The all new Xiaomi Mi Band 5
It’s been one of the most leaked and rumored devices over the past few weeks – but now we have the official word on the Xiaomi Mi Band 5.
The budget fitness tracker, which costs ¥229 in China – around $30 – has landed on the Mi Store in its homeland, and will be hitting people’s wrists next week on the 18th June.
James Stables of Wareable has done the digging through the official specs and feature list and a lot of the features rumored over the past few weeks are present and correct – including the new female fertility tracking aspect.
The spec sheet confirms a 1.1-inch (126×294) AMOLED display, a new magnetic charging function, sleep tracking with insights and heart rate monitoring.
It is widely anticipated that the international version of the latest Mi Band will launch with Amazon’s Alexa on board for voice commands. On the Chinese model that has just been announced, Xiao Ai is the built-in voice assistant.
There is a big focus on sports tracking with 11 new modes included, such as rowing, yoga and skipping.
There are 8 different straps to choose from and users can personalise even further thanks to over 100 built-in themes from the likes of SpongeBob Squarepants to Hatsune Miku and Detective Conan.
That ¥229 price tag is for a NFC version of the Mi Band 5, which offers contactless payments, bus passes and the like in China. There is also a non-NFC model too, costing ¥189, which is around $26.
Battery life is stated as 14 days on the NFC model, 20 days on the non-NFC variant. The Xiaomi Mi Band 5 is also waterproof to 50m.
With previous generations of the Mi Band, Xiaomi has always taken the covers off of the native model first, with an international version going live in the following weeks – so I fully expect we’ll hear more about the model for the western world soon… and hopefully confirmation of that Alexa functionality.
Xiaomi is a major player in the wearable tech world; the Chinese company ranks only behind Apple in terms of worldwide shipments.
IDC stated that Xiaomi shipped 12.8 million wearables (of which 73.3 percent were fitness trackers) in Q4 2019.
Fitbit, in comparison, shipped 6 million devices in the same period.
