Introduction
Xiaomi’s Mi Good Band, or simply Mi Band because it’s recognized in China, is undeniably one of the vital fashionable wearables the world over. It is small, light-weight, and tremendous low-cost, but it goals to do a ton of stuff.
Final yr the Mi Band 5 introduced a bigger OLED display screen and a magnetic charging - two main upgrades over the Mi Band 4. This yr the display screen sees an excellent larger increase with an edge-to-edge full-color OLED.
In the meantime the worldwide pandemic made the heart beat oximeters (SpO2) vital and the Mi Band 6 is retaining with the newest traits by including a blood oxygen stage monitor of its personal.
Unboxing
The brand new Mi Band 6 comes packed throughout the similar lengthy and skinny paper field because the earlier model. The bundle accommodates the band itself, one strap (black in our case), and the identical magnetic charger because the Mi Band 5.
Oddly, half of the area contained in the field is wasted to an unbelievably thick guide. We’ve not seen such, let’s say a guide, shortly!
Design and strap
The Mi Band 6’s physique is equivalent in dimension to the Mi Band 5 - it is the identical tiny piece of plastic and with tempered glass atop the display screen. The scale and weight stay just about the identical - 47.4 x 18.6 x 12.7 mm and 12.8 grams (vs. 46.95 x 18.15 x 12.45 mm and 12 grams). And that is nice information for 2 causes - the brand new options did not make the Mi Band larger, and all straps you acquire in your Mi Band 5 are appropriate with the Mi Band 6.
The foremost improve is the show - it is now a 1.56″ AMOLED display screen with sharp 326ppi decision (152×486 px) up from 1.1″ (29×126 px, 326ppi). It is an edge-to-edge panel with the identical form because the band, together with the spherical high and backside.
Having an all-screen entrance means there isn’t any touch-sensitive key. The entire show is capacitive and also you both swipe (in all instructions), faucet, or faucet and maintain to function with the band. We discovered ourselves reaching for this lacking key sometimes after we wished to return to the watch face, however in every week or so this behavior was gone.
The display screen glass appears to be as prone to scratches because the Mi Band 5’s, so for those who hope for a more durable one, we would need to disappoint you.
The sensors on the backside of the Mi Band 6 have totally different association however are equally skinny. The center-rate sensor has been upgraded with the flexibility to watch SpO2 (blood oxygen) and that is most likely why the underside appears to be like totally different. You can too spot the pogo charging pins.
The indentations across the rubber strap are nonetheless right here and they’re going to accumulate dust over time, and we advise cleansing these regularly to keep away from rashes or worse. It positive is not very best, nevertheless it’s not a headache both.
Lastly, the Mi Band 6 is as protected because the earlier mannequin - it has a tempered glass to maintain the display screen protected and the entire thing is waterproofed at as much as 5ATM. We have examined one Mi Band 5 at sea water, and it survived, we have seen one other one die upon submersion after which come again to life when hooked on a charger, and we additionally killed one in every of these. However relating to showering and swimming pools - we have by no means had points with the Mi Band 5 mannequin and to this point, the Mi Band 6 is holding fairly nicely, too.
Options and interface
The Mi Band 6 works with the Mi Match app and the core performance stays unchanged - it might do heart-rate measurements, sleep monitoring, sport monitoring, present notifications, act as a digicam shutter, management your default music participant, has the same old alarm/timer/stopwatch capabilities. PAI - Private Exercise Intelligence mode and Stress calculations are additionally current.
Identical to the Mi Band 5, the Mi Good Band 6 can even observe feminine cycles. Respiratory workout routines can be found as nicely.
Now, this new Good Band 6 additionally presents SpO2 measurements and much more sports activities modes. It improves the sleep monitoring with SpO2 measurements and respiratory high quality choices, although these two cut back the battery life considerably. Should you allow HR, SpO2 and respiratory high quality throughout sleep, chances are you’ll must recharge your band each three days or so.
