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

10 Year Appreciation Post

I cant believe this blog is already more than 10 years old.

I've been going through some of the old posts,

I am a bit sad that I couldnt have contributed more for the past few years.

It feels like going through 10 years of memories in a flash. Slow flashback? Throwback? Whatever back?

I think I might close this blog down and jump and open a website with my own domain instead, I am considering WIX

Surprisingly, my previous post, had some numbers. Honestly, who are these ghost readers? I would really like to know, maybe we could be friends lol.


So the title of the post is 10 year appreciation post.

Honestly, I dont think I appreciated this blog so much. Is this a reflection of I am not appreciating myself enough?

So lets look back of what had happened for the last 10 years

1-The government changed (fairly recent though)

2-Worked in two companies with multiple roles

3-Bought a house

4-Got into a serious relationship

5-Got a degree

6-Read books (like yes, I read books now haha)

7-Sort of became vegan when possible (this was quite recent)

8-Subscribed to netflix

9-Lived in the middle of the Sea for prolonged periods of time

okay, at this part, I sort of liked stopped an starred and looked back into my life....

I'm having an overthinking or an anxiety attack on whether what I should write.

There are things deep inside me that I should just let out though I just cant.

I dont know, maybe another time. 

Its August?

Yes it is august.

I am slowly trying to build up my long gone writing skills.

I have no idea on how I was so passionate in writing back then.

I am taking word by word of Tun M's advice to read and write.

I guess this is the phase of life where phone zombies just cant stop going out of the rabbit hole.

Losing all sense of creativity, time, value and many others.

Dont you just hate the cycle where you get back home from work,

lie down on your bed and just get stuck in the rabbit hole of browsing your phone over and over again

Keep switching apps over and over again just to get that hand position of holding the phone.

I guess its a bad habit I need to break free from.

Though 7 months has passed throughout the year, I would say it was quite a meaningful one.

I just dont know what else to say.......

Lets save it for later..... (hopefully not never)

A year and counting

It has been almost a solid year since I deleted social media apps from my phone. The last post I posted on instagram was on the 1st of August 2017 and it was not even a photo, it was a cut-out from an article that shows swimmers seems to have younger organs than their real age lol.

I guess many of you are wondering (if my blogger readers still exist) why I quit social media. There's a long blog post of why here --->LINK TO BLOG OF WHY I DELETED MY SOCIAL MEDIA APPS .

Many of you ghost readers out there up to this point may be wondering (after reading the blog post perhaps) what has progressed over the year of quitting social media. To be honest, I think the most time consuming social media would be instagram. I kinda find instagram to be a short form acronym of "Instant Gratification". After deleting Instagram, I sort of lost the will of trying to pose like an idiot to get the perfect photo to show the world how awesome my life is. I simply mastered a part of not giving a f*ck. Like seriously. Just walk around an art expo or an event or somesort, people just dont absorb the atmosphere anymore, their heads are looking down on their phone or forcing their friends to take the best photo pose of them so that they could upload to social media and prove the self worthy and gain fake social validation from the internet community. Furthermore, I dont have much more free time rather than trying to upload and insta-story or somesort. Further down the line, I also dont know whats going on with the people I follow on instagram, There was an instance that I had no idea my friend just had a kid. I found out he had a kid when he came by and we had real social interaction at a restaurant that he brought his wife and kid to eat dinner together and I was like WHOAAAA SINCE WHEN YOU HAD A KID? lol I would say, that it is sort of a drawbacks of you not knowing of your friends that you care who they seem to exclusively upload their life progress only through instagram (lol, such an exclusive breed). I seriously have a lot more to rant about instagram, but I guess you all would get the point by now (gosh i just love typing with my new mechanical keyboard hahaha)

Anyway, you may also be wandering, what about your other social media apps, twitter and facebook? Yes, I deleted them too. Though I only open them with my phone browser. My facebook basically only has feeds of news from pages that I follow and to check for wedding invitations. I basically un-followed everyone on facebook to appear on my feed, though I still remain friends with them. I occasionally share interesting news and mostly photos of cute cats. Talking about weddings, there some instances I had no idea that some of my facebook friends got married due to not following them in my feed and they did not invite me to their wedding (lol).

So, what about my twitter account? I muted all annoying feeds (sorry) and mostly interesting news on my feed. 

I do get stuck sometimes in the never ending black hole of twitter and facebook even though looking at them via web browser, but that only happens when I am being an arse towards myself and not thinking of the greater good I could do with all that time. As soon as I snap out of it, I mostly do something productive. But the bright side of not using the app, it gives some sort of resistance to like stop using it and you dont get the full addictive experience if you use it on browser. Furthermore, you dont get instant notifications. Notifications is the devil, its the trigger to go deep into the bottomless abyss. Its hard to resist that red dot with the number inside.

Now, at this stage, you may be wondering, what has happened so far with all the free time?

Lets make a list

1-I get free time (obviously)

2-I stop thinking of taking photos of every activity which are deemed cool to post on social media

3-I discovered the sweetness of not giving a f*ck

4-Almost a million ringgit in debt for 35 years haha 

5-Got on to many phases in life

6-Discovered big challenges to overcome my worsening anxiety, faced it and said f*ck you anxiety

7-Managed to finished off a lot of books.

8-Discovered weekends alone at home can be quite funnnn haha

9-Swam a 7 km swimathon (again) and did worst timing than previously did two years ago by two minutes lol

10-Got on to much more serious phases in life (ehem ehem)

11-Forgave people for how much of an ass they are and pretty much say f*ck you to them

12-Cursed much more than before

13-Care about people who really matter

14-The government changed 

15-Discovered DIY home improvement stuffs and failed miserably at it and learned the hard way to resolve it lol

I think the list could go on and on and on....

Anyway, the only reason I feel like writing lots and lots again, Dr.M said, one way to keep your brain sharp is to read and write. I hope I get to live until 90 plus like him. 

Thats all for now..... Shall write some more in the near future since I just love tapping my mechanical keyboard lol

Mechanical Keyboard

Roughly about more than a week ago, I decided to get myself a mechanical keyboard. So I was walking around, window shopping at ALL IT KLCC, I manage to find an Elysium Lofree Dot Keyboard for RM249. Yes, RM249. Suprisingly, the keyboard last year costs around RM400. So I decided to get one at the discounted price. The great thing about this keyboard is that its probably the only mechanical bluetooth wireless keyboard around.  Most mechanical keyboards are wired, this is because mechanical keyboards are normally used by hard core gamers in order to get the best speed response. Bluetooth has some drawbacks, its a bit laggy compared to wired keyboards. Though I've been using this keyboard for a little over a week, I dont feel the lag at all and I also dont game on my laptop PC lol.

Anyway, this blogpost is basically me testing out the keyboard. The clickety clack sound of the keys does give you a sense of satisfaction after pressing each keys. I'm planning to blog post even more to feed my satisfaction of each key press. Pushing buttons eh? lol I'm planning to snooze early tonight and get things done in the morning I guess. I really should reduce playing with my phone too much.