Mi Band

Xiaomi Mi Band 3 performance and battery life

The Mi Band 3 pairs with a smartphone using the Mi Fit app and Bluetooth 4.2 LE, which keeps the power consumption down. The app is available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, and it is very easy to pair the band with a phone. When using the Mi Band 3, one can swipe upwards to go through various bits of information. When there is more than one readout available, you will see a scroll indicator hinting that you can swipe right to left to see more.

The Mi Band 3 displays a lot more information than the model it replaces. Apart from the time and date, you can check the number of steps taken, distance covered, calories burned, battery level, a three-day weather forecast, heart-rate, and a stopwatch. You can also switch the ringer profile of the phone (Android only), use the band to find your phone, and start recording exercise sessions directly from the band.

The Mi Fit app remains unchanged, but the Mi Band 3 does get a few new settings under the Device tab. One of them is a night mode that dims the display automatically at sunset or a scheduled time. Select Heart-rate Detection lets you turn automatic detection off, pair it with sleep tracking for better accuracy, or just keep it on. When switched on it gives you the option to track your heart rate at set intervals, with the lowest being one minute

The Mi Band 3 can also handle notifications and phone calls. We had paired it with a Samsung Galaxy S9₹ 45,999 (Review) and found that it displayed the telephone number for an incoming call instead of the caller's name, even when the contact was in our address book. It gives you the option to mute incoming calls or reject them entirely, using the capacitive button. The band manages notifications quite well and also saves these notifications until you clear them.

Activity tracking with the Mi Band 3 is very accurate. To check the accuracy of the step counter we went for a walk and counted 1,000 steps manually. The band reported 1,004 steps, which is very good, and the minor deviation can be accepted. We went for a walk for a distance we knew was exactly 1km, and the Mi Band 3 recorded the distance to be 1.12km. This is because non-GPS trackers like the Mi Band 3 can only estimate the distance you cover, so if accurate distance tracking — and not just steps — is important, you should look at more expensive alternatives.

The deviation was even larger when we used the Mi Band 3 on a treadmill with the exercise mode enabled. After we finished 2km on the treadmill, the band displayed 1.68km. This is primarily because the band cannot gauge stride length when on a treadmill, but we did have the option to calibrate distance after finishing a run.

While in exercise mode, the band displays the time and constantly tracks your heart rate. You can also use it for outdoor runs, where it uses GPS data from your paired phone for better distance tracking.<iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-in.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=IN&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=bestprodu0ea3-21&marketplace=amazon&region=IN&placement=B07HCXQZ4P&asins=B07HCXQZ4P&linkId=e188d35e23f0e46c09ac6c1ebe24a92f&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff"> </iframe>