The interface of the Mi Band 6 is a well-known affair however unfold over a bigger display screen. You get loads of watch faces within the Retailer part throughout the Mi Match app, however practically half of the faces are tailor-made to Asian audiences and will probably be unfamiliar, if not outright complicated to the Western customers. Nonetheless, there are sufficient to select from and the most effective half is that you would be able to all the time make it yours by selecting a structure of your liking and placing a customized background.
Mi Match app
The Mi Good Band 6 has no button, so it depends solely on swipe gestures for navigation. Swiping up or down on the watch face brings the primary menu with Standing (steps, distance, energy), Coronary heart Charge, SpO2, Notifications, Exercise, Occasions, Alarm, Climate, Music, World Clock, Settings and Extra (containing Stopwatch, Timer, Discover System, Digital camera shutter).
Swiping left or proper on the watch face cycles between a couple of shortcuts you possibly can customise - for instance, climate forecast, music shortcuts, digicam shutter.
Beforehand, the Again/Dwelling perform was dealt with by the contact key. Now, you might want to swipe from the left to return. Coming from a telephone it is intuitive alright, however for those who’ve used the Mi Band 4 or Mi Band 5 loads, it can take a while to cease tapping on the lacking key.
Notifications • Notifications • Notifications • Sleep monitoring • Choices
The Mi Good Band 6 helps all kinds of notifications - emails, incoming calls (with reject choice), SMS, emails, Idle alerts, Targets, and might present many of the third-party notifications similar to Telegram, WhatsApp, Fb and Messenger, Skype, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Calendar, video games like Pokemon Go, Mi Dwelling app, and lots of extra.
The Mi Band 4 was the primary to help non-Latin symbols, like Cyrillic, out of the field with none tweaks. And now, the Mi Band 6 helps a fundamental set of emote icons. This implies it will not present all emotes however probably the most fundamental ones, and it will depend on the app, nevertheless it’s higher than nothing. These ??? symbols showing as an alternative of emotes are actually occurring much less and we’ll gladly take that.
The Well being Monitoring is expanded. You may set the band to measure coronary heart charge at intervals all through the day and provide you with a warning if one thing shouldn’t be trying good. It may well additionally improve the mentioned interval if it detects sport exercise.
There may be assisted sleep monitoring, along with the common sleep monitoring, which will increase the HR measurements. You can too allow Sleep high quality monitoring, which captures your breaths throughout sleep however has a huge effect on battery life.
Continued Stress monitoring measures Stress each 5 minutes, and also you guessed that proper, it additionally reduces the battery life large time.
The Mi Band 6 is certainly actually good in doing this stuff - exhibiting notifications all day lengthy (there’s DND mode or Night time mode, after all), and its coronary heart charge and SpO2 sensor are fairly correct - we examined it towards a daily oximeter and the deviation was lower than 5% in 9 out of 10 instances (it actually will depend on how good you have tightened the band.
The sleep monitoring is not that correct, although. It will get the REM sleep proper, so far as we will inform. However the gentle sleep is a little bit of a combined bag - for those who had been having an insomnia episode however lied nonetheless, these elements will probably be usually marked as gentle sleep. And even for those who received a complete of two hours of sleep at night time, you’d see, say, 7 hours captured from the Mi Good Band 6. That is a difficulty we had with the earlier Mi bands, too, so it is not like the brand new one is worse.
Now, let’s speak about exercises. The Mi Band 6 helps a complete of 30 health modes - together with new ones similar to Basketball, Zumba, Boxing, HIIT, Pilates, Ice Skating, Avenue Dance, Badminton. There are six modes which might be mechanically acknowledged - Strolling, Operating, Treadmill, Biking, Elliptical, Rowing Machine. Certainly, the Band did know after we used the Treadmill and after we had been exterior, so it appears these work as promised. For the remainder 24 modes you’d must activate them manually. What you get from the Exercise monitoring is time, correct info in your steps, kilometers, energy, HR, and so on.
