Pros
- Attractive Price
- Up to20-days battery on a single charge
- Color screen and custom watch faces
- Accurate sleep and health tracking
Price
RM 149
Cons
- Annoying to remove and charge
- Watch straps aren’t everyone’s cup of tea
- Mi Fit still needs some work to do
Colors
Black
Box Contents
- Mi Smart Band 4
- Charging cable
- Wrist Strap
- User Guide
The Mi Smart Band 4, like its predecessors, is a great little piece of tech you can add into your already swelling drawer of gadgets no matter what you think. It doesn’t cost a lot, it has great new features and a color screen. What’s not to like?
Design Highlights
- Comes only in black
- Detachable design for charging
- Polycarbonate body
- 155-216mm wrist strap length
- Super light 22g weight
- Mi Band 3 strap compatible
Over the Mi Band 3, there are visible improvements to the Mi Band 4’s design. It’s a simple 2-piece setup, consisting of a rugged polycarbonate body and a a thermoplastic polyurethane wrist strap.
Although it’s cumbersome to remove the body from the strap to connect it to the USB charger, it’s not frequent enough for anyone to complain about it. If you’re not a fan of the rubber strap or the color of it you can always just buy another color or a buy a 3rd party band somewhere online.
As for the screen it actually has 2.5D tempered glass with anti-fingerprint coating that doesn’t really prevent fingerprints but okay.
Display
- 0.95 inch RGB AMOLED display (120 x 240)
- 400 nits max adjustable brightness
- Single Touch button for navigation
Clearly, this was made to be a simple, straightforward product. You’re getting 0.95 inches of screen that’s bright and colorful. it’s an AMOLED on-cell capacitive touchscreen with a single home button at the bottom that wakes up the band and lets you go back to the watch face when you’re done swiping up and down the simple menu.
For the active you
- Running / Activity Tracking
- Working sleep tracking
- PPG Heart rate sensor
The Mi Band 4 can do what most wearables can already do, such as counting steps, measure heart rates and how much distance you’ve covered followed by the calories burned. It doesn’t have its own GPS but you can just simply use your smartphone’s with just a simple pairing using the Mi Fit app. It’s such a simple setup and yet even the Galaxy has neither built-in nor smartphone connected GPS. This is indeed a value proposition.
As a workout tracker
After pairing the band via Bluetooth to your smartphone, it will start syncing everything the band records, from steps to sleep. Measuring all these metrics are a 3-axis accelerometer plus 3-axis gyroscope motion sensors, alongside a proximity sensor and a PPG optical heart rate sensor.
What it can’t do here is track anything that ISN’T walking, running, cycling and swimming. I’d love to complain about that but the price point and intended application of this device would only make it an uphill battle for me.
As a lifestyle wearable
If you’re not intending to use it as a fitness tracker but more of a simple wearable for you to keep track of your day to day, I can still recommending the Mi Band 4. Even on that small screen you’ll still be able to receive push notifications such as messages, incoming calls and some app notifications.
If you wear this to sleep you can use this as an alarm clock, and control your phone’s music without whipping it out.
The China-only version of the Mi Band 4 (should be 3A) comes with NFC for payments and a built-in microphone for voice commands. It would be neat to have them here too but I doubt we have the support for it for now.
With the Mi Fit App
The Mi Fit companion app is a must-install if you own any Mi Band. From here you will be able to sync data from your Mi Band, as well as track your daily step goals. You can also use the app to change your watch face, as the screen is too small on the Mi Band to change on the fly.
Like most fitness apps, you can also add other Mi Fit users to see their activities and movement, and for some reason keep things competitive.
Verdict
The Mi Band 4 is even a good jump from the Mi Band 3. An improved display with color, 3-week long battery life and accurate heart rate measuring are the highlights here and the RM 149 official price tag will not hurt anyone’s wallet
If you’re looking for an affrodable step counter with a color screen and a wide set of features, this is pretty much it.
