XIAOMI Smart Band 7 Pro Review — Faster, Stronger, Smarter

5 months ago we’ve talked about the Xiaomi Band 7 and all its adequately well-placed features and performance. Just recently Xiaomi has graced us with yet another smart band for those smartwatch and wristwatch connoisseurs out there, the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 Pro, an upgraded version of its predecessor Band 7. So what’s new? What are the exact additions included in this small little widget? And most importantly, does it surpass its predecessor and stand out as a uniquity of its own? Let’s find out.

CONTENT

As usual, the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 Pro comes in a black box with the following items included :

• 1 x unit Xiaomi Smart Band 7 Pro
• 1 x unit of USB magnetic charging cable (double-pin)
• 1 x unit of the silicon band strap
• 1 x copy of user manual

And that’s all you need to boot up the device.

DESIGN

The Smart Band 7 Pro has a slightly larger screen than its previous counterpart, coming in 1.64″ with a 280 x 456 AMOLED display having a pixel measurement of 326PPI. Technically taking up 70% of the screen-to-body ratio and resulting in a more smartwatch look rather than a smart band due to its particularly larger display and body size. Unique to its own is the 2.5D curved up glass design protruding out on the main screen, while still retaining that familiar rectangular outline but just larger. That being said it’s definitely an improvement compared to its previous model in terms of display and touch area. Therefore making it much more suitable for users of all ages, especially elderlies.

The strap is, as usual, the same old hard-to-break silicon material. Comfortable as usual unless you have a thinner hand wrist (like me, for real) then sometimes finding the right wrist hole to hook the buckle onto could be a troublesome task because it may be too tight or it may be too loose. But that’s just me as I’m pretty sure it fits perfectly for others. But personally speaking, I am a huge fan of the strap buckle style rather than the click-on button style like its predecessor. So for that, I’m in favor of it.

The entire Band 7 Pro weighs 31 grams, just slightly heavier than the Band 7 but overall the weight doesn’t affect the comfort of wearing the band at all, even while asleep. The official site claims that the Smart Band 7 Pro comes in 6 colors ranging from your typical black, blue, pink, white, orange, and olive green, similar to the Band 7. As you can see the one we received came in black. Customers are given the choice to pick between leather or silicone straps when they order and thus giving more choices to consumers when it comes to style and taste.

As usual, more than 150 watch faces are available for download in addition to the 5 pre-installed ones. So swapping between watch faces is as easy as a snap of a finger as long as you have your Mi Fitness app installed. Sadly, the 5 pre-installed ones are not deletable so really you only have 2 additional faces for your preference. Each watch face would take up an average of 1.3 MB or so.

INTERESTING TWEAKS

Once again, like its predecessor, it has no visible button located anywhere on the watch, it can be activated by double-tapping the watch or, with customized settings, by twisting your wrist upwards towards your face. Or unless you want to keep the clock display on at all times, you could enable the Always-on-display (AOD) but it will drain your battery at a faster pace.

One interesting feature that comes with the Band 7 Pro, and a not-so-obvious one is that the band has auto-brightness control that adjusts to the lighting in surroundings. Other than that, the Band 7 has a 5ATM waterproof, meaning you could do more with it other than just splashing the band while washing your hand, say, going for a swim? As long as you’re not going scuba diving then everything is fine and dandy.

FEATURES

The Xiaomi Smart Band 7 Pro is, by all means, made with fitness in mind, with a slight touch of fashion. You have all your usual features such as heart rate monitoring, blood oxygen monitoring, sleep monitoring, and stress monitoring just to name a few. Evidently more than Band 7. Packed with 110+ workout modes that will never keep you bored if you’re a sports enthusiast. Hiking, cycling, jogging, walking, swimming you name it. You could basically go on a full-out triathlon with no issues. However, if you need guides you still have to vouch for it on your own as there are no workout guides available within the device.

