The heartbeat of a banana

Mi Band 3, three months on

  Whatever happened to your new year's resolutions, it's still not late to tackle that "Getting fit" written down somewhere on your list. For that matter, I suggest you get yourself a fitness tracker, and offer one to your loved ones. You can get one as cheap as $25 such as a MiBand3

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Unboxing

My miband was delivered from a local web store, in a box that has a transparent lid, inside was the watch, the strap, a user manual, and a USB adapter for charging.

The battery was absolutely flat, so I had to charge it first (which took a bit less than 2 hours), synced it with its native app: "Mi Fit", then I was good to go.

What do I like about the MiBand3?

The watch is so lightweight (8 grams), and the strap is anti-allergy AND anti-bacterial. It is comfortable, I can barely feel it on my wrist. I even sleep wearing it.

the display is clear and readable under sunlight. For the clock face, I like to see time, date and footsteps gauge at the bottom. The pedometer is accurate, but sometimes it throws in a handful of extra steps here and there.

As far as fitness trackers are concerned, the miband3 does the job, it can calculate distance I run, calories I burned based on my HR, plus they added "behavior tagging" for different activity tracking

As per water resistance, the watch is rated IP68, I don't take it off when I shower. It can resist up to 50 m deep. A 3m deep swimming pool isn't likely to damage it, but will test it soon anyway.

My phone is almost always in silent mode. The band vibrates when I receive notifications. It is a very very convenient feature, especially when driving, I see the caller ID while my hand is on the steering wheel, I can reject the call right on the band.

One full charge can extend to around 15 days if you turn off unimportant notifications, and disable bluetooth and heartbeat tracking at night.

What I don't like about it?

The mi fit app UI was an absolute disappointment, it is not organized nor intuitive, the same applies to the menu on the miband. Navigation is not fully customizable. Please! UI/UX experts needed.

That being said, I prefer 'mi fit' to other 3rd party apps available on play store. "Notify and fitness" is rich, but distracting, and ugly. "Tools & Miband" is minimalistic, but lacks some features, and is paid. I've just installed the opensource app Gadgetbridge, we'll see if it can change my opinion.

I noticed that the heart rate is not the same when the watch is inner vs outer side of the wrist (higher on the inner side). So I'm still questioning the HR measurement accuracy .. Watch this if you're wondering about the title.

The charging cable is a big concern, I use it twice a month, which makes it prone to loss, it is not standard, surely you can hack one, it's nothing but two wires that go into the pins. But hey, water resistance comes at a price ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . I also wish I haven't had to remove the watch from the strap every time I need to charge it, a charging dock would have been more practical.

Finally, I got contradicting results between "miFit" and "sleep as android" for sleep monitoring. please leave a comment if you have any clue.