So, this is my personal review of Xiaomi Mi Band 4 as someone who previously used clone of it (Chinese copy, something like this M4 Smart Band) and Smart Watch (to be precise Forever SW-100 which was premium looking but with custom firmware on it).
Now, one and two months of usage later I will provide my experience with Xiaomi’s Mi Band 4 which I got for a fair pricing at August of 2020. To be precise, pricing was about 33 Euros at day of purchase (conversion from Croatian Kuna’s to Euros so there might be conversion mismatch because I used information for conversion from European Central Bank on 4. October 2020. to see what was conversion ratio on day of purchase).
Why I chose Xiaomi Mi Band 4 over Xiaomi Mi Band 5 which was available to purchase? It is simple – pricing. Mi Band 4 was cheaper and also it was for my usage perfect Sports Tracker and Smart Bracelet.
For a quick rundown of specifications I will mention few things – 0.95 inches AMOLED display with 24bit color depth and max of 400 nits of brightness, 5 ATM Water Resistance Rating, 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer, Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity with backwards versions of Bluetooth support and finally – capacitive 2.5D tempered glass for display to be useful. More detailed specifications can be found on Official Xiaomi Site or on GSMArena.
How it is to use Xiaomi Mi Band 4 for a two months. To put it simply, it is easy to use, I don’t mind to have it all day long on arm. It isn’t obtrusive as previous Smart Watch that I had and also it is way lighter than it. In comparison to Chinese Clone of it – it is way more responsive and it is in my honest opinion way better in battery department.
As I’m mostly using it to track my walking and heart rate (plus sometimes I might track sport activities like Outdoor Biking or Running/Jogging) it can do all things that I put to it. As mentioned I’m using it primarily as my pedometer and heart rate monitor with enabled features like Sleep Monitoring.
For sports monitoring it needs to be connected with phone and Mi Fit application. It is important to connect phone and Xiaomi Mi Band 4 trough Mi Fit as it uses them to get GPS data for walking, running or cycling distance and to be more precise with them. In General Training option in Workouts it tracks how long are you doing exercises and tracks heart rate with heart rate monitor. There is also Swimming tracking, but as I bought it bit late I couldn’t test this feature, but I can say that water resistance is perfect.
As for non sports features it have Weather connection trough Mi Fit application, Notification support for multiple of applications but without option to reply on them and some features which might be useful like Alarms directly on watch. Yup, I use that feature a lot, especially with regular Alarms on phone (needs to be activated trough Mi Fit) so it can wake me up when phone is on desk and I’m still in bed few meters away from phone. I can dismiss Alarms or get to to Snooze from Smart Band which helped me few times when I forgot to turn of daily alarm at 5:55 AM on weekend.
Other notable features are Smart Do Not Disturb Mode which is enabled when you go to Sleep or to Power Nap (which is useful not to vibrate with notifications when you just want a quick nap after hard working day).
There are also features like Music Playback controls (which I didn’t used as I’m mostly playing music using YouTube Music application), Stopwatch with Timer, Find device and Silent Mode.
Now, as it is Xiaomi’s product it is customizable with Watch Faces. You can create yourself one or just find one you like. In Mi Fit application there are few of them, but you can find more on Internet or just use application Mi Band 4 Watch faces from Google Play Store (there are more applications for that, but I found this one to be perfect in my opinion as it have lot of watch faces to choose with different styles and language compatibility.
In final topic let’s talk about battery life. What I can say is – it can take about 25 days (give or take few days depending of usage) from charge to charge. This is my average, and this average is higher then official rating of 20 days of usage. And yes, that average is from 2 mobile phones that it was connected in a first week – temporary iPhone 6 and my current device Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro.
As for additional bands or protectors for screen – it have bunch of options on various sites like Aliexpress, Gearbest, eBay and others like them. For instance I bought 3 pack of screen protectors and they helped out on few occasions where I was working around metals and it saved me lot of money from scratching device. Now I’m on second protector as first one got scratched to be unusable one day while working around house for preparing wooden planks to be painted later on.
In conclusion – Xiaomi Mi Band 4 is still perfect Smart Sports Tracking Band for somebody who wants affordable and perfectly usable smart band with lot of customizability and great support from manufacturer.
All images shot for this review are my personal shots created with Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro.