Xiaomi’s best selling Mi Band lineup has got a new update today: the Mi Band 5. The new wearable brings significant upgrades to the company’s smart band family, including a new magnetic charging design, a larger dynamic OLED display, and new sports modes. The band also comes with a brighter display that goes up to 450 nits, improving its visibility outdoors.
Larger Display with 100+ Animated Watchfaces
The new Mi Band 5 retains the same pill-shaped design of the Mi Band 4 and has a variety of wristband colors. You can choose the TPU wristband in eight different colors which include – graphite black, deep space blue, dynamic orange, bronze purple, vibrant yellow, light green, dark cyan, and ivory.
The Xiaomi Mi Band 5 comes with a large 1.2-inch dynamic color AMOLED display, protected by a scratch-resistant 2.5D glass on top. This marks a significant increase in its screen size (more than 20%), allowing more information to be displayed at a glance. Another highlight of the new display is the support for new dynamic animated watchfaces. You get over 100 new animated watchfaces and there are some special ones based on characters from popular series’ like Neon Genesis Evangelion (EVA), Hatsune Miku, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Case Closed.
As mentioned above, Xiaomi has also increased the peak brightness of the Mi Band 5’s AMOLED panel, increasing it to 450 nits from 400 nits on its predecessor. You also get five levels of brightness adjustment.
Better Health Tracking
New Indoor Sports Modes
Considering the current situation across the globe where indoor / home exercises are gaining popularity, Xiaomi has added five new indoor modes for the newly launched Mi Band 5. This includes indoor machine and floor exercises like rowing machine, elliptical machine, skipping rope, yoga, and indoor cycling /spinning. This combined with the already available six exercise modes like swimming, walking, cycling, etc gives you a total of 11 specific tailor-made sports modes on the new wearable.
More Accurate Heart Rate and Sleep Tracking
The Mi Band 5 comes with a photoplethysmogram (PPG) biosensor for accurate 24 x 7 heart rate monitoring. Xiaomi claims that the new wearable increases the accuracy of irregular heart rate monitoring by up to 50%. Sleep tracking also gets an upgrade and its accuracy has gone up by 40%. It can also show you how many hours of REM sleep you’ve had every night, in addition to deep and light sleep.
Xiaomi Mi Band 5, for the first time, will also calculate your Personal Activity Intelligence (PAI) score. PAI is calculated by monitoring your heart rate and gives you a fair idea of your physical activity every week. A PAI score of 100 or more in a week indicates that you have an active lifestyle.
Magnetic Charging solves the biggest Pain Point of its Predecessors
Each generation of the Mi Band has had at least 2 weeks of battery life. But charging the device was a painful process – you had to manually remove the device from the wristband and place it in the charging cradle. Plus, there were a lot of complaints regarding the charger’s design.
The Xiaomi Mi Band 5 finally solves this pain point by using a magnetic charger. The charger easily connects to the two charging pins on the device, so you no longer have to remove it from the wristband.
The new Mi Band comes with 14-day battery life, so you just have to do it once every two weeks. It’s also waterproof up to 50 meters – just like its predecessor.
Xiaomi Mi Band 5 Pricing & Availability
The Mi Band 5 comes in two variants – NFC and non-NFC. The NFC variant is slightly more expensive at 229 yuan (~$32) but the non-NFC variant is priced at just 189 yuan (~$27).
The Mi Band 5 will go on sale on June 18 at 10 AM in China.
Honestly, the new Mi Band 5 raises the bar for smartbands this year. With a larger display and better health tracking, you get a lot of features for its sub-$30 pricing!
Love the new Mi Band 5? Don’t forget to participate in our Mi Band 5 giveaway for a chance to win it!
