In a grand event, Xiaomi finally launched the Mi Band for the Indian consumers. Available at just ₹999, the simple fitness tracker sports some elegant features of a wearable. At the launch event of Mi 4i, Xiaomi Global VP Hugo Barra announced another surprising deal for the first sale - which will be available through Mi.com from 28 April. Making the first sale special, Xiaomi is offering first 1,000 units of Mi Band at just ₹1.
Built and Design
Xiaomi deserves a pat for the Mi Band's simple yet elegant design. The actual device is a capsule-shaped unit with an array of LED lights. The upper portion features a silver aluminium finish and the bottom has a black plastic casing with the company's name engraved on it.
The device comes with a silicon band, a USB charger, and a hard copy manual describing the installation process in a lucid manner. Xiaomi offers different-coloured silicon and leather bands through its official site that needed to be purchased separately.
The silicon bands are washable and cheap, so you can buy different-coloured bands to match your fashion.
Compatibility
The Mi Band is compatible with any smartphone that runs on Android 5.0 Lollipop and above. Apart from that, Mi Band also supports Xiaomi-made Mi and Redmi devices. Xiaomi has made an app to accumulate the data from Mi Band and shows it later to the user. The app is available in both Android and iOS operating system.
Installation
Set the capsule-shaped device in the band and then download the Mi Fit app on your smartphone. In Android, the app's size is just 12MB. The app takes an array of device information to get going.
Once installed, you just need to tie the band on your wrist and open the app. Initially, it will prompt you to turn on the Bluetooth of your phone for connecting the band. Once paired, the Mi Fit app will ask you several questions regarding your health statistics. For example, your age, height, and weight. Later, the app will ask you to set some daily goals.
Performance
The smart feature of Mi Band is that you don't need to carry around your phone all the time. The band transfers all the archived data to the phone whenever it gets connected. So you can turn off your smartphone while sleeping, the Mi Band will track your sleeping pattern and once you switch on your phone in the morning, it will transfer the data to the phone.
The LED lights turn on according to the goal percent you achieve each day. So if your target is 10,000 steps per day, one LED will turn on if you walk 2,500 steps and two will turn on if you manage 5,000 steps, and so on. But the LED lights are hardly visible in the bright lights.
The Mi Band can also give you notifications like alarm or miss call by vibrating; it also offers an unlock function with the Mi Band, but unfortunately it works only with Xiaomi-made smartphones.
You can share your achieved goals with friends via facebook and WeChat.
Our Say
If you compare Mi Band with other fitness tracker devices like Fitbit, Jawbone, and GOQii, it offers limited functions. But for the price, it is the only available fitness tracker device available for budget users. We would recommend the product to users who are eager to try a fitness tracker device, but don't want to spend much.
