Mi Band 7: The First Tech I’ve Ever Returned
To start off this blog thing, I must declare that this is not a tech review. I am going to talk about the functionalities of the Mi Band 7, but I am mostly going to focus on everything else. If you want the review instead of the boring stuff, scroll down to the part with a line of red text, and read everything there.
I have never bought a Mi Band in my life, even though I did use the original Xiaomi Mi Mix for a year. I have always been in love with the Apple Watch when the first one came out and I bought one in Japan; but the laggy software and uncomfortableness of wearing a watch for me at a young age kept me from wearing it at all. That’s when I bought a Samsung Galaxy S3 Frontier when I bought my first Samsung phone, the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. I liked that watch a lot when I first bought it; but the design has aged very badly, to the point that I just can’t wear it publicly anymore.
After a 3 year hiatus of never wearing a watch at all due to Covid, I bought my first smart watch again, and it is surprisingly from Apple, since I do not use an iPhone. I purchased the Apple Watch Ultra model even though its design is not my favorite; but its bigger battery and fresh design was interesting enough for me to skip the Stainless Steel version of the Apple Watch Series 8 and instead opted for the Ultra. Since I’ve never used any Apple Watch other than the original one, I was immediately surprised by how good the software has been for this tiny little watch (not too little). I purposefully bought an iPhone (albeit not the newest model) just for this watch, because I am just this much extra, and I just wanted a smart watch that isn’t from Samsung, which to me, still does not have any watch that has any sex appeal to me. The Google Pixel Watch was very appealing, but I ultimately didn’t buy one because of its nasty bezel that made it look like a watch from 5 years ago.
One month after I purchase the Apple Watch Ultra, I am very content with it. In fact, I am so happy with this watch, I have bought 10 watch bands just for this watch. Don’t worry, I am not stupid enough to buy the overpriced watch bands from Apple. The watch can deliver every notification from my iPhone to me, but, that is the precise problem for me. It only delivered notifications from my iPhone to me; but not from my Samsung phone, which is still my main phone. To be honest, if only Apple would decide to integrate Apple Watches to Android phones, I would love to pay extra for that feature, but Apple is being Apple, they want more money, so that leaves me in a very awkward position.
This is when I saw an article from The Verge, about “double-wristing”. Click here to see the that article. Please do not confuse it with “double-fisting”, as I want to keep this article PG. “Double-wristing” is a watch wearing term that refers to when a person wears two watches on both wrists at the same time. The person who wrote the article wore a smart watch and a traditional mechanical watch on each hand because he enjoyed the complicatedness of the traditional watches, and he enjoyed the simplicity and the technology that came with a smart watch.
That struck me as deeply disturbing, yet, extremely interesting and fun. Why won’t people wear two watches at the same time? What’s wrong with wearing another watch on your other wrist when it is THE prime real estate for another watch?
But then, I started realizing the social conventions that dictates things that we do or not do. There is a reason why people only wear one wrist watch — it is a social convention that started since the invention of the first wrist watch. There is a reason why most, if not all watches are supposed to be worn on the left wrist — it is because most people are right-handed, and it is a social convention to wear your wrist watch on your non-dominant hand. This is why despite you can choose the orientation of your Apple Watch, the crown and the button design will always look awkward if you try to turn it another way instead of the conventional way — the crown faces your hand.
Many people can snuff off the idea of social convention; after all, it is 2023, and no one should care about what others think about their fashion sense. If you think this is what makes you look good, and if you think this is the way you want things to be, then by all means, do whatever it takes to make yourself feel better. But the thing is, I am not that much openminded. I am very much a slave to social conventions. I do not wish to be different from the crowd. I like rules, that’s what made me, well, me.
That’s why I am meticulous about the world of suits. I follow everything to the detail. For example:
Never button the bottom most button on either your suit jacket or waist coat
Best not to match the color and the pattern of your pocket square to your tie
Never wear brown shoes with a black suit
Always show at least half an inch of your shirt’s cuffs outside of your jacket’s sleeves.
Always wear your lapel pin on the left
And as always, wear your wrist watch on your non-dominant hand.