Lastly, we need to point out the PAI, Stress and Breath capabilities. PAI is private exercise index calculated primarily based on steady HR measurements for 60 seconds. It is a characteristic that encourages you to do higher however given its algorithms we’re not positive it is that dependable. Similar goes for stress - it makes use of HR measurements and accelerometer to trace your hand actions for 60 seconds. It sounds alright however we discovered its readings reasonably inaccurate.
We preferred the respiratory characteristic although - it is reasonably easy and nevertheless it does assist with stress - there’s an animation and a fast buzz that tells you when to inhale and exhale.
There may be one MIUI unique characteristic - you probably have a MIUI-running telephone, you possibly can setup the Mi band 6 to unlock your telephone and bypass your passcode/fingerprint/face safety.
Battery life and charging
The Mi Band 6 has the identical 125mAh battery because the Mi Band 5. Xiaomi guarantees the identical battery life - round 2 weeks of regular utilization.
Within the first 15 days of our testing, we recharged the band twice, that means we received a full week of battery life with the identical routine we had with the Mi Band 5 however with common HR measurements (each half-hour). It features a ton of notifications throughout any workday - Skype, e-mail, IMs, and so on., at the very least 50 time checks, and utilizing customary sleep monitoring perform (no HR, no breath monitoring).
Then we examined with the guts charge turned off totally and we received about 18 days of battery life - about 4-5 days down from our regular Mi Band 5 battery life. Sounds about proper given the bigger display screen.
Utilizing the heart-rate sensor and the display screen is taking its toll, clearly, however nonetheless - the Mi Band 6 gives nice battery life for such a small gadget. And it is not all-day battery life, it is an all-week and even two weeks, relying in your private utilization. Should you exercise extra and observe your HR loads - you possibly can count on one week, which remains to be fairly good. If not, chances are you’ll not even keep in mind when the final time you recharged it was.
Lastly, the Mi Band 6 requires about 2 hours to recharge from 5% to 100%.
Conclusion
The Xiaomi Mi Good Band 6 positive looks like a worthy improve over the Mi Band 5. It has a bigger edge-to-edge show, helps SpO2 monitoring and in COVID-times this may very well be purpose for improve by itself, and it would not change the design or the strap dimension, so you should use all these colourful bands you acquire in your previous Band.
The Mi Band 6 prices €44.99, which is €5 dearer than the Mi Band 5 at launch. That is not loads contemplating the bigger display screen and the brand new sensors. And it is nonetheless one of many most cost-effective bands round, with a vibrant group to provide watch faces and loads of options.
As soon as once more we do not get an NFC choice on the Mi Good Band 6 - the characteristic as soon as once more reserved for the Chinese language mannequin. We do hope Xiaomi overcomes no matter is stopping it from making a world NFC-enabled band and delivers one quickly.
The Mi Good Band 6 is an affordable wearable, so do not count on it to dramatically enhance your well being by itself. Then once more, neither will the newest Apple Watch and its Health+ paid service. However at its worth we would positive describe the Mi Good Band 6 as an overachiever. It has many of the capabilities rather more costly smartwatches brag about, and but prices a fraction of their worth. It is also far more compact, light-weight, and the battery life is superb - every week, or two weeks is one thing no smartwatch can provide (with the identical routine because the Band) except it goes into some battery saving mode.
Whether or not you’re coming from a Mi Band 4 or 5, we would counsel an improve to Mi Band 6 whenever you get an honest deal in your market. And if that is going to be your first Mi Band or first sensible band ever, you will not be disenchanted.
Execs
- Small, light-weight, waterproof.
- Suitable with Mi Band 5 straps.
- The sting-to-edge OLED is high notch at that worth.
- Glorious battery life, magnetic charger.
- All-round characteristic set, together with SpO2.
- Low-cost!
Cons
- No NFC (on world model).
- Not that good at sleep monitoring.
- Straightforward to scratch glass.
Source link
