Gadgets
Mi Smart Band 6 Review: The Gold Standard of Budget Fitness Bands?
Mi Smart Band 6 price in India
The Mi Smart Band 6 is priced at Rs. 3,499 in India, but owners of any previous Mi Smart Band model can avail a Rs. 500 discount, dropping the price to Rs. 2,999. Xiaomi is selling the Mi Smart Band 6 only in black with a black strap, but you can buy different coloured straps to customise your fitness band.
The Mi Smart Band 6 is capable of logging more types of workouts than the Mi Smart Band 5
Mi Smart Band 6 design and specifications
Just like previous Mi Smart Bands, the Mi Smart Band 6 has two components, a capsule-shaped core and a TPU strap. The Mi Smart Band 6 at first looks identical to its predecessor, the Mi Smart Band 5 (Review), but the difference is apparent the minute the display lights up. While the Mi Smart Band 5 had a small rectangular display, the one on the Mi Smart Band 6 stretches to the edges of the capsule and has very thin bezels at the top and sides. The AMOLED display now measures 1.56 inches and has a resolution of 152×486 pixels. It also has tempered glass on top and an anti-fingerprint coating which helped keep the unit smudge-free, in my experience.
The capsule is removable but you don’t really need to do this since you can charge it using the included magnetic charger. The underside of the capsule has pins for charging the 125mAh battery in the band. Xiaomi hasn’t bumped up the battery capacity over the Mi Smart Band 5 leading to some apprehensions before testing thanks to the larger screen. Right above the charging pins are sensors for heart rate and SpO2 tracking. There are no physical buttons on the Mi Smart Band 6, and all navigation is touch-based. Xiaomi has made the Band 6 water resistant upto 5ATM, in fact it can also track swimming.
Stress tracking is a claimed feature of the Mi Smart Band 6
The Mi Smart Band 6 supports Bluetooth 5 and can be paired with a smartphone running Android 5.0 or above. You can also pair the Mi Smart Band 6 to an iPhone running iOS 10 or above. You can use the Mi Fit app or the Xiaomi Wear app. It is also compatible with the popular Strava app. I used the Xiaomi Wear app, which is the same one I have used with the Redmi Watch and the Mi Watch Revolve Active for their reviews.
Mi Smart Band 6 features and software
The Mi Smart Band 6 is feature-packed. Xiaomi claims that this wearable has 30 different fitness modes and can automatically detect six types of workouts. You can track steps, distance, and sleep on the Mi Smart Band 6 along with SpO2 and stress tracking, as well as menstrual cycle tracking. The Mi Smart Band 6 can also calculate what Xiaomi calls a PAI (Personal Activity Intelligence) index based on different health parameters.
Pairing the app with the Mi Smart Band 6 is quite easy, and a lot of the band’s settings can be changed through it. You can select which widgets appear on the Mi Smart Band 6 and in what order. There are a lot of widgets to choose from but only six can be added to the Band 6. Whichever ones you choose, you can take a look at all your activity parameters in the app. Similarly, you can select which apps are available on the Mi Smart Band 6 for use.
The underside of the band has the health sensors and charging contact points
Health monitoring features can also be configured using the connected app. You can select the frequency of heart rate tracking, toggle all-day stress tracking, and also enable the sleep assistant, which increases the frequency of heart rate tracking while you sleep. With the Mi Smart Band 6, Xiaomi has also introduced a breathing score metric which is currently in beta. The Mi Smart Band 6 uses its SpO2 sensor to track your blood oxygen levels while you are asleep. Most of these features are disabled by default, and you’ll need to spend some time within the app to set the device up to your liking.
In the Xiaomi Wear app you can also select which apps on your phone can notify you using the Mi Smart Band 6. You can even set up the band to unlock your smartphone and vibrate for incoming calls/ messages.
Mi Smart Band 6 performance and battery life
I used the Mi Smart Band 6 for two weeks to test its accuracy and battery life. In terms of tracking accuracy, this is among the best wearables you can get in this price segment. I counted 1,000 steps manually as I walked, and the Mi Smart Band 6 registered 1,002 steps which is a negligible deviation. To check distance accuracy, I walked 1km on a treadmill using the Mi Smart Band 6’s treadmill mode,, and it measured the same reading. This device also lets you save the distance reading from the treadmill workout.
I wore the Mi Smart Band 6 on my right wrist and an Apple Watch SE on my left to compare their heart rate tracking accuracy while working out. The Mi Smart Band 6 displayed heart rate readings in the same range as the Apple Watch SE (Review), with only occasional minor deviations, which is acceptable. Sleep tracking on the Mi Smart Band 6 was also accurate, with the device accurately logging the time I went to bed and when I woke up. The app gives a breakdown of deep, light, REM, and awake periods, along with a breathing score (based on SpO2 readings) if this feature is enabled. You also get tips to improve breathing. SpO2 tracking on the Mi Smart Band 6 was fairly accurate as well, returning readings in the same range as those of a standard pulse oximeter.
A magnetic charger makes it convenient to charge the Mi Smart Band 6
Xiaomi claims 14 days of battery life but you are most unlikely to hit that if you exercise five days a week and track all parameters regularly. Most of the features of the Mi Smart Band 6 are disabled by default, so it does not track heart rate continuously, show app notifications, or monitor stress unless you want it to. I set the Mi Smart Band 6 to track my heart rate every five minutes, enabled app notifications, sleep score, and idle alerts, and tracked my workouts five times a week. With these settings, the Mi band 6 lasted for eight days before needing to be recharged. If you enable PAI, expect battery life to drop even further, since it requires your heart rate to be logged every minute.
Charging the Mi Smart Band 6 was easy. I did not need to pull the capsule out of the band. The magnetic charger attached to the underside of the band quite securely. charging it from zero to 40 percent in 30 minutes and to 83 percent in an hour. Battery life is lower than that of the Mi Smart Band 5, so you will need to charge it more frequently.
Verdict
After testing the Mi Smart Band 6 for two weeks, I can say that it is a good fitness band and its measurements can be relied on. It is fairly accurate when it comes to tracking steps, distance, as well as sleep. Fitness tracking has improved compared to the Mi Smart Band 5 (Review), and the Mi Smart Band 6 can track a wider range of workouts. The addition of SpO2 tracking has also come at a good time, letting you get quick readings at any point during the day.
Xiaomi hasn’t changed the battery capacity of the Mi Smart Band 6 compared to its predecessor. That is one thing I would like to see improved with the next model. With the bigger display and added features, battery life has gone down. Still it can last for between 8-10 days with reasonable use, so it is still a good fitness wearable for the price.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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