Mi band 1s Review

Features

Fitness

The Mi Band in general revolves around step counting, but the Mi Band 1S expanded the firmware to support a "running mode." This running mode is on a whole - basically useless - and was a somewhat futile attempt by Xiaomi to try to add some bloat to their severely feature-lacking fitness app, and it seems to have been removed in later versions of the app. As of now, it has the same fitness features reported in the original review.

Heart rate monitoring

This is a new addition to the Mi Band 1S which wasn't seen in previous versions of the device. It is a full-blown heart rate monitor, and on command it can check your heart rate. It doesn't come without its set of problems though.

It was great, it made sense and it worked well, and it was three quarters of the reason why I continued to wear my Mi Band.

The new Mi Band 1S stripped this feature out and although the old apps still work, you can no longer get color-driven notifications that tell you what the notification is for. Boo.

Battery Life

The other part where I liked the original Mi Band was with the battery life. Some users were reporting as much as three months on a single charge, making it a great low-maintenance accessory to have. And that goes double for those of us who've never wanted a wearable and it would just be another device for which you need to worry about the battery life.

That has since changed, with the Mi Band 1S getting barely two weeks on a single charge, and in some cases losing more than 10% in a single day due to malfunctions with the heart rate monitor. This actually led to my Mi Band dying and put me in a position where I wasn't able to charge it until a few days later.

Again: it went from great to bad, and that's a huge problem.