Should you wait for the Mi Band 5 or just buy the Mi Band 4?
Xiaom’s
Mi Band 4 has proved to be a great fitness band you can get for
yourself at an eye-popping price point. The Chinese company is known for
producing premium products at an affordable price point. The Mi Band 4
has had four product iterations since it was first launched with each
release packing better specs and features. Now Xiaomi is prepping to
announce the next version of their popular health and fitness wearable
device, the Mi Band 5.
Now there’s been a lot to
unpack about the Mi Band 4. Released last year in 2019, the Mi Band 4
spots a 0.95 inch AMOLED, full color touch screen display with up to 400
nits. It comes with the latest version of Bluetooth 5.0 BLE with NFC on
China models, spots a 135mAh battery that lasts you upto 20 days. The
Mi Band 4 is water proof up to 50 meters, 5 atmospheres and comes with a
number of sensors including accelerometer, gyroscope, PPG heart rate
sensor, capacitive proximity sensor.
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For
a price point of below $40, it’s hard to turn away the Mi Band 4. But
now Xiaomi’s subsidiary Huami has revealed that the Xiaomi Mi Band 5
will be launched this year 2020 according to Android Authority. The exact release date is unknown, but rumors have it that the Mi Band 5 will be launched in June which is next month.
The Mi Band 5 is expected to have a bigger 1.2″ display which is slightly bigger than the Mi Band 4’s 0.95″ AMOLED display. The new display is expected to have a brighter contrast than one of the previous version. The display of the Band 5 is expected to spot an oval punch-hole
unlike the previous one which didn’t have it. It’s not clear what the
punch-hole is going to be used for, but we are speculating that it might
be a camera.
The other change expected with the Mi Band 5 is global support for NFC. Now both the Mi Band 4 and Band 3 have NFC but only for China models. NFC, short for Near Field Communication
is a wireless technology akin to Bluetooth used to enable communication
and data exchange between portable devices. NFC in the Chinese version
of the Mi Band 3 & 4 has been used to power or integrate with mobile
payments specifically AliPay and WeChat
which are extremely popular in mainland China. Globally, few players
have NFC-based payments and that explains in-part why the global version
of the fitness band didn’t have the capabilities.
On price tag, the Mi Band 5 is expected to go for 179 yuan in China (~$25.31)
in China. The price will obviously vary across the global and you can
expect to topup about $5-20 to that official price tag. Even then, this
is a lot cheaper than similar products from the likes of Apple, Samsung,
Garmin and Fitbit.
So, should you wait for the Mi Band 5 or
simply go with the current Mi Band 4? Well, if you are to ask me, I
think I don’t see much of a major upgrade between these two version
except for the slightly larger 1.2″ AMOLED display in the Band 5. NFC
isn’t that terribly useful if you aren’t living in China although both
Google Pay and Apple Pay have support for NFC payments.
The Mi Band 4 is
currently priced at $30 on Amazon or for our Ugandan audience Ugx 200,000 on computers.co.ug.
The coming Mi Band 5 is certainly going to cost slightly more for a
not-so epic upgrade. So I would go for the Mi Band 4. But if you can
wait and you really want to see what’s new from Xiaomi, then you should
probably wait for the Band 5.