This is a code, nay, creed, that I have followed to my very teeth. That is what stopped me from actually deciding on double-wristing — it breaks the code that I am following. If I break my personal creed, then what am I? I am but my personal code, and if I do not follow my personal code, I am not me anymore.
Still, this is my personal creed, so if you really want to enjoy both the benefits of a traditional time-piece and of a smart watch, please do it, as it still is very cool to a rebellious side of me.
When I am browsing Reddit on this subject matter, I have seem multiple suggestions that you can wear a smart bracelet/band with your watch and it wouldn’t look tacky or stupid.
That’s actually a great idea! Wearing a watch with a bracelet on the other hand is not stupid at all. In fact, it is very fashionable. I’ve done it before, and I liked that combination very much. If a bracelet is fine, then why not a smart bracelet?
That’s when I started looking for — a Fitbit. Yes, my search for a smart band is actually Fitbit, not Mi Band. Fitbit is more widespread in North America, and from the contents that I have been eating up, Fitbit is the mainstream smart/sport band that will probably work for me. That is until I saw the price.
The most expensive Fitbit is the Charge 5, and right now, as of the time of writing, is on sale, at about $129, it’s actually not bad. With a stainless steel body and a small screen, it was very appealing as a piece of jewelry that men can wear. Still, $129 is a lot of money, and a tough pill to swallow when I already have an expensive-ass Apple Watch that costs more than $800.
Yes, that’s when I remembered that there is actually a Chinese alternative, the Mi Band. I am very unfamiliar with the Mi Band family because I never thought it was something I wanted. I used to only have one phone, so my primary drive for a wearable tech has always been a smart watch, not a band that has a small screen. And Again, when I was first introduced to Apple Watch and smart watches in general, Mi Band was still in its first and second generations where the first one had no screen, and the second one had a small black and white screen. Now that Apple Watch is beginning to stagnate, I figured that maybe Xiaomi had something else in their pocket.
I was surprised how the Mi Band 7 looked. It looked very stylish with a very long screen. Even though it did not look as visually appealing as the Charge 5, at a jaw-dropping ¥200 RMB, or less than $40, does that really matter? I immediately went into research mode, and started to look for reviews both in English and in Chinese. The common consensus among English speaking reviews is that the Mi Band is fantastic at its current value proposition, and for the Chinese speaking reviews is that Mi Band 7 is actually not as good as the Mi Band 6, which had a smaller screen, but better battery life. But for ¥200 though, I feel like that’s some disposable income that I can comfortably dispose of when this turned out to be a dud. With that said, I ordered the Mi Band 7 online when it’s on sale, which is basically the next day that I started looking for smart bands.
Review Starts
Delivery was swift, and I ran downstairs to get the package. Opening the cheap packaging was very disappointing, but again, it’s only ¥200, shouldn’t matter as much. When I pulled the Mi Band out from the box, the first thing that I felt was its weight. It weighed practically nothing compared to my Apple Watch. I thought that was a good thing at first, but that feeling didn’t last very long.
After setting the Mi Band up with one of its two apps called “Zepp Life”, I very hastily put it on. Remember I said that I thought the lightness of the Mi Band was a good thing? After I put it on, the only thing that I can feel is how incredibly cheap this product is. Even though my Apple Watch Ultra is a rather heavy watch, its heaviness gave me the illusion that it is worth something. Maybe not worth the whole $800+ that I paid for it, but certainly felt like it was a watch that was maybe worth around $400-500. The light-weightedness of the Mi Band is precisely what made it felt like a rather cheap “toy”. It felt more or less like $10 dollars.
That is not to say that this is a bad thing. Many of the reviews that I have read have mentioned how light this watch is and how much that is beneficial to their use case. I agree, for their decided use case scenario, its lightness is a very useful factor when they are using it for its intended uses, such as for sport purposes. A light sport band must be a lot more easier to use than a heavy smart watch when you’re running.
Putting it on is very easy. I spent some time in the Zepp Life app, customizing the Mi Band to my liking. The English UI in the Zepp Life app is moderately bad, but as a product that is mostly facing the Chinese population, it should not be too much of a problem. Just click on everything and see what it does to your Mi Band, just remember not to click on the “reset” button and you should be fine.
