Packaging & Design
Keeping with Xiaomi’s packaging policy, the Mi Band 2 comes in a plain brown box with just the Mi logo on the front.
And inside, Xiaomi has also kept things simple, all you will find is the Mi Band 2 fitness tracker, the USB charging cable, and simple manual leaflet.
One thing that made the first generation Mi Band great was its simplicity. A minimalist pebble that fits into a silicone strap. Three indicator lights shine through the metallic surface to relay information. The rest of the interaction takes place on the phone in the Xiaomi Fit app. The Mi Band 2 comes with a simple OLED scratch-resistant display where you can view information such as the time, number of steps, calories burned and heart rate.
The main oval unit is 10.5mm thick. It doesn’t raise too far up off the wrist. The band is well engineered, and a snug fit and while sitting level with the bracelet, the top surface of the unit remains exposed but is almost completely covered with black glass.
Together with the soft black silicone bracelet, the Mi Band 2 looks particularly smart, but it may be harder to match against other colour bracelets compared to the aluminium surface of the previous generation. The Mi Band 2 only comes boxed with the black silicone strap, other colored straps are available to purchase from Xiaomi.
Charging is done by removing the Mi Band 2 pebble tracker from the silicone strap and inserting it into the USB charger cradle.
All it takes is a few hours of charging to juice up the Mi Band 2, but the main complaint here is, to keep things minimalistic, the cable on the USB charger is very short; OK for charging off your laptop’s USB port but if you want to charge it say on your bedside table, you’ll either have to have a USB charging port on the tabletop or use a USB extension cable.
The OLED display is scratch-resistant display is not intrusive and has been one feature that users of previous generations of the Mi Band has asked for.
The brightness of the OLED display is turned down so that it doesn’t attract the attention of others.
2 comments
The MI band 2 is much cheaper than the competition and a fantastic value for money. Plus Xiaomi is constantly updating it. The low cost makes it easy to overlook some of its bigger issues like the heart rate sensor. I think even if you look at it just as a tracker without a heart rate sensor, its still hard to argue with that price tag.
I might get this band as well, at geekbuying it dropped to $27.