Xiaomi Redmi Smart Band review: Value-for-money fitness tracker

Xiaomi's Mi Band series is one of the most popular fitness trackers in the Indian market. Some of the primary reasons are its robust fitness tracking capabilities and yet cost much less than rival brands.

Recently, it released a new Redmi Smart Band, which comes with a lot of features and costs Rs 1,599, lower than the sister Mi brand. I used the Redmi new fitness tracker for a few days and here are my thoughts.

Design, build quality, and display:
The new Redmi Smart Band flaunts a rectangular module with a 1.08-inch colour LCD screen. It is really bright. The display is just wide enough to view clearly the notifications, calling details right on the wrists, and also control the music played on the phone.

Also, I did not face any pressing issue while viewing the time or other details on the compact screen even under direct sunlight.

The silicone straps are really tough and I fully got to know their strength when pulling one to charge the module. It's a real pain to pull the strap, but on the bright side, I am happy with the material (Thermoplastic PolyUrethane) used for the band, and also it delivers good battery life, so this exercise to limited to just twice a month.

Also, the review unit's black colour module and straps look lovely under the sunlight. You should also check out three other colour variants- blue, green and orange. The latter looks great too.

The Redmi Smart Band comes with an in-built Type-A USB plug for charging. You can see in the picture below.

Xiaomi Redmi Smart Band. Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit

User-interface and Performance:
Setting up the Redmi Smart Band is really easy. Just need to install the Xiaomi Wear on the phone (with Android 4.4 or above/ iOS 9.0 or later versions) and pair the fitness tracker, add details such as height, weight, and details for better fitness monitoring. For me, it took less than five minutes to complete the procedure.

The simple swiping gesture interface to navigate through the smart band is very fluid and the credit has to go to the sensitive display and tiny on-cell touch button at the base. It is very responsive and was easy to go through features and settings; very rare in this ultra-budget segment. Also, users can change watch faces with the phone app and there is a treasure trove of more than 50 vivid and artful watch faces.

A companion phone needs to have Xiaomi Wear app to pair with the Redmi Smart Band. Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit

You can easily find the settings, weather data, notifications, status (distance covered in Km, steps, calories burned), heart rate, work out activity tracker, alarm, timer, stop watch, find phone, control music, enable/disable Do Not Disturb (DND) modes with just up and down swipes.

It comes with Photoplethysmography (PPG) heart rate sensor, a 3-axis accelerometer, and tracks five common outdoor activities such as outdoor running, treadmill, cycling, freestyle, and walking. Also, it also has a sedentary alert feature, which makes the user, if haven't moved from a single place for close to an hour, take a walk a bit or do some physical work.

It has a 130mAh battery and as advertised by the company, it lasts more than 14 days of usage.

Xiaomi Wear app on Redmi 9 Prime. Credit: DH Photo/KVN Rohit

Also, the Xiaomi Wear app has a minimalistic interface and shows all the statistics with colorful tabs for active calorie burned, steps count, sleep pattern, standing, average heartbeat rate, and other details.

Final thoughts:
Xiaomi's Redmi Smart Band is a good budget fitness tracker and I'm pretty impressed with the sturdy straps and the long battery life. Also, the display is really impressive for its class (under Rs 2,000 price range).

This is a good option for presenting it to school-going children to develop a good fitness routine. Also, senior citizens too would love it, particularly those who like to have a simple interface for hassle-free operation.

Pros:
Excellent build quality
Very simple and user-friendly interface
Good activity tracker

Cons:
It's a bit of a pain to remove the strap for charging. Thankfully, we have to do that only once in two weeks

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