TechLife_Australia_Issue_63_May_2017

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RADAR

Xiaomi Mi Band 2

THE BUDGET FITNESS BAND IS BACK.

LOOKING AT THE wearable landscape, the segment has already had

it’s big boom time and the devices that are ahead of the competition

have had the chance to refine and hone to a level that genuinely satisfies

its users. We’re the first to admit that Xiaomi’s Mi Band 2 shows the

same level of sophistication when it comes to design aesthetic, form

factor and even ease of use; but even when you list out its raw feature set,

it’s way more than what we would expect from a tracker at this price.

The Mi Band 2 tracks three things: time, steps and heart rate.

This isn’t to be scoffed at. There’s no other fitness tracker we know of for

under $200 that’ll ping your heart rate, and the Mi Band 2 comes in at

around $70. You can choose to add more display metrics including the

distance you’ve travelled, calories burned or the remaining battery

percentage directly on the band’s OLED screen, but that’s about the

extent of the wristband’s functionality.

Once paired with the Mi Fit app, however, there’s notably more

information and a whole suite of additional functions to draw on.

The Mi Fit app will pair with the Mi Band 2 to add smart alarms

(that’ll wake you at the best point in your sleep cycle), automatic sleep

tracking, notification alerts, call management and idleness reminders.

The only area in which the Mi Band software is a little limited is in the

range of sporting activities it attempts to track, namely, it’ll only do

running, or running on a treadmill. Fortunately, for many those are

the main activities you’d use a tracker for anyway, and the Mi Fit app

tracks it competently, even drawing on the phone’s GPS signal to peg

your route and timed splits.

While the Mi Band 2 isn’t quite on par with the best trackers in

the business, the value proposition is better than anything we’ve

seen before. [ JOEL BURGESS ]

Xiaomi Mi Smart Scale

BE SMART ABOUT YOUR WEIGHT LOSS REGIME.

WITH THEIR GLASS faceplate and crisp white colouring, this set of

bathroom scales is a classy expression of stylish technology — and one

that outperforms its mechanical predecessors. Unlike some of the more

expensive smart scale options out there, the Xiaomi scales don’t

measure anything other than your weight, but what they add is a level of

convenience that you’ll truly appreciate in the long run. Hidden beneath

the surface of the white facade are a series of circular white LED lights

that arrange to display your weight, but most of the Mi Smart Scale’s

technological magic is even less perceptible.

The scales pair directly with the Mi Fit Android or iOS app and will

record your weight every time you step onto the scales. With the ability

to recognise up to 16 different weight profiles for the various members

in your family, you won’t have to worry about the unit accidentally

patting you on the back for losing 20kg in a day. Drawing on the height,

sex and age information that you’ll add manually to your weight profile,

the app can even give you an estimate of your BMI and tell you how you

are fairing on a normalised graph of healthy weight profiles.

With up to a year’s usage from four replaceable double-A batteries,

the Mi Smart scales do an excellent job making weight tracking

effortless. It’s hard not to wish that these scales also incorporated

electrode-based fat percentage readings, but at $69, it wasn’t exactly

expected. You have to give quite a bit of personal information to fitness

related apps (something we were less than comfortable doing with

Xiaomi, considering China’s differing privacy and information sharing

laws), but if the world’s affiliation with Facebook is anything to go by,

this won’t be a big problem for many. [ JOEL BURGESS ]

XIAOMI MI BAND 2

$59

http://www.mi.com/en

CRITICAL SPECS

IP67 water and dust resistant; 70mAh battery (up to 20 days

standby); 0.42-inch OLED display; Bluetooth 4.0 BLE;

photoelectric heart rate sensor; 19g

41 /^2

XIAOMI MI SMART SCALE

$69

http://www.mi.com/en

CRITICAL SPECS

5–150kg weight range; measures in kilograms, catties and

pounds; 100 g margin of error; Bluetooth LE 4.0; Android 4.4+ and

iOS 7.0+; 4 x A A batteries (not included); 30 x 30 x 2.8cm; 1.9kg

WINNER

APPROVED

AWARD

4

WINNER

ED’s CHOICE

AWARD