The Band tho, on the other hand, has a very badly designed UI. It is understandable that for such a small device, it must have a very small GPU in it; yet, even after about 6 months of updates, the newest Band in the Xiaomi lineup is laggy as hell. I do not have a frame rate calculating method, but based on my naked eye, I would say that the display has less than 30 fps. For such a small display, a 60 fps count would make every animation look like it is 240 fps; but on the Mi Band, the software design team didn’t do that. Moving around feels very slow and inconsistent, I had a very bad time just scrolling through everything.
The Band has other health-related features. Since I still plan to wear my Apple Watch Ultra on my left wrist, I wore the Mi Band on my right wrist, and did some tests with it. It could be hit or miss, and the heart rate calculations that the Mi Band had is slightly different from the one from Apple, and is always a few beats slower. To be honest with you, I would not trust the health sensors on the Mi Band, as it is too small to be worth a damn. But it can be a nice tool to have for approximate results if you are not trying to use it to save your life.
The Mi Band does not have automatic screen brightness adjustment, and you need to dive into 3 levels of settings before you can adjust brightness. It is about 450 nits, bright enough for daily use. The AOD, a very useful tool that is brand new for this generation of the Mi Band, demolishes the battery life if you turn it on. It was advertised as 14 days of battery life, but if you turn the Always On Display on, then it cuts the battery life to 3 days. For me, I turned every automatic health sensing feature off, and that did not make the Mi Band survive any longer than the brief 3 days I had before deciding to return.
Yes, I returned the Mi Band. I really wanted to like it, but there is one thing that bugged me the most about this product: its protruding health sensor. Normally on a smart watch or a smart band from Fitbit, the health sensor does not cut into your skin, as it gently sits on your wrist with the health sensor being about level with the base of the watch/band. The Apple Watch had a spherical design that although it pushes into your skin, it is round enough to make the experience not miserable at all. The Mi Band though, and apparently it was a design choice that the designers chose since Mi Band 4, has a health sensor that sticks out of the back of the device that stabs into your wrist. Unlike the Apple Watch which had a cushion-like design that hurts you less, the Mi Band has a very angular oval-shaped bulge that cuts into your wrist. It is extremely uncomfortable for someone who has never experienced this type of health sensor in the past, and it is extremely unthinkable for me to imagine what the hell the designers of the Mi Band were smoking when they thought this was a good idea.
To their credit, the bulge at the back is not very long per se. It is about 3 mm away from the back of the band; but that 3 mm can be fatal. It leaves a very nasty oval mark on my wrist despite my best effort to never tighten the band. Whenever I wear the Band, I feel intense irritation that I had to move the Mi Band up and down my arm with a loosened band’s band (lol); and that action left me with multiple oval marks that were tales of a not so distant past where it hurts like hell. Since I really wanted to keep the Mi Band, I looked online for solutions. I couldn’t find anything on Taobao that would help alleviate the marks left by the bulge from my wrist; and searching in both English and Chinese didn’t help, as it was seemingly ignored by most users all around the world. They chose to live with the pain, for the Mi Band has such a good value proposition that it is okay to live with the hurtfulness that a tiny thing on their wrist has imposed upon them.
One Chinese user on the Baidu forum said that he used sand papers to grind the bulge flat, but I am not going to try to do that with something that I do not find necessary to put that much effort into. Ultimately, without a solution, my only option was to return it back to the vendor, as I do not want to waste money and lay the product somewhere collecting dust.
This ends the review of the Mi Band 7. If this is all you want to see, then you can be sure to click away now. Nice seeing ya!
Now, to the point of why I decided to write this blog thing at all. I never write reviews for anything because I have a clear self-understanding that no one is going to ever read anything I write. For a brief period, I wanted to be a tech YouTuber, but that was more or less a dream of mine that maybe someday will become a reality. The only reason that I chose to write anything in the first place, is that the Mi Band gave me a brand new perspective of life. This tiny little plastic crap that hurt me physically did indeed change my way of looking at the world. And it felt like a moment that I want my biographer to know, if I ever become famous enough to warrant a biographer.
I discovered two things. One, my always trustful “research skills” failed me big times this time. Two, I am just a different person than what the band’s intended audience is.
