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To get the Mi Bvà 4 to traông xã your workouts, however, you vày have lớn manually tap it khổng lồ begin; the bvà does not automatically detect sudden spikes in heart rates as a potential start to an exercise. You also have sầu lớn manually stop it when you’re done, which can be annoying to rethành viên khổng lồ vì chưng if you’re lượt thích me and you hop right into the shower after you’re done with a workout.
I read the privacy policy so you don’t have to
Looking through Huami’s (the parent company for Xiaomày wearables / Mi Fit) privacy policy, the company makes it pretty clear that it collects anonymized information lượt thích your gender, age, & location lớn target advertisements with third parties. That’s not unusual for an internet company nowadays. It also employs the use of cookies và px tags lớn traông chồng websites you’ve visited or ads you’ve clicked, and your information may be shared with “business partners and affiliates” for “internal business purposes.” If the company is sold or merged, your information may be part of that transaction.
Basically, the device và app act as a secondary ad machine, which isn’t unexpected from a device that’s this affordable. (Competitors lượt thích Fitbit vị this, too.)
Something else worth noticing, though, is that your data may be “stored anywhere in the world,” & its current data facilities are in China, Singapore, Germany, Russia, and the US. If you are found to have violated its user agreements, you’ll have khổng lồ settle your disputes in Chinese courts. There’s really no way around this since the Mi Fit app is required khổng lồ phối up the Mi B&, but Huami does let you revoke your data usage via privacy
Although the Mi Bvà 4 offers sleep tracking, I found that the estimations didn’t always seem accurate. Most days, I wake up and start the morning by reading in bed, & the Mi Band wouldn’t recognize me as being “awake” until I got up & walked to lớn the bathroom. (The Fitbit Inspire HR, the last fitness tracker I tested, had no problem identifying this lounging in bed behavior.) There was another day when I came home page & promptly passed out on the couch at 9:45PM (no judgment, please) và briefly woke up around 1AM. The Mi Bvà 4 did not detect this movement, & it concluded that I slept for 10 hours and 51 minutes that night.
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I could tell you that the Mi B& 4 is a perfectly fine fitness tracker. It’s cheap, easy lớn wear, fairly discreet & lightweight, and it does everything most $100 fitness trackers can bởi vì for less than half the cost. The problem I had with the Mi B& 4, & what I’d like to spkết thúc the second half of this Đánh Giá discussing, is how some of the messages on the device and through the Mi Fit ứng dụng appear to lớn be a bit lost in translation. It got so frustrating that I found it to be too annoying lớn recommend, especially if you’re a beginner looking for an inexpensive way to lớn start changing your lifestyle.
Let’s face it: changing habits is hard. Cognitive sầu scientists will tell you that positive sầu language is key lớn restructuring your brain khổng lồ encourage better behavior, & this is where the Mi Bvà 4 utterly failed.
Take, for example, the analysis of my first night of sleep with the Mi B& 4. Despite getting eight hours of sleep, I woke up to lớn find some oddly worded, fearmongery tips, such as how sleeping after 11PM is going khổng lồ tốc độ up aging và wrechồng my immune system (which is especially not fun to read, given that I already have sầu half the immune system of a normal human). It also vaguely suggested that I can improve my deep sleep times by not “strain
The Mi B& also sends notifications lớn remind you to keep moving, as most wearables vì, but its version of this message had a rather off-putting tone. After sitting at my desk for an hour at work, the B& buzzed và told me, “You’ve sầu been sitting down too long.” Again, I’m no psychologist, but shouldn’t sustainable behavioral change be encouraged with a positive sầu outlook? To each their own, perhaps. Maybe you’re the kind of person who prefers this type of sternness to get moving, but I felt lượt thích this gadget nagged me more than it motivated.
Avid exercisers will also tell you that muscle weighs more than fat, but the Mi Fit tiện ích seemed mostly focused on thinness as signified by an icon of a female figure slimming down in an overview of my weekly steps. (This inhỏ was used regardless of whether you identified yourself in your protệp tin as male or female.) Diet và weight loss are historically feminized, as Eater’s Jaya Saxemãng cầu has written, when it comes lớn product messaging that can often be fatphobic. All of the Mi Bvà 4’s language just felt vain.
Mostly, I attribute this cultural mismatch to the fact that the Mi Bvà 4 và Mi Fit were made khổng lồ first serve sầu the company’s trang chủ market in Asia, which has different ideologies in terms of what constitutes health & happiness. But if Xiaomày wants its bands to be more effective sầu in areas outside of Asia, it might want to lớn consider updating its software to suit other markets.
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The easiest way to lớn bypass this mess is lớn just pair your Mi Band with Google Fit, but it requires having a Mi Fit tiện ích lớn vì so, which adds digital bulk to your phone. It’s ironic, given the push by Mi Fit for a lean & conservatory lifestyle. Even if you bởi vì skip the fitness tracking features in the Mi Fit tiện ích, it’s still worth taking a moment khổng lồ talk about messaging because part of pursuing a healthier lifestyle is mental. If Xiaomày wants its products to be consistently used, the language should encourage it rather than drive users away.
All that said, the Mi Bvà 4 is a solid device. You really bởi get a lot for a fraction of the cost of other fitness trackers, và most of my gripes with the device can be solved with a push of a software update. If you’re looking for an inexpensive, basic wearable, you could vì much worse than the $40 Mi Band 4. After all, it’s a fitness tracker that does just that: it tracks. Just don’t look lớn the phầm mềm for any help on how lớn improve sầu your actual health habits.
Photography by Natt Garun / The Verge
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