Review: Redmi Smart Band Pro is a good alternative to Xiaomi Mi Band 6

Redmi recently announced Smart Band Pro. He recently became available on Amazon in some countries like India.

It’s an activity band that comes with a large 1.47-inch AMOLED display and the standard range of fitness sensors, including blood oxygen. At first glance, the wearable shares a lot with the Xiaomi Mi Band 6. As a reminder, the company is owned by the Chinese tech giant, so the resemblance should come as no surprise.

This latest wearable from Redmi closely follows the Watch 2. The second-generation smartwatch builds on the first effort with a larger AMOLED display, as well as built-in GPS. Despite these upgrades, Redmi Watch 2 only sells for around $60. Most would agree that’s incredibly reasonable for something that has built-in GPS. But that’s what Redmi is known for – low-cost connected devices.

Smart Band Pro is not the first fitness band from the Xiaomi sub-brand. It follows on from Redmi Smart Band which was released in April 2020. This one is a fairly basic affair that retails for just $15. For that, you get something that tracks your steps, distance, calories, and sleep. It has 5 sport modes, so the built-in heart rate monitor is useful for monitoring workouts.

Just 5-6 years ago, a laptop that does everything that would sell in the triple-digit price range. That’s how much the prices have dropped. And it will only get better from here.

As the name suggests, now we get something a little more sophisticated. A better equipped and much more capable version of the original. Something that will give budget fitness trackers a run for their money. The following is my review of the Redmi Smart Band Pro.

Redmi Smart Band Pro review: Design and hardware

• Looks like a “boxed” version of Xiaomi Mi Band 6
• Beautiful and clear 1.47 inch AMOLED
• Blood oxygen sensor
• Two week battery life on a single charge

look and feel

Redmi Smart Band Pro is quite a handsome wearable. Its design highlight is undoubtedly the bright, extremely vibrant and colorful 1.47-inch AMOLED display.

It’s a pretty high resolution (194 x 368 pixels) and offers up to 450 nits of brightness, making everything easily readable both indoors and out. The Redmi Band has an ambient light sensor allowing the screen to automatically adjust the brightness depending on the surrounding conditions and that no doubt helps. The colors are very realistic and vivid thanks to 100% NTSC.

You have an always-on display option, but enabling it will reduce battery life. When enabled, the band will revert to a simple screen showing the time and date when not in use. Tap the screen or lift your wrist to bring the full watch face into action. No physical buttons, however, but you don’t really need them as the screen’s touch functionality works flawlessly.

The construction of the fitness tracker is 2.5D tempered glass and something called polycaprolactam. It is a type of lightweight nylon, plastic material. The fitness tracker doesn’t feel or look cheap – I would rate it as sporty. As you’d expect, the strap is attached to a silicone strap with a pin-and-hole type mechanism that holds it in place. The whole thing weighs only 15 grams.

Redmi Smart Band Pro vs. Xiaomi Mi Band 6

Xiaomi has a lot of know-how when it comes to designing fitness trackers and Redmi has clearly tapped into that knowledge. Put Redmi Smart Band Pro and Xiaomi Band 6 next to each other and you will notice how similar they really are.

The main difference is in the dimensions. The Redmi Smart Band Pro is a bit shorter but wider and thinner than the Xiaomi Mi Band 6, i.e. it has a squarer look. So there is a clear visual difference between the two.

Its exact dimensions are 42.05 x 24.45 x 10.15 mm. Xiaomi Mi Band 6 has an elongated design with dimensions of 47.4 x 18.6 x 12.7 mm. The construction and everything else seems to be identical. Even some of the watch faces appear to be the same!

Water resistance will suffice in most cases except for those into deep scuba diving. The 5 ATM rating (to depths of 50 meters) means you can swim with it or shower without worry.

Personally, I prefer the look of the Redmi group to the product of Xiaomi. Despite being more boxy, you can tell it’s definitely a fitness band. The dimensions don’t cross into smartwatch territory. But because Smart Band Pro is wider, it allows for larger fonts that make everything easier to read. Granted, there’s a bit more scrolling involved.

When it comes to color options, you only get black. We would expect Redmi to add more color choices in due course.

Sensors, battery life

Under the hood, no surprises. You get the usual, including a 6-axis sensor (low-power 3-axis accelerometer and 3-axis gyroscope), PPG heart rate sensor, SpO2. The last on this list is an improvement over the first generation device. In case you were wondering, these are the exact same sensors you’ll find inside the Xiaomi Mi Band 6.

Display quality is one of the strengths of Redmi Smart Band Pro. The other strong point is the battery life. The laptop contains a 200 mAh battery. Interestingly, it is larger than the 130 mAh that can be found inside the Mi Band 6.

With normal use, the battery keeps the Redmi Smart Band Pro running for about two weeks between charges. This can be extended up to almost three weeks when the power saving mode is activated. But it is with limited features.

Charging is done via a magnetic touch cable. Simply line up the pins and the cable snaps onto the tracker where it stays firmly in place.

Redmi Pro Smartband Review

Fitness and health tracking

The wearable packs a lot of health and fitness features for its low price. Along with the usual steps, calories, distance, and sleep, you’ll find advanced health features. This includes blood oxygen monitoring (both on demand and automatically while you sleep), as well as stress tracking, female cycle stages, and breathing exercises.