One significant feature included within the Band 7 Pro is a built-in GNSS sensor, unlike the previous Band 7 which lacks a standalone GPS tracker, the Band 7 Pro does not require a smartphone to be carried around at all times. This means no matter which area you’re in you are able to keep track of your location with no issues.

Just like its predecessor, the Smart Band 7 Pro features a 6-axis sensor; 3-axis gyroscopes, and 3‑axis accelerometers along with a PPG heart rate sensor for SpO2 measurement. So nothing too extraordinary.

Other small features include a flashlight that illuminates the entire watch surface, an alarm feature, a Do Not Disturb (DND) option button, and a “Find my phone” feature. The band could also act as a camera shutter for your phone.

CONNECTIVITY

Setting up the band doesn’t take much trouble because again, if you’re using a Xiaomi phone you’re basically good to go from the start but if you don’t, then you’ll have to download the Mi Fitness app to kickstart your device. GPS connection is solid, may take at least a few seconds for the device to pinpoint your location and the tracks that you left behind. And from thereon, the band will do a good job at tracking wherever you go, covering terrains and forests and urban, and concrete jungles alike.

OVERALL PERFORMANCE

So the performance is what you would expect, being the “Pro” version of the Band 7 does come with some noticeable improvement. Other than the aforementioned inclusion of a built-in GPS, the monitoring system is able to keep up quite well too. Most of the measurement systems are able to perform neatly like the heart rate and SpO2 trackers. The constant tracking of your heartbeat and oxy level easily places the band well above its predecessor. Even the speed for gathering your stress data has improved slightly as it only takes around a minute or so to complete the computation.

You could access additional measurement metrics through your watch. Depending on what exercise of your choice, you could access metrics such as active calories burned, average BPM, how many steps you took, your average pacing, and average SPM for the “walking” workout mode alone.

However, the band does tend to get overwhelmed at times. Especially when it is bombarded with lots of notifications from any apps that your phone allowed access to. swiping through the message would get a bit laggy. There are also delays sometimes when it comes to message notifications as it may take a few seconds or so for the band to scan through the messages before it could display them on the screen. Clearing notification is easy as the option is located on the topmost section of the notifications. In addition to that, the band could only hold up to a maximum of 10 notifications.

Other than the usual fitness functions, there’s also the music playback option, weather report, and also quick access to Alexa. But unfortunately, Alexa is not available in Malaysia so I couldn’t express how effective the function is.

BATTERY

Having 235 mAh may not sound impressive but for a small device like this is more than plenty. It only takes less than an hour to fully charge the watch from 0 to 100%; 4 days of consecutive light use after full-charged and it still has plenty of juice left in it (70%). Xiaomi did claim that the watch could last up to 12-days and I personally think it wasn’t too farfetched. Of course, different features enabled will result in different amounts of battery consumption. Heavy use such as full features enabled will surely drain the battery within 5-7 days. But nevertheless, it’s plenty enough time for anyone to go out on a week worth of camping before it needs charging.

SPECIFICATION

VERDICT

While the improvement is obvious, it’s nothing too grand. It does blur the line between the definition of a smartwatch and smart band though, if it’s not because of the unavailability to run any third-party independent apps, I would have thought it’s a cheaper smartwatch at first. But it is still a good device for sports use and a good health monitoring tool for normal proactive use. Having such a huge collection of workout sessions along with a much sleeker look compared to its previous band 7 is definitely worth a try. I do, however, hope that it could be NFC compatible in Malaysia rather than just solely in China though. It could make things much more convenient and easier.

If you’re interested to get one, I would recommend checking it out on Shopee and Lazada with an original retail price of RM299. But now it will only be priced at RM279 during 11.11 sales. So grab yours while stock lasts.

That being said, here’s my take on the Pros and Cons :

PRO

• Larger display, with AMOLED screen
• Built-in GNSS
• Adequate battery life
• Smartwatch-like features
• More measurement metrics

CONS

• May get laggy with notifications
• Maybe slightly too pricy
• Lack Bluetooth calling