Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro

Aug 19, 2024

I only now thought about this, but I've only had the even numbered Mi Bands. Started with a Mi Band 2, after that a Mi Band 4, upgraded to a Mi Band 6, then to the NFC version, and back down to the regular version, and now upgraded to the Smart Band 8 Pro.
So basically what I can take away from that is that I have to, at all cost, not upgrade until I get to the Smart Band 10.
Anyways, the categories:

Comfort

Arguably the most important part of any fitness tracker or smart watch is the comfort. It doesn't matter how smooth the display is or how precisely it tracks your heart rate, or if it can make you a million euros a month if it's not comfortable. Okay, maybe I'd take that last deal.

And the Smart Band 8 Pro, (I'm so tired of typing that that from here on out I'll shorten it down to Band 8 Pro) is amazing. The biggest part of comfort is whether or not you can simply forget it exists. And I can very easily forget I have this thing on. It may be decently heavy, but it feels so light due to how well it's made and the materials chosen that it doesn't even matter. I'll touch on the security part of this in the extras category, but you don't need to worry about losing it.

Comfort, however, isn't just how it feels on your wrist. It's how easy it is to use it how convenient it is. What I especially like about the Band 8 Pro is the oleophobic coating on the screen. I've seen it on my Xiaomi 13T Pro and it is amazing. Your finger glides easily and any fingerprints can be wiped off with just a few swipes of your sleeve or whatever else you use.

And in terms of ease-of-use, it's great! Everything feels intuitive, there hasn't been one instance where I thought "Why is this here and not in this other obviously better location?". Everything makes sense. If you have ever used just about any tech product ever and understood even a little of how it works, you'll have no difficulties with this product.

Display

The display is one of the best parts of this, at least in my experience. As you might have guessed, before upgrading, I was using the Mi Band 6. With a, what feels like, 24hz screen. It might not be specifically 24hz but I recall hearing something about that. And there's nothing about the refresh rate publically. This has 60hz. And to best explain it, please go to your settings app and set your refresh rate down as low as it gets. Use your phone for a few minutes. Then come back to the highest it gets. And that feeling is exactly what I felt. Everything is so smooth, every gesture feels amazing, every swipe makes me feel happy.

But that's not all. What to me was a mere afterthought actually turned out to be a great feature as well. And that's the screen size. By just making the display wider, Xiaomi has added so much more screen real-estate that it's amazing. No longer are notifications a pain to read. I can now glance at my wrist and be able to essentially perfectly understand exactly what happened. Also, this may sound weird, but it actually supports emojis and unicode! No more rectangles! Finally!

There are a few more aspects, such as the brightness, but they can be summarized by saying that they aren't things I think about. The screen, in its entirety, from the brightness, to the size, comes together to make me forget about it. And that is perfect. There's no hindrance while using it and that is exactly how it should be.

Battery

I've only had this band for a few days so I can't comment about the battery life, but it feels great. I've maxed out each and every sensor possible to the point that there is no way to drain more and my display brightness is on max, and I have lost around 40% since Tuesday afternoon. (That's around 3 days!). So battery's pretty damn good.

But battery isn't just about how long it lasts. Charging is also an important consideration! And while a full charge isn't yet possible because I'm still on 30%, I have charged for 5 minutes, timed it, and it went from 31% to 38%, that's 7% in 5 minutes. Pretty good!

Features

There are so many features that I can't even cover all of them. Just read the product page on the Xiaomi website. It says enough. There's so many different modes and utilities that it'd take me a thousand words just to cover half of them. So I'll share a few of my favourite parts. Some of these might sounds foreign to those who haven't upgraded from a Mi Band 6, but bear with me.

The best part of the entire sports mode is how quickly it connects to GPS. It used to take tens of seconds on the old band, but now it's at most five seconds. And even then, most of the time takes around 2 to 3. It's great! The GPS accuracy is also way better, it actually shows where I was and not 20m off to the side or in the river. (And no, I did not throw the band into the river.)

There's also improved widgets and one of the best parts is quick toggles with a swipe to the right from the homescreen. Granted, I don't use a lot of the features that are in there, but at least a few of them are nice to be able to quickly toggle!

Lastly, I'd like to quicky touch on the watch face customisation. There's a lot of predefined options, but I find the Roman Minimalism one the best. What I find rather unfortunate is how little info-centric watch faces there are. I haven't found one that actually allows me to have more than two custom widgets, and that's deeply unfortunate considering the screen size. However, that's nothing the custom watchfaces can't solve. And there's plenty of those!

Extras

Alright, the last section. Finally. I'll cover a few extra things that don't necessarily belong to a specific category but I feel deserve a mention.

First, the safety. I'm sure with the weightlessness I mentioned earlier some people might be concerned about what happens if the band falls off and you don't notice it. Rest assured, that's downright impossible. The band has a dual safety system. First, the little pin that you have to insert is on the inside, so to remove the band you have to press on it instead of pull on it, so that eliminates the chances of it getting caught on some clothing and getting detached. Second, there's a little clip at the end that the strap goes through and it's very tight and doesn't move without manual force. You don't need a lot of force, you just need to concentrate it in the right areas. But it's not going anywhere without manual input.

Second, the showering aspect. This might be important to some. The band has a huge flaw that everything has. Touch does work when in the shower, but only to an extent. If you get too much waterdrops on it, it stops detecting the touch correctly and might also just start ghosting. Also, the band can't be easily dried without taking it off so I suggest taking it off before showering regardless.

Closing thoughts

Way too many words. My hands hurt. That's all I got.

Jokes aside, it's an awesome smart band and DEFINITELY worth the price. I paid absolutely nothing for it because I got it by using a 100€ coupon, but it normally costs ~70€ and that's a great price for what you get. I highly recommend this band. Only minor flaws are a lack of NFC and no ability to accept calls, only deny them, but that's fine, I guess.