone strap holding the screen in place is made from a more breathable, anti-sweat material, with it being available in black, orange, green and blue colour variant. We hope the design is better so the Mi Band 2 module, unlike its predesessor, does not pop out under strenuous workouts.

The Mi Band 2 features an IP67 water and dust-resistance certification, which allows the user to wear it in the shower and its okay to get a little splash of water when you’re washing your hands or working in the kitchen but is not protected against swimming or long interval immersions in water.

With the addition of a display, you do get some smartphone notification features here as well. The Mi Band 2 will vibrate for incoming calls and texts and like its predecessor, the Mi Band 2 can be used to unlock a selection of Android smartphones. Wish they could incorporte the same feature for iOS and Windows!

As tracking goes, you still get an optical heart rate monitor that Xiaomi claims will offer improved accuracy over the previous Mi Band Pulse. A new pedometer algorithm coupled with ultra-low power accelerometers is designed to deliver improvements to step tracking, and of course, sleep tracking is still a key feature, breaking down your deep sleep and light sleep patterns. A built-in vibration motor which gives inactivity alerts, giving you prompt when you’ve been sitting too long at your desk.

The Mi Fit app has been given a makeover introducing a new-look user interface, and adding more ways to drill into your data. It’ll work with Android phones running 4.4 or later OS and iPhones running iOS 7.0 and above.

In terms of battery life, the Mi Band 2 packs a 70mAh battery that can deliver up to 20 days on standby, a feature we simply love. If you look at the offering, it is a pretty neat device at a very competitive price point.

A band which covers all useful features ranging from notification alerts to activity measurements with a 20 day battery life, what is there not to like (albiet if you are not finicky about the accuracy of the fitness measurements, which we will coment on once we have put the band into a grind).

At present the Mi Band 2 is only officially on sale in China for 149 Yuan. The company did the same with the original Mi Band, but there’s no problem picking one up from a reseller regardless of where you reside. There’s no word on Amazon availability yet, but Geekbuying has the Mi Band 2 at USD 39.99.

Moving on to compare the device, in early 2016 the Mi Band Pulse went on sale, packing an optical heart rate sensor, for 99 Yuan (~USD 16). The band did not have the three screen unlike the new Mi Band 2 and is also not officially on sale outside of China yet — but you can grab one on Amazon for USD 23.99.

There have been negotiations regarding the price of the Mi Band 2 and has been prevailed to be set at something equivalent of just USD 22 in China, which makes the Mi Band 2 a whole lot of fitness tech for not a lot of money.

Originally published at Chip-Monks.