Ever since the release of the first Mi Band, the whole smart wearable market has been flooded with similar cheap products for years. However, the Mi Band series is still the best of them all and has successfully updated to the 7^th generation model. At the just-concluded Redmi Note 11T launch event, the Mi Band 7 got officially released in China. The new Mi Band has not only been upgraded with a slightly bigger display but also supports richer sports tracking and other new features.

For those who are looking for a smart-tracking wearable for their exercise, the Mi band 7 no doubt would make it into their wishlist. 

First, let’s see what we get inside the new Mi Band package. 

Well, the packaging is similar to the previous models, nothing special if you just look at the packaging and the smart band design. It seems that Xiaomi doesn’t want to spend too much on packaging and design. But it really makes sense if you realize that the design of the whole series hasn’t changed a lot from the first model. Smart bands are still the entry-level devices in the smart wearable ecosystem, and their success is largely due to their rich features and the fact that they are cheap. 

The model we got our hands on is a Mi Band 7 NFC version, which supports copying access cards or NFC Payment. In addition to those upgraded features, it inherits almost all the features of the Xiaomi Band 6. For example, it supports multiple sports tracking, sleep tracking, and swimming mode with 5ATM waterproofing. The Mi Band 7 also enables the tracking of key body data, including heart rate, blood oxygen, and stress index. In heart rate tracking, users can set the frequency of monitoring and set alerts for abnormal heart rate detection. And not just all-day heart rate tracking, it can also monitor stress throughout the whole day. 

For sleep tracking, it supports monitoring both nighttime sleep tracking and daytime nap, in which you can view your deep and light sleep data and rapid eye movement records. Apart from the basic sleep data, it also has sleep-breathing-quality monitoring, which can help determine whether there is sleep apnea.   

For female users, the Xiaomi Mi Band 7 also supports convenient recording and prediction of periods too.

But almost all the features we mentioned above were already available on its predecessor. So here we’ll just give you a brief review. 

Now let’s check out what has been upgraded. 

The first upgrade is the bigger AMOLED display. The racetrack front face is a classic design for the Mi Band series. On the Mi Band 6 it’s already reached a retina pixel density of 326PPI, while on the new model, the screen size has been expanded from 1.56 to 1.62 inches with the same pixel density. But apart from being a little wider, there are not really changes to its compact dimensions. And the weight of 13.5g is still great. 

Along with the bigger display, its brightness and running smoothness have also been improved. The Mi Band 7 is upgraded with the new Dialog chipset, which is more powerful and can achieve GPU graphics rendering. And it did bring smoother animation effects and a better visual experience. Meanwhile, in terms of software, Xiaomi has also made adjustments to the User interface, allowing more content to be displayed. During the experience, we did feel the information arrangement is also more reasonable. 

With this AMOLED display, the always-on-display feature is finally coming to the Mi band series. But thankfully, the addition of the new feature doesn’t affect its battery life. The new model with the larger battery even can last 4 days longer with heavy use.  

The attached strap is made of TPU material and is antibacterial. And there’s a new sweat-conducting slot being added to the inside of the band. It seems to be helpful to drain sweat or water away quickly. 

As for health tracking, the continuous all-day tracking of blood oxygen is now available on the Mi Band 7, which can also push alerts in real-time when low blood oxygen is detected. 

Compared to the 30 sport modes supported on the Mi Band 6, up to 120 sport modes make the new wearable handle a wider range of sports. Like the Huawei smart wearables, the Mi Band 7 is also able to analyze your sports data, such as oxygen uptake, training effect, recovery time, and training load. And if move to the phone app, you will receive a complete report of your exercise. And don’t worry whether you’re using a Mi phone or not, the official Mi health app now is available and works pretty well on both Android and iOS platforms. 

Another great upgrade is its new positioning capacity. The Mi band 7 adds an independent positioning chip to support GPS, as the predecessors needed to rely on the phone for the positioning function. Now you can use it separately without activating the phone’s GPS. 

So that’s all upgrades that we have on the Mi Band 7 NFC version. Although we didn’t see a completely redesigned model, the classic design of the series is great, and it’s already capable of carrying all the new features of this entry-level wearable. Indeed, we don’t really see any reason why it needs to be redesigned. More importantly, it still holds up at a price that most people can afford. But on the other hand, if you don’t really care about those upgrades we mentioned, the cheaper Mi Band 6 could also be an excellent option. 

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