First point. I always pride myself with the fact that when I want to buy something, I never return them because I have done the correct research, and I know that I truly want it and need it to be in its exact specification before I place my order. My way of researching includes going through online forums, reading reviews from both Chinese and English sources, and watching videos from both Chinese and English sources. From triangulating between these different sources, I always thought I had a clear estimate of what this product is and how may it be helpful to myself in my use case. None of the reviews or forum discussions that I found before me purchasing pointed to the poignant fact of the protruding bulge. In fact, I didn’t know it existed until I saw the mark that it left on my wrist when I took the band off after feeling uncomfortable. All of them has said that the Mi Band felt very comfortable, but none of them had the same feeling I had — it is light, but its crappy design is not helping its thickness. The back of the band sits on your wrist, while the 3 mm bulge sticks into your skin. I never read anything about the bulge until I actually found out about its existence and started to look for remedies. How did this slip past me? Has my usual way of researching things to buy failed me more times in the past? The Mi Band 7 has completely shattered my self-confidence in my research skills that I have honed ever since I H made contact with the internet.
The second point, to me personally, is a scary thought. Every review that I read/watched had deep analysis into the software and the hardware of the Mi Band 7. Some of them are critical of the laggy software (which I am very familiar with, so the refresh rate was not the reason why I chose to return the band); but every one of them commended the comfortableness of the Mi Band. The main focus has been its weight and how it disappears into your daily life without you noticing it being there. One extreme case saw the reviewer saying replacing his Apple Watch Series 7 with the Mi Band 7 has been one of the best things he ever did. None of them mentioned the angular bulge that cuts into your wrist and how that factors into the general comfortableness of the band itself. No one mentioned how cheap the band felt against your skin and on your wrist.
That’s when it hit me. Am I not the target audience for this band? I consider myself to be a tech junky; someone who values cool tech so much, that I can be considered a nerd. When I saw the value inside the Mi Band 7, I immediately placed an order with no hesitation (after watching the reviews of course). That has been me since I was old enough to be interested in cool tech. I certainly did not change, but perhaps, I was always not the one they (Xiaomi) consider when they are designing products.
My first Xiaomi product is the Mi Mix. The first Mix shattered my opinion of what a beautiful smartphone could look like. For a period of time before the official sale of the product, the Mi Mix was my wallpaper on my iPhone 6s, which I considered beautiful too, but too boring after its general shape being incepted since the first iPhone. The Mi Mix, with its ceramic backplate, gold plated circle around the fingerprint sensor, and its first in the world all around display took my breathe away every time I see that piece of machinery. With a price of 3999 RMB, even though it’s far cheaper than the iPhones of that time, is still very expensive compared to other phone manufacturers in China.
I am the target audience of the Mi Mix. I have always been the target audience of tech companies that are aiming for the high-end market. I am never the one to buy a cheap product just because of its value proposition; and I am never the one to buy a cheap product because that is the only product I can afford in this price range. In other words, other than the first Mi Mix, I was never the target audience of Xiaomi, at all.
The Mi Band 7, although it looks like a wonderful product, was not designed for me. It is a product designed for a group of audience that cannot afford anything more expensive; who are interested in technology in general, but lacks particular insight of what they really want to achieve with that piece of technology, therefore choosing a cheap product that had a good reputation on its value proposition and see if they really like this particular product. In other words, I, someone who enjoys everything technology, cannot enjoy this specific piece of technology because I am classified into a higher-end market that this Mi Band is not trying to be in.
This is very much a scary thought to me. I didn’t want to be special, and I never want to deny a piece of good hardware based on its low price. My trusty sense of reviews and comments searching had me confident in everyone of my tech decisions, something I am very proud of because “I have always done the research”. Mi Band is the first and only thing I have bought and returned after I have done my usual research. I am assuming this is one particular case that will probably not happen again, but who knows.
Anyway, this is the end of my self discovery of a disastrous blog post that I don’t know how to put an end to. If you read this thing up until this point, I think you know me a little bit better now. What I am experiencing right now is very special and awkward at the same time, and I am very thankful that you chose to experience this feeling with me together. This is the first time in my life that I knew that I am somehow being classified into a group that I didn’t know that I didn’t belong, and knowing that, it’s like, deja vu.