My honest review of the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 as a Swim tracker

DISCLAIMER: This is not a sponsored review, thoughts and views are purely independent.

I bought the Xiaomi Mi Band 4 from a boy in Puchong for RM150 around two weeks ago.

If you are too lazy to read until the end of the blog post: For a personal fitness tracker, it is shit. For a nice cheap smart watch with decent features, it is great.

Okay, here is the long review.

I have never bought a smart watch before or even worn one. But with recent trend of smart watches having more and more fitness tracking features, most importantly swim tracker, I was sort of hooked. 

So the choices in my mind were either an Apple Watch 4 or a Garmin Fenix 5S. I bought neither because I got a proper watch instead. Lol.

But with the most recent Chinese Brands like Honor, Huawei and Xiaomi of producing cheap smart watches, smart band, fitness tracker or whatever you would call it, there was the latest one, the Xiaomi Mi Band 4. 

And yes, it has a swim tracker. So I decided to get one with hopes of tracking my swimming habits so that I could post it on social media like a douche to show how many Kilometres of swimming I have racked up.

But I didn't post anything, cause.... I don't want to be a douche (lol just kidding)

Okay, lets talk about the watch.

I got the watch when it first came to Malaysian shores about two weeks ago. I bought it from a guy in Puchong. He sold it to me for RM150. It was sealed brand new in a box from China. (It was the chinese version). At this point you may wonder why I didnt just buy it from Lazada for only RM110 like that. Because, I was so excited it had a swim tracker, I dont want to wait a few days for Lazada, I wanted to use it instantly and test out the swim tracker. That was what exactly what I did.

After COD with the guy from puchong, I head straight home and charged the damn thing. It took around less than 2 hours from 0%. As soon it was charged, I head down to the pool to try out the swim tracker function :D

But before we head to the swim function, lets talk about what fitness tracker function it has (for other functions, go watch a youtube video or something, I am too lazy to write it down)

i-Outdoor running

ii-Treadmill

iii-Cycling

iv-Walking

v-Exercise

vi-Pool Swimming

From what I know for distance tracking for walking activities and cycling (besides treadmill), it links to your phone gps and you need to bring your phone along while you run in order to get accurate distance logging.

For other sports, they claim it has some sort of gyro sensor thingy that could track your movement and stuff and translate that into how many steps you have taken.

You must be curious, is it accurate?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

To be honest, you can shake the mi band and it records you have done 10-20 steps even though all you've done is shaking your hand back and forth.

For the exercise function..... I have no idea. It suppose to detect you do reps or something like that. (Go search for a review on that lol)

And now, lets get back to swimming.

So I was super excited to try it out at the pool. So the swimming function , you need to select the distance of the pool. It had 50m, 25m and custom. In custom you can set according to the actual length of the pool.

My pool is around 25-30m, so I chose 25m.

So I tried swimming 100m first and did breast stroke which is around 4 laps. I looked at the watch and it recorded 100m! wow! how could a cheap RM150 watch do that! So I swam some more, until 600meteres. I stopped the tracking. It recorded 625 meters. It was off by 25m, it was acceptable for its price. It sort of grew on me. It also detected what kind of stroke I was doing (Mindblown, but to be honest it could only detect breast stroke and freestyle accurately (sometimes)) 

Over the period of two weeks, I swam with it again and again. Then I realised something, the distance was getting more and more off. I did two laps of slow breast stroke, it showed 3 laps. I did 50 meters, it showed 100meters. I did breast stroke, it recorded I was doing freestyle. Even at a smaller pool at my parents place, it was way way off.

So I got back to my place and swam today. I gave up. It was way off too much. 2 laps become 3, reset again and still the same. Breast stroke became free style, 50m become 100m.

For today, I decided to swim 50 laps before i stopped the watch. It was a mixture of breast stroke and free style. I normally warm up with breast stroke, continue with free style in the middle and cool down with breast stroke.

The watch recorded that I did 68 laps, freestyle (normally if I mix my strokes it would record as medley). I wanted to print screen the swim log but it didnt record it and it didnt show up on my phone -_- (PHUCK)

I dont want to be that douche to post numbers of me swimming even though it is inaccurate. To be a douche, you need to be a douche with integrity. (lol jk jk)

Anyway, I'm selling off this watch to soothe my broken heart (lol)

Yes, the cat is giving sign languages if you were wondering

Verdict:

Pros:

-It is cheap

-Makes a good watch

-Has a good alarm function

-You can use it to ring your phone if you lose your phone in the house

-Battery is superbly good

-Heart rate monitor sort of works

Cons

-Swim tracker is shit

-Walking tracker is shit