Some of these features must be activated through the smartphone app. If you want to get the most health tracking benefits like me, choose 1-minute interval for continuous heart rate monitoring, 10-minute interval for blood oxygen sampling during sleep, enable advanced sleep monitoring and all-day stress tracking. But don’t expect two weeks of battery life with all of that enabled. It will be closer to half of that.

Other features that can be activated include alerts when your resting heart rate exceeds a certain level. There is also a similar setting for heart rate during exercise. So many nice customization options for health and fitness.

The big screen of Redmi Smart Band Pro is conducive to follow all this on the go. Swiping up and down shows your notifications. A simple finger swipe from right to left guides you through heart rate, blood oxygen, weather training, overall daily fitness stats and display settings.

All of this is customizable and you can have up to 7 widgets on the fitness band at the same time. Others can be found and installed through the smartphone app. These are all one-page affairs, so pressing the tracker when on a main widget display does nothing but keep the screen awake.

For a more detailed look at the features on offer, swipe up from the home screen. This will reveal the full list of widgets that you can open by tapping. Here’s the order: Workout, Activity, Stats, Heart Rate, SpO2, Sleep, Stress, Breathing, Cycles, Weather, Music, Camera, Alarm, Stopwatch, Timer, Notifications, Find Phone, Flashlight, Settings.

These widgets contain a bit more information that can be viewed by scrolling when the page is open. They also allow you to take on-demand stress and blood oxygen level readings and trigger certain smart functions.

Please note that other than activity history, most of the fitness stats on the tracker are for the current day only. For longer-term trends and other information, head to the Xiaomi Wear iOS or Android app.

Smartphone software is a fairly straightforward affair. It does the job but leaves a person wanting a little more.

Like most other health and fitness apps, you get a main dashboard with panels showing the various stats. Tap any of them to get daily, weekly and monthly totals.

The sleep statistics, in particular, are very detailed. What impressed me is that the tracker will also detect naps. This is something that cannot be said even of some big brands.

This all works perfectly fine, as does tracking your activity. I wouldn’t rate it first class but it’s acceptable. I would say, however, that the blood oxygen readings are a bit low.

Lots of watch faces

The app is also where you can download different watch faces (there are over 50). You can’t store multiple watch faces on the device itself, so the only way to switch between them is through the app. There are a few good choices available and you will have fun looking for the one you like best. The wide screen and the AMOLED quality make some of them very beautiful.

I do think the app lets down what is a great fitness tracker a bit though. You can’t help but think it has some catching up to do with the hardware when it comes to quality.

The most annoying problem I encountered was related to synchronization. This can take a while, and sometimes the band disconnects from the tracker before it completes syncing. In fairness, the Redmi Smart Band Pro is a new wearable – not even available in some markets yet. So these issues should be fixed with later firmware updates.

For example, when I started testing the fitness band, no additional watch faces were available in the app. These were only activated after a few days of testing. It is therefore still early days and Redmi is clearly making changes and upgrades to the software.

Sports tracking

• Connected GPS
• More than 110 fitness activities
• Three activities with automatic recognition

This Redmi Smart Band Pro review wouldn’t be complete without a look at its sports monitoring capabilities. The band is able to track over 110 fitness activities, three of which are self-recognizing (treadmill, outdoor running, and outdoor walking). That’s a pretty big boost in capacity over the first-gen device. No built-in GPS, beware, so you’ll have to rely on connected GPS.

I tested some of it on a few short runs and walks. The easiest way to enable GPS tracking is to use the smartphone app. Start the activity from there and the fitness band will do a good job of mapping your activity.

You’ll get stats along the way that runners will appreciate. This includes pace (for each mile), heart rate, steps, active calories, elevation gain and loss, heart rate zones, average stride length, and average cadence.

All this data is displayed in summary form, other data will also be displayed in graphs. Finally, the wearable will also calculate your Vo2Max from GPS-tracked activities, but that’s where the performance stats end.

Redmi Smart Band Pro review: The essentials

Redmi Smart Band Pro is a perfectly decent little fitness tracker. It feels quality and very similar to the Xiaomi Mi Band 6, the flagship of the outfit’s parent company.

The highlight of the bunch is undoubtedly its beautiful AMOLED display. It’s incredibly vibrant and easy to read indoors and out.

Battery life is another item in the Benefits column. That said, with all the fitness tracking features turned on, it will be closer to a week than two weeks. Still, that’s pretty decent for something that tracks your activity, heart rate, and stress around the clock, and blood oxygen automatically when you sleep.

I would like to see improvements in the smartphone app. Synchronization sometimes takes a long time, which can be a bit annoying. Hopefully Redmi will fix this issue with future software and firmware updates.

The fitness band is not yet available in all markets. But you can pick it up on Amazon in some countries like India and mi.com in some countries, such as the UK. There it is currently selling for £35 (down from £45), which means when it arrives in the US it will sell for around $50 or slightly above.

That’s about the price of the Xiaomi Mi Smart 6. With hardly anything to separate these two devices in terms of functionality, it comes down to design preference – i.e. do you want something elongated or more square.