Xiaomi Band 8

Product Information

With a simple switch in the app (and the help of an attachment sold separately), you can transform the Smart Band 8 from a wrist companion into a bonafide running pod. There are thankfully some insights that are a bit more useful, though, and they generally come from when the device is instead attached to your running shoe. Pebble Mode This splits your night’s sleep into either light or deep sleep, though this expands to include REM sleep and heart rate monitoring (leading to more accurate sleep stage information) after you enable the setting. However, anybody looking to get anywhere close to the most out of the Smart Band 8 will want at least a few of these features enabled, and that’s naturally where things begin to decline.

Band 8 review - Wareable Xiaomi Smart Band 8 review - Wareable

An hour-long, aerobic run will see the Smart Band 8 advise taking the next 63 hours off to recover, meanwhile, and tag the workout as mostly anaerobic despite an average HR reading of 153. I've already mentioned the 6-axis motion sensor, but that's also joined by a heart-rate sensor on the underside which delivers your all-day heart-rate and blood oxygen saturation readings. The omission of GPS continues to be a bit of a killer, and means you’ll have to take your phone with you if you want any kind of reliable distance data. And even then, we’ve found this to be pretty poor - distances are often underreported and location trails in the app are essentially non-existent. While we’ve seen previous Smart Band devices barely change from their predecessors, the Smart Band 8 offers some genuine reasons to get excited.It’s not just the case that’s been improved, either. The display, despite being the same 1.64-inch size and 192 x 490-pixel resolution as its predecessor, can now reach 600 nits of brightness. This isn’t necessarily a negative, though. You can’t have it all at this price point, after all, and the few smarts present here actually work very well.

Band 8 Active - Xiaomi UK Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Active - Xiaomi UK

Interestingly, the Mi Fitness app will still point out your lowest HR from a particular 24-hour period, as shown above, and this was always very in tune with our Oura and Garmin. Gone is the long-standing unibody design of older Mi Bands/Smart Bands, and in its place are now the more typical slot connections on each end. The Smart Band 8’s battery capacity doesn’t take the same leap forward as we saw with its predecessor, but it is still bigger - and you can expect the newer device to be fairly long-lasting.The positive here for the Smart Band 8 is that we didn’t encounter any glaringly incorrect data, in which the heart rate readings never got going or spiked way too high, as is sometimes the case with cheaper devices.

Band 8 hands-on: Comprehensive fitness tracking on a budget Xiaomi Smart Band 8 hands-on: Comprehensive fitness tracking on a

And while this does add some polish to the operating system, we should say again that there’s still very little in terms of smart features to get excited about here.

Some, like Garmin and Oura, simply take your lowest heart rate reading from sleep, while others, like Xiaomi and Apple, instead look for your lowest reading when you’re in an awake and inactive state. In its condition out of the box, with most of those power-intensive features turned off, as we mentioned above, the battery drain is very minimal. Typically, we saw it lose around 5-7% per day, which roughly equates to Xiaomi’s estimate of 16 days. AOD mode test conditions for the Xiaomi Smart Band 8: Fully charged, factory default settings, static display, and smart AOD function turned on, but high-precision sleep monitoring, in-sleep breathing quality monitoring and all-day stress monitoring turned off. Heart rate monitoring every 30 minutes and message notifications (100 messages, 10 calls, and 3 alarms per day) enabled; app data synchronised once per day; blood oxygen manually measured twice per day; and exercise monitoring for 60 minutes per week. As shown in our example above, all the data seems within a healthy range of the wrist-based Running Dynamics info available from our Garmin Epix Pro (Gen 2), which, considering the incredible price difference, is impressive stuff.

Band 8 - Xiaomi UK Xiaomi Smart Band 8 - Xiaomi UK

Xiaomi’s proprietary OS is also very zippy - a feeling that's is aided by that bump-up in refresh rate we referenced earlier. For example, we’ve run 30 miles in a week with the Smart Band 8, alongside two gym sessions and five hour-long walks, yet our training load is still considered ‘Low’.Even with just these two core changes, the Smart Band 8 appears to be one of the most significant upgrades in years - and that's before considering the cheaper price tag, slightly bigger battery, and refined screen. Notifications may be a little cramped on that 1.64-inch display, and you still don’t have the ability to really do anything with them other than view, but they are at least customizable through the Mi Fitness app and come through reliably.