It was a similar story on the heart rate monitoring front. Though, as we found, the tracking accuracy even with connected GPS could be hit and miss on both Bands compared to the GPS tracking on more reliable Garmin and Polar GPS watches. There's no built-in GPS on either tracker, but you do have the option of using connected GPS, which means booting up Xiaomi's companion phone app to track outdoor exercise like runs and cycling time. Xiaomi has sought to improve the Mi Band's ability to track your sporting pursuits despite still lacking a pretty notable sports tracking sensor. The key difference here for us is that you're getting a bit more reliability in terms of continuous heart rate monitoring on the 7, but it's a hard area to separate the two. It's also used to track breathing quality during sleep.Īcross the board, you're getting stress tracking, women's health tracking, and guided breathing exercises. There's now the ability on the Mi Band 7 to set up high and low SpO2 alerts similar to the high and low heart rate alerts Xiaomi also supports. The SpO2 sensor, which is available on both, gives you the ability to continuously monitor or take on-the-spot readings. Switching over to what Xiaomi would deem health features and you can continuously monitor heart rate, which we found was much more reliable and accurate compared to tracking heart rate during exercise. It's not a particularly engaging feature though and its integration as a feature hasn't changed on the 7 compared to the 6. PAI scores remain a feature of Xiaomi's fitness tracking ecosystem, measuring time spent with the heart rate elevated and scoring efforts every week out of 100. They can feel accurate some days and wildly off on other days. In our tests, we found step tracking at times quite far off the devices we compared them to. If you want an altimeter to track elevation like climbing stairs, neither has that desirable sensor. Fitness and health tracking featuresįitness tracking is the key here and while neither Band will inform you about a serious heart problem, they do offer features to help keep an eye on your general wellness and health.įor the basics, these Bands will count steps, track distance covered, and calories burned over the day, and send you idle alerts when you're inactive for long periods. That improved screen resolution and size along with the option of an always-on mode is going to give the Mi Band 7 more appeal, but we'd say whichever Band you go for, you're going to get a tracker that lives largely the same day and night on your wrist. Water resistance ratings remain the same here, so that's a 5ATM rating ensuring you can shower and swim with both Bands up to 50 meters depth. It's nice that the 7 offers improved brightness, but the brightness wasn't an issue on the 6. The screen on the 7 is bigger and does mean you have a bit more room to display data, but the quality and elements like viewing angles don't feel hugely different. What does that mean in terms of using the screens? We'd say not a huge amount. There are changes on the brightness front with the 6's screen maxing out at 450 nits of brightness and the 7 going brighter at 500 nits. The 7 in comparison features a larger 1.62-inch AMOLED with an improved 192 x 490-pixel resolution and offers an always-on display mode you don't get on the 6. The Mi Band 6 hosts a 1.56-inch AMOLED touchscreen with a 152 x 486 resolution. What you might notice is changes in the display department. The Mi Band 6 has a 47mm case while the Mi Band 7 has a smaller 46.5mm case, which few people will notice. The Mi Band 7 comes in black, green, orange, and blue shades, so you've got options on both fronts. These Bands offer similar looks and their main differences in the display department, which separate them.īoth use the same module squeezed into a band that you can can swap for a host of other different colored options The Mi Band 6 comes in black, orange, yellow, olive green, ivory white, and blue.

Mi fit 7