Last month, the mailbag brought a number of goodies including a new smart wrist band for Maureen, the Xiaomi MI Band 3, supplied by GearBest. Several weeks later, this little fitness band is in full time use, as Maureen absolutely loves it. The battery lasts a week or more between charges, which is far more than can be said for some other bands out there including pretty colour bands that are essentially useless because of short battery life – no such problems here.
Here’s the link:
Xiaomi Mi Band 3 Smart Bracelet: https://goo.gl/hKj4PN
First hurdle: the instructions are in Chinese, not a word of English. Well, the watch has an ID in English on the side but that’s about it. XMSH05HM. On plugging the diminutive device minus strap into the supplied USB charger lead, encouragingly the time came up as 4:50 with some Chinese (I assume) text underneath. This was at 10am in the morning.
The watch comes complete with plastic bracelet, charging lead, Chinese instructions and the actual watch module.
Some hours later after a day at the poolside here in Galera – intuitively, the watch (which has no controls), paired with Bluetooth on my Smartphone almost immediately. Once I found the official Mi Fit app on the Android PlayStore it took only minutes to update, after un-pairing with the phone and pairing with the app (that’s what I get for rushing in) it was just fine and has stayed paired since.
For the most part I had little idea what the update was doing but it looked reassuring and soon Maureen’s new band was running in English, showing heart rate (via the built in sensor), correct time (24-hour format) and date, notifications, steps, weather and also communicated with the phone app without any problems.. there is also a stopwatch in there, sleep monitoring and probably more…. but now, Maureen won’t part with it to let me tinker.
The unit is also waterproof. We’re not looking at a 5-minute surface review here, she is wearing this constantly.
Antonio pointed me to an additional app called “Notify and Fitness” in the Google PlayStore which he uses with his MI 2, predecessor to the Mi 3.
This band came in black as you can see. The module has a solid feel – very nice. I have ordered spare (cheap) bands in 3 different colours m ore for variety than need. More colours are available on Ebay.
Longer term tests – the unit works reliably – no surprises.
A link for the (slightly more expensive) international version for you and before anyone asks, I am not on their affiliate program and no, I don’t benefit from the links…
https://goo.gl/kQuxdg Coupon: SD8C7KTH1T Coupon Price: 32.59USD
Excellent product for the money spent. I was facing problems with the battery for the first week. But i disabled the heart rate detection as per Mi customer support, and completely discharged and recharged the band. Have not faced battery issues since. But 20 days on a charge sounds like a dream. If you use other features, it will barely last 2 – 3 days. Hope the review helps other customers. If u want a healthier or a stunning start day of your life go to https://amzn.to/2RYcXtH
I’ve had a few watches recently, almost all have had battery problems but the MI3 is a good one – my wife loves it despite the monochrome display.
awesome band by mi band 3
What is the difference to the international version?
If you are into open source software you don’t even need the official app, but can try this one: https://gadgetbridge.org/
Even does Firmware-Updates (kinda) and you can export the database and use it further. It can also set the bracelet to measure your heartbeat once per minute. Even then battery is not running empty quickly. Pretty cool!
and they just announced newer model.
https://www.techradar.com/news/xiaomi-has-a-new-fitness-tracker-that-has-a-larger-display-than-the-mi-band-3
Possibly more expensive but yes, worth looking at that, too.
As the poster mentioned before – when you install the official app it will update the firmware and add more languages. English and German work for sure – haven’t tried other languages.
Another great companion app is tools & miband
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.zdenekhorak.mibandtools
But the official one should stay installed. It’s good for firmware updates and to adjust some settings, but also has some other nice Features. The 3rd party apps are usually a bit better for adjusting notifications. They offer custom filters, vibration patterns and such things.
typo in title, it’s mi band 3, not 4
you need to install the companion app, MI FIT: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xiaomi.hm.health&hl=it
then you need to register a xiaomi account on http://www.mi.com and use to login with the app: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8d6jmgQGm4
and there’s a way to translate from chinese to english easily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGJj69sC4eg
a WAY better app is NOTIFY and FITNESS, i do EVERYTHING for my miband2 with this and use the official app (which should NOT be uninstalled…) only for firmware updates: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mc.miband1
with the apps you can modify the number of pages on the watch (which can be changed pressing the touch button on the front), set to show phone caller id (only with the second app, for me on miband2, don’t now if it’s different with model 3), have watch vibrate on incoming call or notifications, use it as a alerts and to wake up 🙂
but i think you just need to update the firmware using the official app to have english, as they add new languages this way…